You won’t find more inspiring footy stories than Sam Docherty’s. He came back from three ACL tears and two bouts of cancer to forge an outstanding AFL career and captain his boyhood Blues. His goal in his comeback game in Round 1, 2022, raised hairs on the back of the neck. Today, he’s a rising star in footy media.

Docherty has captured the many highlights (and lowlights) of his career in a new book, What it Takes, written in conjunction with the excellent Konrad Marshall.

Cody, Jonathan and I were lucky enough to speak at length with Sam about his career, getting drafted, coding his own games, how the game has changed, and what’s next.

Apologies for the mild audio issues on this one. We did our best.

New episodes of 110 Percenters are published here. You can also find us wherever you get your podcasts, including:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Pocket Casts

• YouTube Podcasts

Listener feedback will be key to making us better, so if you took the time to listen, please also consider taking the time to rate and review the show.

What it Takes by Sam Docherty with Konrad Marshall is published by Simon & Schuster. It’s in stores now.

We all agreed we’d try for a concise 60 minute pod and, inevitably, totally failed! It’s another long one this week.

New episodes of 110 Percenters are published here. You can also find us wherever you get your podcasts, including:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Pocket Casts

• YouTube Podcasts

Listener feedback will be key to making us better, so if you took the time to listen, please also consider taking the time to rate and review the show.

I’ve put links to Cody and Jonathan’s writing after the jump. Their work is the best in the business.

Links:

• Read Cody’s work here

• Read Jonathan’s work here

To celebrate our 10th episode, we invited a guest onto the pod! Marnie Vinall is a journo for the ABC who writes about the AFLW and diversity and inclusion at all levels of the game. It was a real pleasure having her on.

The four of us chatted – a lot, it was another long episode! – about Ken Hinkley’s appointment as Tasmania’s inaugural AFL coach, the opportunity cost of Essendon’s incredible upset win over the Giants, the progress that’s been made and is still yet to be made when it comes to making footy a welcoming environment for everyone, and about the upcoming AFLW season.

New episodes of 110 Percenters are published here. You can also find us wherever you get your podcasts, including:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Pocket Casts

• YouTube Podcasts

Listener feedback will be key to making us better, so if you took the time to listen, please also consider taking the time to rate and review the show.

I’ve put links to Cody, Jonathan, and Marnie’s writing after the jump. Their work is the best in the business. I’ve also added a link to friend of the pod Mim Birch’s great piece about Patrick Voss, and other friend of the pod SgtButane’s brilliant Footy Redraft game (not recommended if you have important things to do with your time!).

Links:

• Read Cody’s work here

• Read Jonathan’s work here

• Read Marnie’s work here

• In Defence of Patrick Voss (Mim’s Substack)

• Footy Redraft

Social preview image courtesy of Reddit.

The Crows have played 149 games since the 2020 AFL season returned from its three-month Covid hiatus. Ben Keays has played in all 149. This Thursday night, he will run out – with his characteristically upright bearing – for his 150th consecutive game and 150th in red, yellow, and blue. It is one of footy’s most satisfying redemption stories, a triumph of guts, grit, and perseverance. It is also, for those same reasons, a story rich in lessons for rebuilding clubs.

The world’s most Brisbane-coded man was born in Melbourne. At an opportune time, it turns out, because it coincided with his beloved Lions making frequent trips there on the last Saturday in September. Ben was four when the Lions broke the drought in 2001 and cried all the way home when Port Adelaide denied them a historic fourpeat three years later. By then, the Keays family had moved to Brisbane. Ben took the only path available to a talented junior footy player at the time: he joined the Lions’ Academy. It was there he established himself as one of the most promising midfielders in the 2015 draft pool. In his draft year, Keays captained Queensland to the Under-18s title, averaging nearly 29 disposals in the process. The strengths and weaknesses recruiters identified then are still present today, 11 years on: Keays knows how to find the footy but doesn’t always capitalise when he does. He runs all day but rarely at a speed that makes opponents nervous. Despite that, he was then, and is now, as honest as the day is long. Keays was selected with Pick 24 in the 2015 draft. It was a dream come true for the boy who lived just down the road from the Gabba.

But dreams don’t always come true. Keays was delisted after four seasons. His last two years on the Lions’ list yielded just four games. It was a typical story: he was edged out by better midfielders. Lachie Neale’s hands were cleaner. Hugh McCluggage’s kicking was more penetrative. Jarryd Lyons and Jarrod Berry ran just as hard. After years of toil, the Lions were finally climbing out of the footy basement. Keays wasn’t quite quick enough or slick enough to go where they were going.

Getting delisted by the club you’ve loved since you were old enough to love must be close to the worst feeling in the world. If something that devastating happened to me, I’d probably just stare at the ceiling for months. But Keays was made of sterner stuff. Instead of lamenting what might have been, he nominated for footy’s last chance saloon: the Rookie Draft. He was selected with the seventh pick, right after Fremantle selected Jarvis Pina (I confess I’m unfamiliar) and immediately prior to Port’s selection of Jake Pasini.

It’s very important to understand the condition of the ship attached to the life preserver Keays caught. The Crows were at their lowest-ever ebb. The tripartite trauma of the murder of former coach Phil Walsh, the 2017 Grand Final defeat, and the debacle of the Collective Minds camp – which Mitch McGovern called a cult in a recent podcast interview – had created a maelstrom which enveloped the club and came close to destroying it. Staff were sacked. Players couldn’t leave quickly enough. The best team in footy for all but one week of 2017 became the worst environment off-field, and one of the worst sides on-field, in two years – brought low by hubris and a fundamental misunderstanding of why the Grand Final went the way it did. It’s not a contest. All rebuilding sides are in bad shape. But the Crows were in uniquely bad shape because, as the Collective Minds camp demonstrated, the entire club – not just the list – was in need of serious reform.

Ben Keays left a rising club and, because he had no other choice, joined a shattered one. His job was to help piece it back together, step by step. He approached his task with the fidelity and dedication of a bright-eyed private. In Keays’ third game for Adelaide, he attended 90% of centre bounces. Only Matt Crouch and Reilly O’Brien who attended more across the entire season. 2020 was a very bad season for the Crows. They lost their first 13 games on their way to winning their first-ever wooden spoon. The list was desperately short on talent. The best players were Rory Laird, a Taylor Walker who looked ready for the knacker’s yard, and a post-peak Rory Sloane. Despite that, it still felt better than the two preceding years, because it felt like the tentative beginning of a new arc rather than the wretched end of an old one. One Adelaide player apparently said that “the culture was better at 0-13 in 2020 than it was at 13-8 in 2019.”

Keays finished fifth in Adelaide’s best-and-fairest count in his first season at the club. He was also named the winner of the Players’ Trademark Award, given to the player who has “best upheld the core values of the team on and off the field”. A tin pot? Maybe. But it was also recognition of the work Keays was doing, even then, with his own playing career at a precarious point, to maximise his and his team’s potential: showing up early, leaving late, bigging up teammates, busting a gut during games. He was the earliest instantiation of the style and culture Matthew Nicks was brought in to build: hard-working, physical, unglamorous, a pain in the arse to play against.

After Brad Crouch left the Crows after 2020, Keays became part of footy’s blondest, most workmanlike midfield, together with O’Brien, Laird, and Sloane. It wasn’t always pretty. But it got results. Adelaide won as many games in the first month of the 2021 season as in the entirety of the prior season. Keays was in the Crows’ top five-rated players in all four of those games. He recorded seven coaches’ votes in Adelaide’s famous one-point win over Melbourne in Round 10 and finished second in the best-and-fairest, just three votes behind Laird, as Adelaide finished 15th. The Crows weren’t yet a good side, but Keays was playing a leading role in making them a competitive one.

Although the addition of Jordan Dawson and Josh Rachele added some firepower, Adelaide remained a workhorse side in 2022 – a fact exemplified by Laird, Keays, Crouch, and Berry attending the vast majority of centre bounces. But then something really interesting happened. In the Round 20 game against Carlton, Keays didn’t attend a single centre bounce. He didn’t play in the midfield at all. Instead, he was redeployed to half-forward, with a specific brief: bring the same energy, pressure, and unconditional effort to the forward line. With eight minutes remaining in the second quarter, Keays kicked what has become his trademark goal: from the goal square, without an opposition defender in sight. His second was virtually identical. So was his third. That night was the first time Keays had ever kicked three goals in an AFL game. It was, also, fittingly, the beginning of the third act of his career. He’d been a fringe midfielder at his boyhood club. He’d been a culture-builder and standard-setter in the earliest days of a rebuild. Now, just as it looked as though he’d be squeezed out of the midfield rotations, he was asked to evolve.

