AFLW finals heartbreak for 2020 flag favourites Fremantle, North as Kangaroos skipper takes a knee

If the footy gods exist, they weren’t paying attention to the first week of the 2021 AFLW finals series.

In 2020, the AFL women’s competition was ended prematurely due to COVID-19, with the two preliminary finals cancelled.

Due to line up in each of those finals were the Kangaroos and Fremantle, with the Dockers undefeated from a shortened six-match season and fresh off a 70-point thumping of Gold Coast.

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They were tantalisingly close to becoming the first Fremantle side — men’s or women’s — to win an elusive Premiership.

In 2021, they set out for redemption, but ultimately fell short at the hands of Melbourne and the notoriously blustery conditions of Casey Fields.

Perhaps it was some form of poetic justice that it was the Demons…