Áine McDonagh with medical staff during the qualifying final between North Melbourne and Hawthorn at Ikon Park on November 7, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos
HAWTHORN will be sweating on scans for stars Aine McDonagh and Kaitlyn Ashmore after the pair were injured during the Hawks’ 39-point qualifying final loss to North Melbourne.
McDonagh suffered a right knee injury, leaving the ground in considerable pain before returning to play the fourth term, but was clearly hampered.
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Winger Ashmore started receiving treatment on her right calf in the second term, and despite extensive time spent on the bike, was not sighted in the second half.
Emily Everist passed a HIA during the game, with Laura Elliott receiving treatment after a heavy knock, while Jas Fleming (13 touches) was playing sore.
“Both of them will need to be assessed and get whatever scans they require during the week, I’m not sure on the details at this point,” Hawthorn coach Dan Webster said.
“[Fleming] was a bit sore in the warm-up. She got a bit of treatment beforehand, and probably just couldn’t quite get going. She has no real injury in that sense, I think it was a bit more soreness today. She wasn’t at her best today, physically.
“I thought we battled well for three quarters, but then just ran out of bullets at the end there. We had players going down in the third quarter, at one point we had one player on the bench, so it looked a bit dicey.
“But I thought the way we fought it out was actually pretty good. We tried some different things, and I thought the look of the game wasn’t too bad. There was still some execution stuff we need to tighten up.”
The injuries came amid a heated third term, with the wallet of fiery small forward Greta Bodey likely to be a few dollars lighter after a deliberate, off-the-ball elbow into the back of the equally combustible Emma Kearney.
When the two sides played last week, Kearney had again attracted attention from Nat Exon, but Webster said there wasn’t a directive to unsettle the Roos champ.
“Not from our end. To be honest, I actually completely missed it, I didn’t see it and had to ask the team what actually happened,” he said.
Hawthorn went goalless, managing just three behinds – one rushed, and two off the boot of McDonagh – and took only two marks inside 50 for the game.
“We still gave ourselves looks, though. There were periods in the game we were quite dominant in territory, we just couldn’t get on the scoreboard. It’s been a bit of a common problem for us, and something we’ve worked hard on, we just need to get better,” Webster said.
“It’s an interesting one, because it’s not just personnel. A couple of times – if we’re out, and we’ve got a chain going, and someone misses a handball, it breaks down the play. If someone drops a mark at some point in time, it shuts down the play. If we miss the wrong target coming out of defence, it changes the play.
“It’s not as much personnel in that sense, I think it’s actually more execution across the board. Last week, we watched the game back, and we had numerous opportunities to score, but we’d miss the one kick. It’s just that piece that’s hurting us at the moment. We’re working very hard at it, and we’ll continue to do that. We realised that our scoring power isn’t as strong as it needs to be, and we’ll try to find how to fix it as best we can with who we have available.”
North Melbourne coach Darren Crocker was pleased at how his side held up under strong Hawthorn pressure, albeit with an inaccurate 5.12 on the board.
“Hawks really challenged us, they made it a really tight, high-pressure contested game. But we’ve got a lot of trust in the way we play, our system and identity, that hopefully teams can hold us for a period of time [but] it’ll open up at some point,” he said.
“[Mid-forward connection] will probably be one thing we’ll look at. Their ability to defend, not just inside the D50, but putting pressure on the ball-carrier – sometimes the ball-carrier was under pressure and they couldn’t get the ball in the areas they wanted to. But they did also get some good numbers back as well.
“We could have been a bit better with where we put the ball for our forwards, at times.”
Crocker confirmed Eilish Sheerin (hamstring) fell just short of selection but is well and truly on track to be available for the preliminary final, with two weeks of solid training ahead.
