Austin’s ambitious debut proves fruitful for the red and blue

Photo Credit: Daniel Pockett/Getty Images

Melbourne’s 2026 AFL Women’s season got off to a pretty perfect start on Thursday night with a 19 point win over Hawthorn, with many key players rising to the occasion and starring.

One of those was new recruit Mia Austin, who may have just proven herself to be the answer to one of the biggest question marks surrounding Melbourne heading into the new season.

Melbourne losing Eden Zanker to Fremantle in the offseason was a big talking point, with many questioning how the Demons were going to replace such a key cog in their forward line, and it turns out they may have just found their answer in Austin.

Despite only recording the seven disposals, Austin still shone on club debut for the Dees, kicking four goals and proving she slots into Melbourne’s forward structure seamlessly.

In this Player Focus analysis, we take a closer look at Austin’s individual game, how she slots into her new team’s forward line, and perhaps also marvel at how on earth that trade last year even happened.

Mia Austin stats vs Hawthorn

One of Austin’s biggest strengths in her game is her marking ability, and how strong she is in a marking contest.

She is far from the tallest of Melbourne’s key forwards – that honour belongs to Georgia Campbell – but Austin more than makes up for that with high upper body strength and reliability in a marking contest. Even if she does not ultimately out mark her opponent, Austin is able to bring it to ground well, allowing the likes of Maggie Mahony and Ryleigh Wotherspoon to swoop in and work their magic off the ground.

Something else she can do well is if the ball is bobbling around in a marking contest, she has a strong ability to juggle it and then take full control of it without it bouncing out of her grasp, which is not always easy to do especially in a contest. This is what happened before her first goal, which saw her than take control of the ball and then go back and kicked perfectly straight.

That upper body strength and strong ability to control was on full display again in the last quarter when she kicked her fourth goal.

Not even a minute and a half into the quarter, with the scores tied at 6.5.41 apiece, a well judged kick into the 50 from Shelley Heath was aimed at a leading Austin, who was sandwiched between two Hawks opponents, and still marked the ball perfectly while positioning herself perfectly to avoid the intercept from in front and any potential spoils from behind. She then went back and slotted the goal perfectly, showing off her power in her goal kicking in the process with the shot coming from beyond 40m out.

Her positioning around the contest is another strong facet of her game.

She has the smarts to not always get sucked into the contest, and also to be positioning perfectly at the foot of the contest to then rove the ball off the deck if need be, which is not something you always see from key forwards.

These smarts were a key part of the reason Austin was able to kick her second goal.

In the first term there was a contest high up in Melbourne’s forward 50, and because Austin had kept her distance from the pack, once the ball worked out to Tayla Harris on the outside, all Harris had to do was quickly handball to Austin in space and it was a simple short shot at goal for Austin.

This marking strength also allowed Melbourne to deploy an interesting strategy – a seemingly yo-yo dynamic between Austin and Harris.

Both players are very strong markers of the ball and both can provide a reliable marking target further up the ground as Melbourne work the ball from defence into attack.

However, on Thursday night Austin and Harris worked well together so that when one had pushed up the ground to provide that first marking target outside defensive 50, the other stayed back closer to forward 50 to provide that next link in the change.

Austin was also able to show off her football smarts in different ways on Thursday night, and one of these was in the build up to her third goal of the evening, which came in the second quarter.

With not too long left before half time, Harris deployed one of her trade mark long bombs into the forward 50, which left Austin in a one on one chase with a Hawthorn defender.

Harris’ kick ultimately dropped short of going through by itself for a goal, which left Austin with a little bit of work to do to add another goal to Melbourne’s tally.

With a defender barrelling down on her and finding herself on a bit of an angle, Austin cleverly soccered the ball through the goal instead of going to pick the ball up to get better control and then shoot. Picking up the ball could have risked Austin being tackled and with the angle she was on there was no guarantee it was going to improve her chances of kicking the goal anyway.