[[Category:2025 Australian Football League season]]
[[Category:2025 Australian Football League season]]
[[Category:2025 in Australian men’s sport]]
[[Category:2025 in Australian rules football]]
[[Category:Australian Football League matches]]
[[Category:Australian Football League matches]]
[[Category:Melbourne Football Club]]
[[Category:Melbourne Football Club]]
Australian rules football match
In round 20, 2025, an Australian Football League (AFL) home-and-away match was played between St Kilda and Melbourne at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne on 27 July 2025.
Both sides were in the bottom six (Melbourne in 13th, and St Kilda in 15th) going into this match. St Kilda won the match by six points after trailing by 46 points at three-quarter-time, with Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera kicking the match-winning goal after the final siren to complete the biggest comeback from a three-quarter-time deficit in VFL/AFL history.[2][3]
Anthony Caminiti kicked the first goal of the match for St Kilda after one minute of play, but Melbourne would kick six of the next seven goals to lead by 25 points at quarter-time, with Bayley Fritsch kicking three goals for the Demons.
Melbourne extended its quarter-time lead, kicking three of the five goals in the second quarter to lead by 30 points at half-time. St Kilda player Lance Collard was substituted out of the match due to a foot injury he suffered in the first quarter, and was replaced by Hugh Boxshall.[4]
Four goals to two saw Melbourne extend their lead to 46 points at three-quarter-time.
St Kilda began to dominate the centre clearances, and kicked seven consecutive goals to reduce the deficit to just six points with only two minutes left on the clock.
With less than ten seconds remaining, Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera kicked the final two goals of the game, the first from a set shot with eight seconds remaining to level scores after taking a spectacular mark inside forward 50, and the second after Melbourne made a 6–6–6 rule infringement at the following centre bounce, with Wanganeen-Milera marking the resultant free kick and kicking the winning goal after the final siren.[4]
In the final quarter alone, St Kilda kicked 9.2 (56) to 0.4 (4) to complete the comeback; it eclipsed the Brisbane Bears‘ comeback from a 45-point three-quarter-time deficit to defeat Hawthorn in round 16, 1995. The win ended a six-game losing streak for St Kilda, whose last win was also against Melbourne in round 12.[4]
| Round 20, 2025 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday, 27 July (3:15 pm) | St Kilda | def. | Melbourne | Marvel Stadium (crowd: 22,570) | |
| 2.1 (13) 4.4 (28) 6.4 (40) 15.6 (96) |
Q1 Q2 Q3 Final |
6.2 (38) 9.4 (58) 13.8 (86) 13.12 (90) |
Umpires: Jeff Dalgleish, Nick Brown, Martin Rodger, James Strybos | ||
| Higgins 4, Wanganeen-Milera 4, Sharman 2, Caminiti, Hill, Steele, Tauru, Wood | Goals | Fritsch 3, Lindsay 2, Melksham 2, Chandler, Langford, Petracca, Pickett, Viney | |||
| Wanganeen-Milera, Sinclair, Hall, Higgins, Macrae | Best | Gawn, Petracca, Oliver, Viney, Rivers, Fritsch | |||
Aftermath and legacy
[edit]
Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin was sacked over one week following the match, after the club was eliminated from finals contention for a second consecutive season. As of 2025[update], it has not won a final since winning the 2021 premiership.[5]
In the weeks following the match, Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera re-signed with St Kilda for a further two seasons; he had come out of contract at the conclusion of the 2025 AFL season and had attracted plenty of interest from his native South Australia.[6] Despite his match-winning efforts, Wanganeen-Milera received only two Brownlow Medal votes for the match, with Jack Viney receiving the maximum three votes and Christian Petracca receiving one vote;[7] while Viney’s 16 tackles for the match was a club record,[8] the final votes drew criticism across the industry.[9][10]
In a poll run by the AFL website in December 2025, the match was voted by the public as the best match of the 2025 season with more than 58 per cent of the vote.[11]