Like all successful player role changes, Keays’ reassignment to half-forward feels obvious in hindsight. But, although we’ve all become more acquainted with the concept of the “high half-forward” in recent seasons, it didn’t feel obvious that a burly midfielder with weak overhead marking and indifferent disposal would flourish closer to goal. Keays became a very good AFL half-forward because of his athletic and psychological traits. He’s a ferocious tackler who uses his remarkable aerobic power to get to contests, manufacture space, and provide an outlet for teammates. He also understands how precarious life in the AFL is, and chases every lost cause as though his career depends on it. But he’s also become a very good half-forward because Adelaide’s coaching staff correctly recognised the way the game was trending.

As the game has accelerated, and the speed of a side’s ball movement, especially after it affects a turnover, has become increasingly paramount, the attacking half-back has become a potent weapon. But sometimes they turn the ball over. Sometimes they don’t run as quickly back towards their defensive goal as they did towards the goal their side is attacking. In other words, they’re exploitable. And Ben Keays is the perfect player to exploit those lapses in skill and work rate. He is a hard counter to unaccountable half-backs. If you watch the highlights of that first game Keays played as a half-forward, you can occasionally see a forlorn Adam Saad about 10 metres behind him. That’s no coincidence. Keays was asked to stay close to Saad when he had the ball, and to exploit his defensive running when Adelaide won it. Since that night, Keays has become an acid test for opposition transition structures. He will always keep running. Will you?

It’s no coincidence that Keays performs best against the sides which fail that test most often. The three sides he’s kicked the most goals against are Carlton, North Melbourne, and Essendon. Yes, worse sides concede bigger scores. But they also don’t defend with as much discipline. Opposition supporters will frequently lament how their side allowed Keays to kick three or four goals on them. “How was he by himself in the goal square?” is a common complaint. The answer is simple: he wanted it more than his opponents did. It’s possible no one has ever wanted anything more than Ben Keays has wanted to carve out the AFL career he has. The trademark Keays goal, the one he must have kicked 50 times in Crows colours, isn’t a coincidence. It’s him using his attributes to their full effect. And one of his best attributes is his desire. When Keays shuttle runs up and down the field, he’s putting yards between everyone who ever told him he was too slow, or not skilful enough to make it.

Adelaide has become a good side. But, despite having better players to rely on, the Crows are still moulded from the same clay Keays helped to mine in his early days at the club. They win by applying manic pressure and generating volume rather than moving the ball precisely. Their best work is done off the ball. They win when they out-work, out-tackle, and out-compete their opposition. Keays’ role has changed – he has attended just 29 centre bounces since the start of the 2024 season – but he still sets those standards. Because he does, he has come to embody lessons which every rebuilding side should heed, but not all do.

The first is that culture and character matter. The Adelaide Football Club was a deeply unhappy workplace when Keays arrived. He has helped make it a happier and more professional environment, both because he never compromises on his professionalism and because he encourages his teammates to never neglect theirs. Keays appears to be completely earnest at all times. Sometimes that manifests in corny ways. On the “Crows Show”, a magazine program dedicated to club-related light entertainment, Keays hosts a segment where he drives teammates around in a sponsor vehicle and talks to them about their footy journey. His earnestness is also apparent in more serious forms. Keays’ great-grandfather Fred and great-uncle Desmond both served in the Australian army (they also both played for Fitzroy – very likely the origin of Ben’s love for the Lions). Great-grandfather Fred was at Gallipoli and, later, fought on the Western Front. Ben admits that, had footy not worked out, he’d probably have followed the family tradition and served. He has often been involved in the design of Adelaide’s ANZAC Round guernsey. Footy and the army are very different. But the values that footy clubs profess to exhibit are strikingly similar to the ones soldiers talk about: mateship, camaraderie, duty, loyalty, sacrifice. Perhaps you think this is absurd. What is clear is that Ben Keays, and the footy team he’s played 149 games for, do not. He has maximised his own potential, and he’ll be damned if his teammates don’t fulfill theirs.

The second lesson Ben Keays can teach footy clubs is that there’s talent to be found in unlikely places. Supporters, sometimes immediately after claiming there isn’t enough talent to sustain 18 professional clubs, will often lament that their club isn’t scouring the state leagues for moneyball prospects. Keays was one of those prospects. Although he was on Brisbane’s AFL list for four years, he only played four senior games in the last two. He was a force of nature in the NEAFL, recording four goals, 27 disposals, and seven tackles in Brisbane’s reserves premiership in 2019. Adelaide’s recruiters didn’t cover themselves in glory at the 2019 National Draft, but they correctly identified that Keays possessed traits which could translate to AFL level.

Culture and character matter. Leaving no stone unturned for talent matters. So does a player’s psychological make-up. One of the traits which enabled Keays to become a good AFL player is that he never relented in the face of adversity. Remember: he was delisted by the Lions and lost his first 12 games at Adelaide. A less resilient person might have wilted. We know that recruiters and list managers value this. In my recent interview with “Alex”, a current AFL list manager, he discussed the importance of mental strength in player development:

Keays was never quite a blue-chip draft prospect. But he was still taken in the top two-dozen following an illustrious junior career. He must have believed the first four years of his career would pan out differently. Instead of bemoaning what might have been, his response was to master the things within his control. Perhaps Keays will never be the most talented player on a footy field. But he will almost always be one of the most committed.

The fourth and final lesson of Ben Keays is that adaptability matters. After Adelaide spent a few years accumulating midfield talent through the draft and hit the jackpot with the recruitment of Jordan Dawson, Keays’ days as a permanent midfielder were numbered. That late-season game against Carlton was his audition for a different role. Had he not passed with such flying colours, there’s every chance I wouldn’t be writing this piece. Again, the success of his redeployment as a blue-collar half-forward wasn’t anywhere near as inevitable as hindsight makes it seem. As rebuilding sides improve, the guys who were there to set standards in the early days often get squeezed out for more talented players. That’s usually a sign of progress. But the risk is that without those standard-setters, standards, well, decline. It’s a huge credit to Keays, and his coaches, that he has used the attributes he’s always had to adapt to a different role – one that’s almost inarguably a better fit for him and team.

I laughed when I learnt that Adelaide staff presented to the AFL Commission about its rebuild on the day of last year’s Brownlow Medal ceremony. The Crows have done many things right since 2020. But the two most consequential moments of the rebuild – persuading homesick boyhood Crows fans Jordan Dawson and Izak Rankine to come home – simply aren’t replicable for a side like, say, North Melbourne. Luck and timing play a bigger role in any side’s success than we like to admit. But there was nothing stopping other rebuilding sides from drafting Ben Keays – or persuading him to join as a delisted free agent – following his time at Brisbane. The career he has manufactured at the Crows is a 95th-percentile outcome. He’d be the first to admit that he doesn’t quite have the talent of his more illustrious teammates. But he might just be the single most important person in Adelaide’s rebuild.

No one could have reasonably predicted what’s happened. But what was possible to predict is that bringing in a guy who carries himself with integrity, and refuses to give up, will yield benefits that are likely to flow through a club. Rebuilding clubs must confront many important questions on the journey back to competitiveness. The one which generates the most media attention and supporter clamour is always which elite prospect to draft with the coveted high pick. But arguably just as important – although much less discussed – is how to find those guys who want it so badly they will run through a brick wall to make it happen. And then run some more.

It’s possible to read Keays’ career in vaguely tragic terms: delisted by his boyhood club, incorrectly denied what would have been a career highlight by a goal umpire, being part of a side which summarily failed its finals test last year. But I don’t see it that way, and I don’t think he would either. The correct reading is that Keays is emblematic of footy’s vast emotional richness. He has faced great adversity and disappointment. And instead of giving up, he has wrung every drop of blood, sweat, and tears out of himself. This Thursday night, a Collingwood half-back will slow to a jog, believing he has a moment to breathe. He won’t notice Ben Keays until it’s too late. No one ever does.

In addition to restarting paid subscriptions, I’ve also created a “Buy Me a Coffee” page so you can show your support for One Percenters with a one-off (or recurring) donation. Here’s the link.

Social preview image courtesy of the ABC website.

Donald Horne’s The Lucky Country is wrong in the ways 60+ year-old nonfiction books tend to be: it is too confident in its conclusions, too intolerant of other points of view, too ignorant of confounding evidence. But the things that make it outdated, from the perspective of 2026, are also – paradoxically – the same things that have given the book its cultural staying power. Its bold central thesis is encapsulated by the opening words of the final chapter:

In much the same way as some Reaganite conservatives misunderstood Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA as a patriotic hype song, some Australians have chosen to interpret Horne’s book as endorsing a particular kind of complacent homegrown nationalism: whaddya mean, mate – we’re the bloody lucky country! But Horne wasn’t especially interested in those comforting bromides. Instead, he argued that Australia’s prosperity was the product of luck – luck of geology, luck of political inheritance – not the quality of its leaders or the scope of its ambition.

