IN WHAT may feel like a sense of déjà vu to some, the AFL Women’s Grand Final has come around again, and for the second year in a row it will be North Melbourne taking on Brisbane in the decider.

Both sides have been on a journey in the 12 months since last year’s decider, as Brisbane coach Craig Starcevich alluded to was the biggest change in his group in the last 12 months.

“Well we got the good lesson early in the year, didn’t we? And we’ve had another one since,” Starcevich said.

“For us, it’s been a bit of a journey of growth across the year I guess, just to try and improve. “There was a fair few things in the first time we played each other this season that we needed to get to work on, and I reckon we’ve steadily got better. “From that point of view, I think we’ve still got a lot of decent footy left in us and a lot of improvement left in us, which is probably the downside of only having an 11 game season.”

When he was asked the same question, North Melbourne coach Darren Crocker had a slightly different answer.

“I think the biggest change for us is just the calmness within the group throughout the season” Crocker said.

“I think we’ve given us ourselves enough evidence to know that we are rightfully should be back here on this stage.”

Despite the pain of losing last year’s decider, Crocker confirmed he has not really brough it up in the build up to this year’s decider.

“We haven’t really spoken about last year at all,” Crocker said.  

“I’ve said it before that we took some learnings out of last year, you’d be stupid not to, and just drip fed that throughout our preseason in regards to what held up pretty well on the biggest stage last season, and then what we could actually do better and that was more just from an education perspective on us becoming a better team.”

These two sides have met once already this season, which saw North Melbourne pick up a big win back in Round 1.

Starcevich said that result is somewhat relevant now, but it is not the be all and end all.

“Probably the last month’s worth of footy is the only thing that I find relevant, normally,” Starcevich said.

“But when you’re talking months ago, I guess it’s not completely irrelevant, but more in the rear view mirror now in terms of what we’re doing preparation wise.”

North Melbourne captain Emma Kearney had similar sentiments to Starcevich, but did agree that the win gave her side a lot of confidence.

“We’ve never beaten Brisbane up until that point, so I think it gave our girls a lot of confidence, but we’ve just built upon each game throughout the season,” Kearney said.

“We’re not so reliant on one or two players like we potentially were the previous years. We’ve seen tremendous growth in some of our younger players and our senior players are leading the way still. So yes it gives us confidence going into this game but we know that Brisbane are an incredible outfit.”

Kearney’s opposite number Breanna Koenen is coming into this decider in a very different position to last year as well as to Kearney, with her side being the underdogs despite being the reigning premiers. But Koenen is not complaining.

“To be honest I don’t think we get a say in that sort of stuff, so it’s just whatever it is,” Koenen said.

“We’ll take it on board and we’ll fly with it obviously. “We just happen to be underdogs this year rightfully so obviously, Roos have had a fantastic season. “They’re near undefeated, so they deserve to be the favourites.”