{"id":766074,"date":"2026-06-28T16:45:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T16:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/766074\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T16:45:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T16:45:12","slug":"zak-butters-zigs-zags-and-rips-adelaide-apart-to-show-why-hes-the-most-sought-after-afl-player-in-the-land-afl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/766074\/","title":{"rendered":"Zak Butters zigs, zags and rips Adelaide apart to show why he\u2019s the most sought-after AFL player in the land | AFL"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zak Butters ran on to the Adelaide<\/a> Oval like he always does: over-caffeinated eyes darting, that Ramsay Bolton face of his beaming. But there was an extra edge to this one. It would almost certainly be his last ever Showdown, and he was determined to make it a memorable one. Two and half hours later, he\u2019d played one of the best games of his career, turned Adelaide inside-out and showed why he is the most sought-after footballer in the country.<\/p>\n

From the moment he stood up to Max Gawn in his first AFL<\/a> game, Butters has bowed to no one. \u201cA competitive little prick,\u201d Ken Hinkley once called him \u2013 presumably as a term of endearment \u2013 and the 23 Crows players who gave him an unfathomably wide berth would no doubt agree.<\/p>\n

There were two areas where Port demolished Adelaide \u2013 at stoppages and whenever the ball hit the deck \u2013 and Butters excelled in both scenarios. He had such a good rapport with his lantern-jawed, much-improved ruckman Jordon Sweet, sharking his taps at full pelt. As always, there was an urgency and hyperactivity to his game as he scampered around the ground \u2013 slicing, zigging, zagging and mouthing off. But whenever the moment called for it, he demonstrated great poise, checking and weighing his kicks to housemate Mitch Georgiades.<\/p>\n

Slicing and dicing: Zak Butters fires off a kick at Adelaide Oval. Photograph: James Elsby\/AFL Photos\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Butters grew up a mad Western Bulldogs<\/a> supporter, and idolised Marcus Bontempelli. Luke Beveridge was presumably beside himself watching Showdown 60, though pretty much all the Victorian clubs are desperate for his signature. The system is such that players in his position really can\u2019t say anything about where they\u2019re going to be playing next year. Anything they do say has to be a white lie of sorts, or yet another deflection. It makes for a rolling feed of half-arsed speculation, and little else.<\/p>\n

Butters has played the charade. But he could just as easily have phoned it in this year. He could have gone through the motions, collected his 20 or 25 touches a week, left on relatively good terms, and done little to hurt his asking price. When the team kept losing, albeit in desperately unlucky circumstances a number of times, he could have turned up his toes. Instead, he\u2019s been an outstanding contributor.<\/p>\n

No one would begrudge him heading home, but it\u2019s a shame we won\u2019t get to see his partnership with Jason Horne-Francis reach full maturation. The pair terrorised the passive Crows, bowling them over and running them off their feet. They had 66 possessions and 23 clearances between them. Butters said it was one of the best wins of his career, up there with the finals and Hinkley\u2019s last game, and it was surely one of the best games he\u2019s ever played.<\/p>\n

Jason Horne-Francis ran Adelaide ragged in Saturday\u2019s Showdown. Photograph: James Elsby\/AFL Photos\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Port\u2019s prison bar jumper was a nod to the club\u2019s peerless 1914 team, which went through the season undefeated and won the grand final by 15 goals. Three members of that team were killed on the western front. And the modern Port had clearly been ginned up for the contest, bringing a level of intensity that harked back to some of those great Hinkley inspired ambushes. After being asleep at the post against North Melbourne in round one, Port have played some terrific football this year, but just haven\u2019t been able to catch a break in close finishes. Their attack on the ball and their gang tackling rattled the Crows.<\/p>\n

Adelaide had no room or time, and despite being run ragged by Butters and Horne-Francis, they seemed to have no inclination to clamp down on either of them. There\u2019s enough evidence now that if the opposition bring the heat, if the Crows clearance game is amiss and if Jordan Dawson is anything less than magnificent, the Crows will wilt.<\/p>\n

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In the final game of the round, Fremantle went two games clear of the rest of the competition by walloping a wretched Gold Coast side. If the home and away season ended today, they\u2019d be five games clear of whoever they play in the qualifying final. Their 14 wins have been so different \u2013 from jolly romps, to rollicking comebacks to hand-to-hand combat.<\/p>\n

Fremantle\u2019s Andrew Brayshaw and Michael Frederick celebrate as the Dockers dominated the Suns. Photograph: Daniel Carson\/AFL Photos\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The Gold Coast team they met on Sunday were a far cry from the side that rolled into Perth like hired assassins last September. The Suns left Perth after that elimination final on a chartered flight and were served drinks by an airline crew staff that sported the club\u2019s \u201cAll Gas, No Brakes\u201d finals-themed shirts. They spend most of their energy these days flailing their arms at the umpires and at one another.<\/p>\n

The wind is at Fremantle\u2019s back now. The fact that they don\u2019t have a single player missing through injury is testament to superb conditioning. But there\u2019s also a lot of luck involved, and luck isn\u2019t something the Dockers have had in abundance in their 30-year history. They\u2019ve only used 30 players in 2026. If they make a preliminary or a grand final, squeezing out half a dozen players is going to one of the hardest things Justin Longmuir has ever done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zak Butters ran on to the Adelaide Oval like he always does: over-caffeinated eyes darting, that Ramsay Bolton…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-766074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}