If Australia is the lucky country, rich and safe despite only sometimes mustering the energy and smarts usually required to be so, then the AFL is the lucky league. The quality of its decisions and the people making them have never been under more scrutiny. The disgruntlement of many of its stakeholders and consumers, at least on social media, feels like it’s at record levels. Fans are unhappy. Clubs are unhappy. Even players and umpires have expressed discontent. It seems the only exception is broadcasters and content creators, who have abundant amounts of raw material to work with. Andrew Dillon has tried to fix it. He’s thrown Laura Kane overboard and parachuted in Greg Swann to buy himself some political capital. That ploy seems to have failed. People are as mad as ever about the way footy is being run. But commercially, the AFL has never been in ruder health. The line keeps going up. I want to explore this tension.

Before considering why people are so angry at the current AFL administration, there’s a preceding question to ask: was there a world in which people weren’t going to be angry? After all, take a look around. Everyone, everywhere, seems to be angry about almost everything. It’s not clear to me why footy, a sport which both exerts huge influence on people’s emotional – and, in the gambling age, financial – wellbeing and is not immune to broader social currents, should be any different. We get mad because it matters. So does the medium. Saying that people are mad at the Dillon regime is tantamount to saying that they’re mad at the Dillon regime on social media. Even what remains of the traditional footy media is increasingly shaped by and for social media. It’s clear enough that this has perverse incentives: social media is both a vessel and an amplifier of our frustrations. We’ve seen this play out hundreds of times: a pundit, podcaster, or provocateur uncorks a performatively angry take. Their audience finds a new reason to get angry. That anger is expressed through shares, replies, and arguments. Lots of heat, not much light.

There’s also a narrower form of the argument that everyone is already angry, which is that everyone is already angry at all the people who run major sports. Perhaps claiming that the AFL is unusually poorly run is provincial or self-absorbed thinking. There is, as far as I can see, not much love out there (from supporters, at least) for Gianni Infantino, Adam Silver, or Roger Goodell, or whoever is currently running the A-League. (Peter V’Landys is a possible exception here, but it seems like much of his political capital is derived from taking pot shots at the AFL, and even then, lots of NRL supporters seem annoyed by some of his wheezes like taking the game to Las Vegas.) Some of the issues assailing these sports are different from the ones facing footy. No one is calling for Andrew Dillon’s head because of the second apron or petrostates buying clubs or because Albo pressured him to overturn a star player’s suspension ahead of a knockout final. The AFL also faces some unique problems, which I’ll touch on later. But the people running the world’s major sports are mostly facing discontent about similar issues: officiating, parity, the influence of gambling, and disquiet about their role as social actors.

Social media and the ambient discontent which permeates life These Days are part of why it feels like the AFL administration is under siege. But they’re amplifying a signal that already exists. The main culprit for the discontent footy fans feel with the AFL is undoubtedly the AFL itself. I first had the idea of writing a piece like this after the fallout from the Lance Collard case. A quick refresher for readers who, understandably, are having trouble recalling the details given that April may as well be a year ago: the young Indigenous forward was suspended for using a homophobic slur against an opponent in a VFL game. St Kilda successfully reduced the suspension following an appeal. Tensions, already high, were further inflamed after the appeals board, the body which administers the process, wrote that it is “commonplace that players can employ language from time to time which is racist, sexist or homophobic whilst on the field.” This, to quote Douglas Adams, made a lot of people very angry and was widely regarded as a bad move. A head needed to roll. One was found in the form of Will Houghton, the silk who had chaired the appeals board for two years. Predictably, the summary dismissal of an independent advisor for saying something inconveniently true didn’t solve the problem in the way the AFL had hoped. But the league had, at least, found a scapegoat. The fact this all happened concurrently with the AFL sanctioning Zak Butters for drawing attention to an umpire’s paid employment with a betting company was just the icing on the cake.

It’s probably futile to try and capture all the reasons so many different stakeholder groups are unhappy with the Dillon administration. But I’ll give it a go anyway. Supporters are unhappy about umpiring. They’re unhappy about the league’s defence of umpiring. They’re annoyed at perceived inconsistencies at the tribunal. They’re angry about the AFL rolling out the red carpet for betting companies. Many are unhappy about draft concessions – some for narrow, sectional reasons, others because of broader concerns about competitive integrity. Some supporters are unhappy because they believe the AFL has conceded too much ground to progressive political causes. Others, meanwhile, are unhappy because they believe the AFL has not conceded enough. Fans are annoyed about the fixture. Some, like me, are perturbed by the capriciousness of rule changes and the league’s willingness to turn the dial towards openness and transition. Many in my quaint corner of footy nerd twitter are puzzled by the behaviour of the AFL’s social media accounts and the preoccupations of some of the league’s house journos. Concussion and CTE. The ARC. Goal songs. The opacity of the league’s illicit drugs policy. Ticket and membership prices amid a cost-of-living crisis. I’m sure I’ve missed some things, but this already sounds enough like We Didn’t Start the Fire as it is. The anger is palpable. And the end result is twofold: widespread dissatisfaction with how the Dillon administration runs the show, and deep scepticism whenever it proposes any sort of reform.

Ultimately, though, one tendency of the current administration frustrates more than any other: it is hopelessly reactive. The AFL feels like it’s locked in a cycle of patching a leak somewhere to get through the day or appease a disgruntled interest group, only for the hull to spring another leak somewhere it hadn’t anticipated. This sense of frustration is felt at AFL clubs, too. One club staffer, who spoke to me off the record for this piece, bemoaned the AFL’s tendency to “layer in fixes in which they create a problem, they create a fix which creates more problems, and they create a fix, and so on.” This is especially apparent in recurring tweaks to both interpretations of rules like holding the ball (which I could write an entire essay about – including how pundits and commentators contribute to misunderstanding) and the draft. The fancy term for the AFL’s problem is that it’s systemically incapable of recognising second-order effects; the thing that happens as a consequence of the thing you do in the first place.

Although I assume a small number of the supporters who have dramatically threatened to stop following the game because of umpiring/rule changes/Laura Kane have actually done so, the main cost to supporters is just that it’s annoying to see the AFL make these sorts of blunders. But for people who work at AFL clubs – including players – it can significantly impact their ability to do their jobs. Changes to bid matching criteria interfere with draft strategies which are often planned years in advance. Changes to the ruck rules rendered a certain class of ruck virtually obsolete at AFL level overnight. The discontent expressed by the staffer I spoke to is not an uncommon sentiment. That should probably concern the AFL, especially considering the decision to appoint Greg ‘Common Sense’ Swann, who’d spent 11 years at Brisbane, was widely interpreted as a move designed to mollify clubs.

Disgruntlement with the current administration goes beyond supporters and clubs. The AFL Umpires’ Association expressed its unhappiness with the league following the Round 17 incident where Collingwood’s Brayden Maynard and Gold Coast’s Touk Miller made contact with umpire Nick Brown. According to Channel 7 reporter, Tom Morris, several umpires were shocked that Maynard escaped a ban, but also weren’t surprised, “given the lack of support they’ve felt from the AFL in the past.” In the past day, it’s even emerged that umpires are (reasonably) unhappy with a social media post from the AFL’s account which highlighted that Matt Stevic – the umpire at the centre of the controversial 50-metre penalty awarded against Adam Cerra at the MCG on Saturday night – will be umpiring this weekend. One major stakeholder group being unhappy? That can happen. Two major stakeholder groups being unhappy? That’s careless. Three major stakeholder groups being unhappy? Even if you subscribe to the theory that if everyone is equally unhappy that means you’re doing something right, that suggests you’ve got a problem.

It’s worth briefly contemplating whether any of this could have been avoided. Can you possibly have a widely respected, or at least tolerated head office in any major sport in 2026? I’m not sure thinking about the Wayne Jackson or Andrew Demetriou days is helpful here. They existed in a time before social media and before a 24/7 media cycle fed by content entrepreneurs, when footy was a pastime, not the totalising social institution it is today. That may as well have been a century ago.

Instead, it’s more instructive to compare the AFL to cricket, soccer, rugby league, and the big US sports. Again – with the significant caveat that I don’t follow any of them as closely as I do footy, and in the case of league I barely even know the rules – none are immune from scandal and stakeholder unrest. Cricket’s problems are existential: the pull towards franchise cricket and growing power of Indian interests is threatening domestic competitions and traditional forms of the game. (For what it’s worth, I do think the AFL is facing its own existential problem – concussion – but I don’t think that’s what’s generating much of the current discontent.) FIFA is, uh, amenable to financial inducements [when you are your own editor and lawyer, it’s best to err on the side of discretion]. The other sports are slightly more comparable in the competing interests they try to appease and the major issues they confront: revenue distribution, player welfare and remuneration, gambling, officiating. These are Normal Problems, in the sense that any capable administrator should anticipate them arising. But their specific instantiation is almost impossible to predict. Here’s where I have some sympathy for the people who run the AFL. They oversee a dynamic game, with a vibrant media ecosystem, where edge cases are the norm. No holding the ball adjudication or dangerous tackle is ever quite the same. Consistency is impossible, common sense a chimaera.

