AFL

Caroline Wilson

Caroline Wilson has been chief football writer for The Age since 1999. She was the first woman to cover Australian Rules football on a full-time basis and the first woman to win the AFL's gold media award. She has won the AFL Players' Association's football writer of the year (1999) and the AFL Media Association's most outstanding football writer and most outstanding feature writer (2000, 2003, 2005). In 2014 she won the Melbourne Press Club's Graham Perkin award as Australian journalist of the year. She also won a MPC Quill Award in 2003.

Trent Cotchin and Sam Mitchell say they won't contact Jobe Watson.

AFL in a muddle over Brownlow presentation

Even allowing for the appropriate sensitivity afforded Essendon's devastated Jobe Watson, the inescapable impression is that the AFL has danced around the practical details of how to manage the handover to Sam Mitchell and Trent Cotchin.

Richmond, one of the game’s worst-performed clubs over some decades, should count itself lucky to engender such passion ...

A small victory for Richmond's ‘lunatic fringe’

The resignation of another long-serving Richmond board member and the club's move to legislate against dead wood directorships should be seen as a victory for those challengers to the club who have been portrayed in recent months as the lunatic fringe of AFL supporters.

Graeme Allan, centre, has resigned.

AFL: GWS drug saga has put McGuire under pressure

Even on the day that the AFL hoped to have finally shut the book on the Essendon drug scandal and awarded retrospective Brownlow Medals to Sam Mitchell and Trent Cotchin, the other drug saga involving Greater Western Sydney's Lachie Whitfield, Graeme Allan and Craig Lambert remains the intriguing talking point looking forward to 2017.

Fans queue outside Etihad Stadium.

AFL trying to reinvent Etihad as a fan-friendly venue

Gillon McLachlan's acknowledgement that supporters deserve better treatment at Etihad Stadium has seen the AFL second the Melbourne Football Club's marketing boss to work over the summer to help transform the venue in time for 2017.

Struggling: Tiger Chris Yarran has returned to Melbourne for the second year running in less-than-ideal condition.

Yarran's future at Richmond in doubt

Chris Yarran's future at Richmond remains in serious doubt with the 25-year-old still struggling to reach the fitness levels demanded by the Tigers after a long lay-off from the game.