Would the frustration be less palpable if AFL House was better at communicating the case for rule changes, better at explaining umpiring decisions (and supporting umpires), better at balancing competing social justice claims, and better at gradually introducing changes to the draft to minimally disrupt clubs? Probably. But, as I’ve already said, to a certain degree, the whole system is optimised for maximum attention and outrage. All publicity is good publicity. There’s another problem here. The costs to the AFL of the AFL making bad choices isn’t very high. Sure, some execs sometimes get demoted or quietly shuffled out of the deck. But accountability stops a couple of rungs short of the top. Gillon McLachlan walked out of the top job and into a sinecure with a betting company (I would prefer if he was not allowed to do that!). The global search for his successor stopped at the guy just a few doors down. Hiring from within, especially to an idiosyncratic organisation, is often the right choice. But the AFL certainly didn’t waste much time trying to persuade the footy public of the merits of the appointment.

The AFL is also less accountable than you would hope or expect an institution of its size to be because it wields a virtual monopoly over the sport. If you’re disgusted by the financial inequalities of club soccer, you can invest emotionally in the international game (while holding your nose when it comes to FIFA). There are other basketball leagues, other cricket competitions, other places where rugby league is played. Perhaps none are as good as the morally compromised, apex-level competitions, but they’re a decent substitute. That’s not the case with footy. You can still find the odd state league diehard who’s resisted the lure of the national competition, but they’re more of a curio than a genuine constraint on the conduct of the AFL.

The American economist Albert Hirschman identified three means of self-expression in an organisational setting: exit, voice, or loyalty. Exit means withdrawing from the relationship. Voice means speaking up. Don’t feel comfortable with the actions of your employer? You can exit – quit – or exercise your voice by calling for change from within. Are you worried about the actions of your government, or anxious about your economic security? You can vote for the opposition or emigrate. Loyalty is what it says on the tin: sticking with your guys. Exit and voice aren’t always sufficient to drive accountability. But they’re necessary, because organisations need incentives to be responsive to stakeholder demands. When it comes to footy, the strength of our loyalty is part of why exit and voice feel so weak. Exiting is a non-starter for all but the most committed and the most furious supporters (these are often the same people). The AFL clearly doesn’t regard exit as an especially credible threat – the league has been busily trying to expand into new markets, arguably at the cost of neglecting already-saturated markets, for the better part of 20 years now. And there are few avenues to exercising our voice. We can’t elect a reformist AFL administration. Attempts to mobilise supporter interests are – with apologies to the AFL Fans’ Association – not taken seriously. The best thing we can do is probably the thing many supporters are already doing: complaining on social media.

The AFL has created its monopoly by squeezing state leagues, but it’s also done it by being the custodians of this incredible, exhilarating game that commands our emotional loyalties. One is reminded of Mark Zuckerberg’s quip about the founders of Twitter as resembling a clown car that fell into a gold mine. If you’re a fourth-generation Carlton fan, or a Freo fan that’s hoping, wishing, and praying for that maiden flag, or – like me – a kid who fell in love with the game because it helped teach him how to be Australian, then the goofs and blunders of the people at AFL House might irritate you, but they’re unlikely to seriously call your loyalty to the game into question. Footy has imperfect substitutes, but for millions of the people who follow it, nothing hits quite the same as the real thing. We’re prisoners who, at some point, walked into the cell and willingly swallowed the key.

To the extent that complaining about the Dillon regime on social media represents a concerted project to drive change, it’s failed. But, ironically, it probably fails even by the strict terms of expressing dissent. Negative polarisation drives engagement. More angry reacts, more clicks, more talkback callers, more stories catering to that base instinct. I’m sure the AFL administration would rather be loved than disdained. But so long as people keep watching, I’m not sure they care. The current administration isn’t weakened by record numbers of people using their voice to express disillusionment if those people remain loyal. Only exit would send a signal that would be heard at AFL House. That isn’t happening. The 2025 financial result showed revenue up 16%, over $1.2 billion, driven largely by the first year of the new broadcast deal, and an operating surplus of $67.9 million, up from $45.4 million the year before.

One in 20 Australians are members of an AFL club. Attendances in 2026 are tracking ahead of last year’s, with round after round setting per-game records. Last Thursday’s game between Fremantle and Sydney was the highest-rating primetime AFL match on free-to-air since 2022, reaching more than 3.3 million Australians. None of this is exactly evidence of a league in crisis. And if the league isn’t in crisis, how can we honestly say that the administration which runs it is? Discontent isn’t a metric the AFL is failing to manage. It’s a metric the AFL doesn’t care about, so long as it doesn’t mess with the metrics that do matter. Bad process and unforced PR errors are tolerable as long as they don’t show up on the bottom line or in TV ratings – and there’s not much evidence, yet, that they do.

I’ve spent the best part of 3,000 words writing about the manifold reasons so many people are unhappy with the AFL without yet discussing what many readers will have identified as the main issue: the logic of expansion into new markets. Attracting new customers is very different to retaining old ones. The AFL has clearly made the strategic choice to accompany the push into Queensland and New South Wales with a set of list concessions, rule changes, and communications practices designed to appeal to new supporters, partly by accelerating and then maintaining the competitiveness of the Northern and expansion clubs. That, inevitably, imposes costs on incumbent clubs and rusted-on fans. Part of the frustration many supporters feel with the AFL is the frustration of neglect. I would be fascinated to see how the AFL’s revenue breaks down by “old markets” versus “new markets”.

Ultimately, an organisation that captures its customers without earning them or without feeling like it has to do anything special to keep them has no structural incentive to improve. The internal metrics the AFL uses to assess the performance of Andrew Dillon are opaque. The external ones – revenue, memberships, ratings – are all trending up. The discontented supporters cataloguing grievances on Footy Twitter were never the audience that rule changes designed to speed up the game were built for. They’re for broadcasters, for the highlight reel, for the fan watching their first game of the season on a Thursday night rather than the fan who’s been to every home game since the turn of the millennium. That’s the business model. Traditional fans are a peripheral part of that.

What I suppose I’ve been trying to get at throughout this entire essay is that the AFL’s monopoly position, plus its cultural ubiquity (which, it must be said, previous administrations have built), have created a situation where second-rate governance – or at least second-rate in the eyes of the people who’ve loved the game for a long time – is the status quo. So what are we to do about it? The AFL will be responsive to supporters only when they begin to threaten the bottom line. Clubs could force a change in behaviour or leadership. There is some evidence they are losing faith with the Dillon administration. But clubs don’t always want the same things (consider draft concessions and Academy bids). Broadcasters could drive change, but why would they?

Donald Horne would warn us that incompetence eventually erodes even the strongest position. Albert Hirschman would implore us to use our voice or find the exit. But for all of us – me included – who don’t know if they can, there’s the timeless advice of another influential thinker, Donald Trump, who wrote, in a tweet from October 2012: “The Coca Cola company is not happy with me--that’s okay, I’ll still keep drinking that garbage.” For as long as the product it controls remains so addictive, the AFL doesn’t need to be good. It certainly doesn’t act as though it believes it needs to keep most of its stakeholders onside. It just needs the line to keep going up.

In addition to restarting paid subscriptions, I’ve also created a “Buy Me a Coffee” page so you can show your support for One Percenters with a one-off (or recurring) donation. Here’s the link.

We also did a fun bit after the outro, so make sure to keep listening for another couple of minutes.

New episodes of 110 Percenters are published here. You can also find us wherever you get your podcasts, including:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Pocket Casts

• YouTube Podcasts

Listener feedback will be key to making us better, so if you took the time to listen, please also consider taking the time to rate and review the show.

I’ve put links to Cody and Jonathan’s writing after the jump. Their work is the best in the business. I’ve also linked to listener Leigh Eustace’s Substack. It’s well worth a read.

Links:

• Read Cody’s work here

• Read Jonathan’s work here

• Leigh’s Substack

We also spoke much more about art than we had on any previous episode! It was all a little rambling – blame the tech issues which meant we couldn’t record until Tuesday night – but we had fun.

New episodes of 110 Percenters are published here. You can also find us wherever you get your podcasts, including:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Pocket Casts

• YouTube Podcasts

Listener feedback will be key to making us better, so if you took the time to listen, please also consider taking the time to rate and review the show.

I’ve put links to Cody and Jonathan’s writing after the jump. Their work is the best in the business.

I’ve also put a link to the excellent John Perceval exhibition currently on at the Heidelberg Museum of Art. I highly recommend you check it out if you can!

Links:

• Read Cody’s work here

• Read Jonathan’s work here

• John Perceval: All That We Are

We also had a long conversation about the harrowing Four Corners documentary about Nick Lowden, the former Casey Demons and Norwood player who was diagnosed with CTE after passing away at 23. The documentary, and other excellent reporting by the ABC’s investigations team, raises many troubling, complex questions about the future of our game, the duties of the AFL, and even our responsibilities as people who love the game.

We were determined to end the show on a lighter note, so we also shot From The Hip, delivering our takes on the future of commentary, the rules we’d politely discuss with Swanny (ripper bloke), and footy’s equivalent of Ben Stokes.

New episodes of 110 Percenters are published here. You can also find us wherever you get your podcasts, including:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Pocket Casts

• YouTube Podcasts

Listener feedback will be key to making us better, so if you took the time to listen, please also consider taking the time to rate and review the show.

I’ve put links to Cody and Jonathan’s writing after the jump. Their work is the best in the business.

You’ll also find links to the full ABC Four Corners investigation, a game of Calcio Storico, and a piece about how former US President Teddy Roosevelt saved (American) football.

Links:

• Read Cody’s work here

• Read Jonathan’s work here

• The CTE crisis the AFL doesn’t want you to know about | Four Corner Documentary

• How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football

• FINALE CALCIO STORICO | ROSSI VS. AZZURRI | LIVE | CROWN SPORTS LEAGUE

Finally, we wave goodbye to the byes. One imagines the AFL and broadcasters have run the numbers and concluded that staggering the byes over five weeks is the commercially superior option. But doing it this way lets air out of the season precisely at the point where things are already a bit of a slog. It also feels like yet more inequality layered over the top of an already unequal fixture. Why did Melbourne, a side which didn’t feature in Opening Round, and so therefore didn’t benefit from a bye within the first month of the season, have to wait until Round 16 for its first break of the season? The most elegant solution is also the one the AFL is least likely to adopt: give the whole league a week off and encourage people to go see their state or local league side. Or, God forbid, unplug from footy for a week.

I suppose I should be grateful: staggering the byes over five weeks has enabled me to compile these mid-season report cards. This final instalment considers the fortunes of four clubs separated by just three wins but vastly different narratives. Geelong remains steadfastly Geelong: clever, constant, inevitable. Melbourne has been perhaps the season’s biggest positive surprise: effervescent risers when most expected them to sink. As in theology, so in footy, the Saints are the mirror image of the Demons. Big name recruits created big expectations that have been partly fulfilled on the field but not on the ladder. The Bulldogs are perhaps the biggest enigma of all: good-ish when most expected them to be great, but significantly diminished by the loss of Sam Darcy. Each side is negotiating its own path to contention in its own way. Before we get into the meat of this week’s instalment, a short and sincere thank you to everyone who contributed their thoughts about their side’s progress. You’ve taught me things about your teams. Let’s get into it.

Geelong

Win-loss: 9-6

Ladder position: 4th

Next four games: Brisbane (H), GWS (A), St Kilda (H), Melbourne (A)

Jake from Chaps Chat Cats

“We won’t make it past a Prelim.” Spend enough time around Cats fans and you begin to understand how sustained success over a long period of time can erode a sense of appreciation for the journey between trophies.

The pessimists may be right. Perhaps the Cats will go no further than a preliminary final this season. Perhaps they might fall sooner, and then the anti-Scott crowd (yes, they do still exist) will fire up as the “faithful” bemoan another flag scattered away to the winds of time.

I tend to think Geelong has managed itself to a 9-6 record pretty well, negotiating a ferocious fixture, a string of lingering injuries, and a gentle turnover of the list as the club positions itself for future flag tilts with fresh faces at key positions.

While the likes of Blicavs, Dangerfield, Cameron and Stewart are headed for the last season or two of their careers, Geelong’s next generation is taking shape. With Jeremy Cameron’s effectiveness lessened due to his lingering arm issue, future spearhead Shannon Neale has averaged career-best figures in marks, goals and goal assists, including a breakthrough seven mark, two goal, three goal assist performance against long-time problem team Brisbane.

A precipitous drop in form for Brad Close has opened the door for VFL goalsneak Oliver Wiltshire to claw his way into the side. His tackling numbers need to increase to ensure he stays locked in the team, but he’s booted five goals in his last two games and begun to look more comfortable at the level.

Bailey Smith and Max Holmes have been predictably excellent again, but Geelong could scarcely have dreamed that young ruckman Mitch Edwards would make such massive strides in his first season as an AFL starter.

Down back, Connor O’Sullivan rules the air, and Lawson Humphries controls the counter-attack, while Sam De Koning is beginning to transform into the next Geelong Swiss Army knife as the post-Blicavs era approaches. All that without mentioning arguably Geelong’s most exciting star of the future, Ollie Dempsey, or a VFL side that sits atop their ladder with just a single loss despite being pillaged of two standouts at the mid-season draft. The future is bright.

The truth is, Geelong is continuing to win despite being in the midst of a fairly significant list transition. In their 41-point win over Brisbane at the Gabba, the Cats started 12 players who weren’t on the field during their last flag triumph. During the nine-point road loss to Fremantle, the Cats fielded 14 such players.

Despite the change in personnel, Geelong’s very best has proved capable of beating the competition’s very best teams. Consistency has been the issue, with the Cats struggling to find their best more often than a few other top four contenders. At their best, the Cats hunt in packs, attack like lightning, and choke opponents out of the game with their marauding swarm of headband-clad interceptors. At their worst, they fail to link up inside 50, lack cohesion defending their front half, and are scored against freely on the counter and from stoppages.

Geelong in 2026 has been shifting the blocks on its Rubik’s Cube, working out how to configure itself into a flag-contending form. The Cats own some of the season’s most head-scratching losses, but also some of the campaign’s most impressive wins. Brisbane out of the Bye won’t tell us everything about the 2026 Cats, but I believe it will give us some clues as to what they can achieve by season’s end. The future, and the here and now, remain pretty bright.

Jake’s grade: A-

My thoughts

Be honest: are you surprised by any of this? Geelong being around the mark, turning over its list, demonstrating its recruitment and coaching remains best in-class, while being linked to high-profile free agents come the end of the season? No, because the Cats have made brilliance look boring. Only the most partisan supporters would deny the systemic advantage created by a true home-ground advantage paired with a Victorian side’s lighter travel itinerary. But equally, for all except those who believe that Geelong’s ongoing defiance of gravity is the product of a massive ongoing conspiracy, you have to hand it to them.

You want to know the secret? It’s not the farms. It’s not the local media cartel. It’s the stability, and the trust that stability and success create. That’s why Geelong’s recruiters have a spectacular strike rate in the hinterlands of the draft, why youngsters serve multi-year apprenticeships in a successful VFL program without a peep of frustration from fans, and why the club remains such an attractive destination for out-of-contract stars seeking success (and affordable farmland). Replacements for key first-team pillars are identified and developed years in advance. Duds are quickly ushered out the door (be wary of any player the Cats are willing to let go). Stars are lured on the understanding that their output is worth more than the potential of a draft pick. This is the blueprint for consistent contention.

This year’s Geelong is similar to last year’s incarnation. The operating principles remain the same: a strong intercept game franked by power running, verticality, and clever forward-half scheming. The Cats are handballing a little more and taking a touch less risk and distance with their disposals. They’ve slightly regressed in their clearance work but remain formidable in the turnover game, which is where modern footy is played. The knocks, such as they are, are outcome-based rather than procedural: two one-point losses (to Hawthorn and Adelaide) mean that finishing in the top four is merely “very likely” instead of “almost certain”. Jake is right to note the side’s personnel evolution. Jeremy Cameron’s modest decline has been replaced in the aggregate. Tyson Stengle may have played his last game for the club. That’s fine, Jack Martin and Ollie Wiltshire can replicate his output. Connor O’Sullivan isn’t particularly flashy, but he’s also a likely 300-game player in a high-value role. These are the dividends of stability and strategy. I wrote in my season preview that the Cats are footy’s index fund: rarely “exciting” in the boom-and-bust sense, but always prudent, always dependable, always there. I’m not sure if they’re the best team in it. But they’re part of a group of four that looks clearly stronger than the chasing pack. They will be there when the whips are cracking. Maybe forever.

My grade: B+

Melbourne

Win-loss: 9-6

Ladder position: 7th

Next four games: Hawthorn (A), Richmond (H), North Melbourne (A), Geelong (H)

Emlyn Breese, This Week In Football contributor and friend of the newsletter

The easiest measure of this season is the degree to which expectations have changed. Coming into 2026, most Melbourne supporters wanted to see two things: evidence of a clear game style, and development of the younger players (a record ninth All-Australian selection for Max Gawn wouldn’t have hurt either).

Sitting now having (finally) reached the bye, we’re ready to have our hearts broken. Finals are no certainty, but they’re now the expectation.

Just three bad losses and a 3-4 return against the current top 10 is very respectable, and if you can only play one ground well, the MCG is the correct choice.

Red and blueprint

Steven King shares a central football tenet with his predecessor: territory is more valuable than possession.

In 2026, Melbourne is ranked 4th-lowest among all sides for time in possession differential and 5th-highest for time in forward half. This kind of mismatch reveals something about a team’s footy philosophy. If we look at the time in forward half you’d expect a team with a given time in possession to have, four of the biggest positive outliers are Melbourne – 2022 (9th), 2025 (6th), 2023 (5th), and this year at 3rd.

How are Melbourne gaining that territory though? That’s where, although there are echoes to the peak Goodwin years, the differences from last year become obvious.

Last year, Melbourne became a safe kicking team. This year, King has brought back the low-retention, high-threat kicking strategy of 2021-2023. Sydney and Fremantle both find themselves in the top 5 for xThreat and bottom 5 for xRetention. It seems a philosophy suited to the attacking-friendly rule set of 2026.

Of course, there are some big differences. Sydney and Fremantle rank 1st and 3rd for Handball receives, while Melbourne are 16th. When Melbourne do use handball, they’ve become more expansive than under Goodwin. They’re averaging double the metres gained per handball compared to 2021-23. They’re now also targeting Kysaiah Pickett with those handballs instead of Oliver, Petracca, and Viney.

Overall, the biggest difference appears to be one of freedom. Players have regularly spoken about the freedom to make mistakes in pursuing an attacking option. It’s seen them scoring 90+ points in 10 of their first 15 games, a figure they reached just eight times in 23 games last year. They’ve scored 12 points more per game while conceding just three more.

Without the ball, Melbourne are comfortable (arguably too comfortable) allowing their opponent free use. They’re deep in the negative for uncontested possession differentials and their neighbours are the properly bad Essendon and Richmond. They are bottom six for pressure acts per opposition disposal and tackles per opposition disposal, and dead last for forcing clangers per disposal. The league as a whole has seen big drops in pressure ratings in 2026. Perhaps this is King’s gambit – the rules undermine the effectiveness of pressure, so it’s best to put your focus elsewhere.

The cattle

Melbourne’s best 23 saw significant churn in the off season. The midfield was the deepest hit. Petracca and Oliver are gone, while Viney hasn’t been sighted due to injuries. The backline wasn’t unscathed either, the best full back I’ve seen wear red and blue, Steven May, is gone, as was young fan favourite Judd McVee.

So, who is filling the void? To start off, the really obvious answers. Max Gawn and Kysaiah Pickett are more important than ever to this team’s performance. Max Gawn is 35 this year and currently averaging his career highest rating points despite being played out of position in multiple games. The man is a freak and in my, admittedly very biased, view a clear-cut #1 ruck of all time. Kysaiah Pickett has taken his game to another level. When Melbourne utilises him, he is a nigh unstoppable force. His combination of extracting the contested ball himself, moving out of traffic, and then using it well is, in my opinion, unmatched.

Elsewhere, Kade Chandler has gone from a handy role player to the second most important part of Melbourne’s ball movement behind Pickett. His recent choice to opt out of free agency and sign a five-year contract extension was a boon for the build. Jack Steele and Brody Mihocek (before his horrific injury) have slotted in as exactly what their respective lines needed. Daniel Turner looks like a key defender to build around, while Jake Lever is recapturing his previous form and staying on the park.

There’s a trio of runners that have looked really well suited to King’s game plan. Harry Sharp went from a seeming permanent sub to a vital part of the group. Jai Culley (before his ACL) and Harvey Langford have created really awkward matchups for opponents with their combination of aerobic capacity and overhead strength. Koltyn Tholstrup and Tom Sparrow have both transformed from fringe players to an effective defensive multi-tool and a player embracing the new midfield minutes on offer.

Looking forward

The Demons looked dead on their feet the last three weeks. Getting over the top of Collingwood required them to dig very deep, and they were fortunately allowed to hold Essendon at arms-length without expending a huge amount of effort.

They came into their last game as the first team since the introduction of the pre-finals bye to play 15 weeks straight (excluding the oddities of the 2020 Covid-affected season). By the end of that game against Adelaide, they looked as tired as you’d expect them to be.

This is a young team. By median age of players selected week to week, only Richmond and West Coast are younger. The hope is the Demons return from the bye refreshed and looking like the team we saw earlier in the season. The fear is they fall away like many young teams do towards the end.

Even if Melbourne falls short of finals from here, you’d be hard pressed to not call the year a success. Kade Chandler and Bayley Fritsch have re-signed, it’s hoped Tom Sparrow will do the same soon. The side looks exciting after years of sludge. And a lot of it has been driven by players who will be there a long time. It is Melbourne, so there are still some off-season spectres haunting the place, but from the playing group themselves, the vibes are immaculate. It’s a genuinely exciting time to be a Demons fan.

Emlyn’s grade: A

My thoughts

Melbourne’s list, with apologies to Jack Steele, Brody Mihocek, and the club’s 2025 draftees, has less talent on it this season than last season. Losing Christian Petracca and Clayton Oliver will tend to do that. But this side is playing much better footy than the Late Goodwin Era, and the vibes are approximately a thousand times better. As Emlyn alluded to in his review, those two things are related. The vibes are better, partly because expectations have been reset and partly because the old guard has been moved on, which has helped a young side play with freedom, which improves the vibes, and so on. It’s a virtuous loop.

I’ve written before that “good” coaching, broadly speaking, comes in two different flavours: improving the culture and standards, or making in-game adjustments. Call it the strategic versus the tactical, or the macro versus the micro. Early indications are that Steven King has made real strides in both domains. His Demons don’t press very hard or high: Melbourne is equal-last for opposition clangers and 14th for opposition disposals per tackle. Instead, the Demons happy to sit slightly deeper and trust their defensive system and personnel to force their opponents to take tough shots on goal. Only Sydney and Collingwood boast a lower expected score per opposition shot. The Melbourne is exceptionally good at winning ground-level contests in its defensive 50 and using those wins as a springboard for sweeping counterattacking chains. I feel like I’ve seen Melbourne kick a goal from a move which begins inside its defensive half and features some combination of Kysaiah Pickett, Kade Chandler, Harry Sharp and Harvey Langford (at the MCG, of course) about 50 times this season.

What’s impressed me most about King’s start to coaching life is how quickly he’s added an attacking layer to what had become a very stale game plan under predecessor Simon Goodwin. Part of it, as Emlyn alluded to, is that he’s quickly grasped what had been under-utilised strengths on his list: Sharp’s running from deep positions, Chandler’s playmaking, Langford’s off-ball finishing.

Pickett and Gawn were not, it is fair to say, unknown or underappreciated talents. Any fair accounting of King’s debut season must incorporate the fact that between them (and other veterans who’ve maintained a high level, like Jake Lever), he’s not needed to spin gold from hay. But established talent has combined well with young talent. And Melbourne’s list appears to have a good supply of both. Langford looks every inch a Pick 5 in a well-regarded draft. Caleb Windsor has improved. Latrelle Pickett’s form has flagged as he’s tired from the exertions of a first AFL season, but he’s shown enough flashes. Koltyn Tholstrup has found a new lease of life as a defensive utility after failing to convince as a mid-forward. That’s a credit to the young players and a credit to the coach who’s kept playing them. More young talent will arrive in this season’s draft: Melbourne has its own pick plus Gold Coast’s first-rounder. The latter is currently looking like a much better pick than anyone would have expected after the first month of the season. The recent record of Melbourne’s recruitment team should give supporters cause for optimism.

As Melbourne’s coaches and players finally take a few days off, the questions surrounding this side are suddenly very different to the ones being asked before the season began. Is it time for a rebuild has given way to what Melbourne can achieve this season and – suddenly, improbably – is another genuine flag tilt is in reach while Pickett and [checks notes] Gawn are in their primes? While there’s every chance the accumulation of fatigue on young bodies will see results dip after the bye, it’s clear that this Melbourne side is closer to success than most observers – except for their shrewd novice coach – had understood. It’s good times at Demonland. The snow is crap this year, anyway. The real show is at the MCG on Sunday afternoons.

My grade: A-

St Kilda

Win-loss: 6-9

Ladder position: 13th

Next four games: Essendon (A), Port Adelaide (H), Geelong (A), North Melbourne (A)

Woody from Wooden Spoon Data

The 2026 season started with perhaps the highest external expectations of the club in the last decade. However, the messaging from the club itself was slightly different, suggesting this could still be yet another year of ‘growth’. Slightly more than halfway in, it seems as though the club was correct.

While the Saints have strung together a few ‘statement wins’ over West Coast, Carlton, and Richmond between Rounds 7 to 10, the broader story of their season has been one of agonisingly close misses. Narrow defeats to Collingwood, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Sydney has defined much of the campaign, with the semi-recent blowout loss to Hawthorn – where the Saints failed to kick a goal in the first half – being their only truly uncompetitive showing.

Beneath the frustrating state of the win-loss column, there have been some peripheral improvements that Saints fans have been desperate to see, one that is – or at least should – semi-successfully shifting the narrative away from complete stagnation, at least for now.

Jack Steele and Jack Macrae were mainstays of the Saints’ centre bounce crew last season. Steele attended 74% of centre bounces, while Macrae attended 67%. Hugo Garcia, Marcus Hindhager, and Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera (especially from Round 18 onward) would slot in depending on need and game state. One year on, Steele is no longer at the club and a declining Macrae has become a peripheral figure. Aside from the obvious inclusion of Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera, many were wondering who would step up in their absence. Currently, Hugo Garcia is taking the bulk of the CBAs and looks to have established himself as one of the best young clearance midfielders in the game, averaging 6.1 clearances (3.3 of which are centre clearances) – more than any other player under 23 and more than his former captain too.

Nowhere is St Kilda’s tactical shift more evident than in the development of Max Hall.

After registering just 34 CBAs for a 5% share last year, Hall has already quintupled that total with 173 attendances, pushing his CBA share to 40%. Furthermore, his centre clearance rate of 16.2% ranks him in the top 10 league-wide among all players with an equivalent or higher midfield percentile.

These changes have made St Kilda’s midfield much more effective and dynamic. Last year, the Saints were 14th for centre clearances and 13th for scores from that source. So far in 2026, they’re third for both. At the same time, they’ve become more efficient at scoring from stoppage clearances.

Questions about the quality and composition of the midfield have been answered. But others have emerged in their place. The Saints have bought in four players via trade and free agency: Tom De Koning, Jack Silvagni, Liam Ryan and Sam Flanders. The results have been mixed. Even before an Achilles injury ended his season prematurely, Flanders had been pushed out of the midfield. De Koning was starting to find some form despite lower numbers due to splitting his role, however he too is injured and looks set to miss a few weeks. That being said, Ryan and Silvagni seem to be fitting into their respective roles nicely, and touch wood it stays that way because the Saints will need them if they’re going to make a push for finals.

St Kilda’s run home features matchups against Essendon, Port, North, Carlton, and Richmond, all teams they defeated in their most recent encounters. However, securing a wildcard position will likely require more than just repeating those victories; the Saints will also need to steal a win against Geelong at GMHBA, or Sydney/Gold Coast at Marvel.

So what are the chances that St Kilda qualifies for an expanded finals series? Well, not great. Wheelo Ratings has the Saints with about a 40% chance to make the Top 10, and I’d say that’s not far off correct. If I were to have a guess, I think it’ll come down to percentage between 10th and 11th, this bodes well for the Saints still managing to stay over 100% despite only winning one of its last five games.

While many will argue that St Kilda should be getting more from their off-season acquisitions, it’s clear that if the Saints are to make finals from here, I’ll be because of the continued improvement from their younger players like Garcia, Hall, Wilson, Phillipou and alike; And when you think about it, that sounds like the exact scenario the club laid out earlier in the year.

Woody’s grade: C-

My thoughts

The Saints are trying to do two things – win tomorrow while contending enough today to retain the players who will hopefully contribute to winning tomorrow – in a league where it’s hard enough for most clubs, let alone one with such a history of misfortune, to do one. They have done a decent job. St Kilda has more “expected wins”, the number of wins you’d anticipate had each game played out according to its expected score, than Adelaide. However, given the scale of the challenge facing the club in the next 18 months, decent is not enough.

To very quickly recap: St Kilda, frustrated by the increasing difficulty of rebuilding through the draft in an environment where finalists often have access to its best talent, has chosen to supplement its young core with a group of mid-career and veteran players to patch holes in the list, drive short-term improvement, and persuade the brightest star of all, Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera, that his long-term future lies at Moorabbin. The contributions of the four new recruits have ranged from underwhelming in the case of Sam Flanders (although his season-ending Achilles injury gives him a mulligan), to fair (Tom De Koning), to good (Liam Ryan and Jack Silvagni). They’ve not moved the needle by far enough, nor have they been a problem.

Too much attention has been paid to the new guys, and not enough to the two unheralded names who have announced themselves as stars. Hugo Garcia and Max Hall were recruited for Pick 50 in the 2023 draft and Pick 4 of the 2024 Mid-Season Draft. They have become, if you consider Wanganeen-Milera a midfielder, St Kilda’s second and third-best midfielders. Their rise, together with Darcy Wilson becoming the competition’s most sought-after out of contract player (are Saints fans doomed for a nailbiting contract saga every year?) has largely offset concerns about St Kilda’s recent first-round drafting. Five first-rounders, including three top-10 picks, suited up for the VFL side, last weekend. You can mount defenses of all of them. Mattaes Phillipou has flashed good form at AFL level before. Alix Tauru is a kid still growing into his body. And Tobie Travaglia has been building and is likely to return to the senior side soon. But St Kilda has a narrower path to success than almost every other club. Every miss hurts. Given the context of Wilson and Wanganeen-Milera’s contractual situations, even every delayed win hurts.

The aggregate effect of the new recruits and organic improvement is that the Saints are a better team than they were last year.

As of three weeks ago, the Saints were seventh for quarters won. They are taking more risks with their kicks and forcing more turnovers. They are scoring almost nine points more per game while conceding almost two fewer points. Many of the old criticisms about coach Ross Lyon’s boring, risk-averse style are no longer applicable. His side is playing a much more modern brand of footy.

The problem is that motion hasn’t created momentum. For all the improvement, the Saints are just one win better off than this time last season. The clock is ticking – loudly – on the futures of star players. The problem is that the test wasn’t whether St Kilda has improved because the 2025 Saints were never the benchmark. The test was whether they had closed the gap to the competition’s best teams. Perhaps they have if you dig deep enough. But on the metrics that matter most to supporters and out-of-contract stars, the gap remains stubbornly unbridgeable. The Saints are still mired in what’s become all too natural a habitat: purgatory.

My grade: C

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Western Bulldogs

Win-loss: 9-6

Ladder position: 8th

Next four games: Sydney (A), West Coast (H), Gold Coast (A), Richmond (H)

Adrian Polykandrites of From the Top Deck

Two things I probably knew have crystalised over the past month or so: we are bad at adjusting expectations, and the footy season is bloody long.

The Dogs’ impressive road wins over the Lions and Crows – which sandwiched a customary beatdown of the Giants – are a distant memory. It doesn’t even feel like the same season.

Everything changed in Geelong on that miserable Friday night when Sam Darcy’s season ended. Ten weeks on and I’m not really sure what this team is. It was never going to be the same without Darcy. It doesn’t matter, because he’s not coming back this season, so there’s no choice but to get on with it.

The record is fine – good, even. The cavalry has mostly returned, the skipper is moving normally again, and they have been able to grind out the kind of wins good teams need to grind out. The loss to Carlton was never as bad as it seemed and the win over Port was better than they got credit for. The Hawthorn win was a fluke but the loss to Fremantle – a kick in it deep into time on in the last – was one of the Dogs’ best performances of the season. They’ve had some luck in close games but they were the better team in most of those (Hawks game, again, was a fluke).

The biggest issue is that their best post-Darcy hasn’t looked nearly as good as their bad has looked bad. The Sydney loss is a write-off given the side they put on the park, but the Adelaide loss was an abomination. The game didn’t look particularly different to the first half of the Hawks game, the Crows just slammed the door shut with their kicking rather than keeping it ajar.

The profile is one of a middling team but given the fluctuation of the 23, that could mean everything or nothing: 15th for contested possession differential, fifth for clearance differential, 13th for inside-50 differential, 10th for scores from stoppages, 14th from scores from turnovers (uh-oh). They’re defending better in their back half but scoring has become a grind.

Of their best players, only Marcus Bontempelli, Bailey Dale and Aaron Naughton have been consistent(ish) across the season – and there’s an asterisk on all of them. Tim English has been great (other than the bath he was given by Lachlan McAndrew) [Mateo: respect McAndrew] or absent, Tom Liberatore has missed and been missed, Ed Richards has been up and down and was clearly playing hurt for a stretch. Adam Treloar is toast. Rhylee West has found some form after a dreadful start but is still a few rungs below his 2025 form. They miss Bailey Williams. Joel Freijah is still good and young and exciting but is finding life tougher with more required of him.

On the positive side, they’ve found a player they needed in Michael Sellwood, and Connor Budarick has been a shrewd recruit. Ryley Sanders has grown into a very capable onballer, Arty Jones has been their second best forward, and in one of the most welcome surprises of the season, Cody Weightman slotted in seamlessly. Cooper Hynes and Jordan Croft have shown enough on the wings to be encouraged, even if both will have you tearing hair out at times in the way young players do.

All in all… I don’t know. The ceiling is lower but the goal – be alive in semi-final week – should be the same. The bye has come at a nice time for them. The injury list is short, with Williams the only player certain to return to the line-up when fit. And they should be fresh for a real test against the Swans which will either answer questions or create new ones.

I just wish, once, this team would have a normal season. Alas.

Adrian’s grade: C+

My thoughts

No event has so changed the trajectory of one club’s 2026 season as violently as when Sam Darcy’s knee crumpled on that brisk April night in Geelong. When Darcy went down, so did the Dogs’ flag hopes. For a club with such a top-heavy talent distribution, every road to the flag ran through the guns firing every bullet they had in the chamber.

Darcy’s season-ending ACL injury was an especially bitter pill to story both because of the inherent tragedy of a young player being struck down and because, until then, the Dogs had been finding new ways to win. Last season, Luke Beveridge’s side was bad both at defending fast transition and slow plays. The problem was both structure and personnel. It’s not just that the blanket was too small – it’s as though there was no blanket at all. Beveridge’s big innovation this season was to drop the high press and semi-willingly concede opposition entries into a crowded 50. The bet was essentially that superior defensive numbers, and the ground ball prowess of the Dogs’ midfield corps, could create opportunities in attacking transition (which would also have the effect of giving Darcy more one-on-one contests).

The first month of the season offered good evidence for the theory. The Dogs emerged from the Lions’ den with four points despite a -13 inside-50 differential, and beat GWS and Adelaide in more conventional style (overwhelming midfield superiority and suffocating forward pressure). 4-0 looked like a perfect platform. Then came a limp Gather Round loss to Hawthorn – in a game that felt like a rerun of the last four encounters between the sides – and that dirty night down the Princes.

As Adrian says, everything changed when Darcy went down. It wasn’t just him, either. Tom Liberatore, Rory Lobb, and James O’Donnell suffered injuries in the same game. Ed Richards, who’d already been carrying a hamstring tendon injury, badly rolled his ankle in the dying stages of the defeat to Hawthorn. Truth be told, this version of the Dogs, despite improved contributions from role players like Michael Sellwood and Connor Budarick, isn’t as good as 9-6 suggests. They are flattered by a remarkable 6-0 record in games decided by a goal or less. That slightly inflated position, coupled with a relatively benign run home, may introduce some challenges in matching a bid for talented NGA prospect Khaled El Souki (and possibly the trade for Zak Butters). But that feels like small beer next to the excitement of winning close ones and the value of the finals experience for what’s still a young group.

There’s been growth through adversity. The question rattling around in my head is whether it’s reasonable for such a talent-studded side to be no better than league average with just one (admittedly, very good, very important) absence? Shouldn’t a team which still boasts the likes of Bontempelli, Richards, Naughton, and Freijah be… better? Perhaps it’s moot. This side will be different next season in a way that makes comparisons with the side they’ve been since April difficult. Darcy will be back. Butters is very likely to join. The club has signalled its pursuit of a key defender. There’ll still be important questions about talent distribution and game plan that haven’t been fully answered. But talent talks. The Dogs’ main objective for the rest of 2026 should be fortifying younger players with the experience they will need for the trials ahead.

My grade: B-

In addition to restarting paid subscriptions, I’ve also created a “Buy Me a Coffee” page. Here’s the link if you feel like supporting my work financially.

Plus: we share our memories of Tony Modra (don’t worry, he’s still recovering, you haven’t missed a terrible update!), Jonathan’s sore throat adds an extra baritone to the pod (he also says a slightly naughty word), Mateo remembers another ‘90s Adelaide icon, and we officially extend an invitation to Jack Ginnivan to join the pod.

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Links:

• Read Cody’s work here

• Read Jonathan’s work here

• Adelaide That Was: Dazzleland at the Myer Centre 1990s

We are now into the fourth week of the mid-season byes. The bye provides players with a chance to rest weary bodies and coaches with virtually their only real opportunity to make substantial changes to their game plan. As the byes unfold, I want to consider how each club is travelling – not just relative to pre-season expectations, but also what’s the likely range of outcomes for the rest of the season. Thankfully, I won’t be doing it alone. I’ve asked supporters of each club – all friends of the newsletter – to share their thoughts about how their sides are going and how it’s changed their belief about what’s possible in 2026. I’ll then respond with my own thoughts.

This installment, with apologies to Essendon and West Coast supporters, resembles the Three-Headed Dragon meme (except there’s an extra dragon). There are two beasts and then two derpy ones. But just because the Bombers and Eagles won’t figure in the season’s denouement doesn’t mean the storylines surrounding them are any less intriguing. They are playing for pride in 2026, and real table stakes in the upcoming years. One appears to be on the verge of climbing out of the basement. The other might just be beginning its stay. Then there’s Brisbane, the wounded champs, and Sydney, the side with so much Grand Final-related trauma. It is an intriguing set of teams that sat out Round 15. Let’s get into it.

Brisbane

Win-loss: 8-6

Ladder position: 8th

Next four games: Sydney (H), Geelong (A), Essendon (H), West Coast (A)

Perri, friend of the newsletter

The Lions’s season has been very up and down. Big wins against St Kilda, Collingwood, Adelaide and Gold Coast have been offset by close losses to Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs, and less close defeats to Fremantle, Sydney, Geelong, and GWS.

The fluctuation in competitiveness has been driven mostly by one of the longest injury lists in the AFL. At one point, the Lions just had six available players for selection outside the best 23.

As a result, there has been significant doubt from footy fans, members, and the media that Brisbane can achieve its second-ever threepeat.

The first half of the season has been worse than expected. But injuries have created opportunities for depth players. Despite the additions of Oscar Allen and Sam Draper pushing him further down the depth chart, Brisbane supporters have seen first-hand this season how good Ty Gallop can be as a backman. Much like Captain Harris Andrews who began life as a forward before becoming a defender, Gallop has shown how young players can quickly change positions while still benefiting the team in the long term.

Speaking of Draper, given his injury history at Essendon, it was fair to question what sort of contribution he’d be able to make. Instead, he’s quickly become Brisbane’s #1 ruck. Draper has been a big beneficiary of both the new ruck rules and tapping the ball down to a more capable midfield unit – his rate of hit outs to advantage has increased from 21.4% in 2025 to 34.6% in 2026, helping give his midfielders first use (the Lions are 1st in the AFL – by a lot – for first possessions at stoppages).

Given the side’s underwhelming start, it’s only natural that not every player has performed at their best. While he is often touted as a future Captain at the Lions, Fletcher has had a mediocre start to the season. Playing out of position as a defender doesn’t help him, but the Lions will need him at his best if they are to achieve the fabled threepeat. The biggest culprits, however, have been the players who make up the midfield unit. It’s partly understandable: several of them had interrupted pre-seasons and are playing through niggles. But the fact remains that they have majorly struggled, especially against the midfields of the other flag contenders. The Lions’ 25-point loss against Fremantle in Round 12 was a jarring example of how the midfield has struggled against the best in the league this season. According to Champion Data, Josh Dunkley, Hugh McCluggage, and Will Ashcroft’s output has declined significantly in the first half of the season compared to 2025. Dunkley has gone from being the 46th-rated player to the 188th, McCluggage has dropped from 12th to 180th, and Ashcroft has declined from the 38th highest-rated to the 235th. Going from an All-Australian squad member last year to being in and out of the side because of a persistent calf injury, Dunkley’s decrease in form has been the most stark of any Lions midfield player. If Brisbane are to feature in finals, the entire midfield group must lift, and the injury list must shorten.

Although missing finals from here is unlikely, this side currently looks a long way from contention. The Lions will have to dance on ice again if they’re to return to the final Saturday in September.

Perri’s grade: C

My thoughts

I’ll start with the good news: Brisbane are generating the second-highest expected score of any side, and over nine points more than last season. The attack is functioning well. Logan Morris has continued his development into one of the game’s deadliest marking forwards. Kai Lohmann has bounced back after a disappointing 2025 and Charlie Cameron has wound back the clock, silencing his critics in the process. Now to the bad news: defending is half of the game, and Brisbane’s defensive numbers have clearly deteriorated.

The Lions are currently conceding 87.7 expected points per game; 13th in the AFL. Compare that to 2025 (76.5 expected points – 8th) or 2024 (71.5 – 2nd) and the picture of a side that has lost its ability to prevent damage becomes clear. So what’s changed? Perri has identified the decline in output from the side’s champion midfield, the anchor of its era of success. But although there are semi-extenuating individual explanations (niggling injuries, an ebbing of desire after back-to-back Premierships, etc.), I always prefer finding a structural explanation. Many of the fundamentals of Brisbane’s game have remained intact: they still lead the league for marks differential and clearance differential. Few sides are as good at winning the ball and keeping it. The problem is that opposition sides have become more efficient at creating situations where the ball is in dispute, and vastly more damaging when forcing turnovers.

The Lions were 1st for time in possession in 2024 and 2nd in the same stat in 2025. This season, that’s dropped to 5th. It’s modest but meaningful. Brisbane’s distinctive kick-mark game is its first layer of defence. As the Lions’ time in possession has decreased, the opposition’s ability to punish in transition has increased. Brisbane are currently the second-worst side in the AFL, better than only Essendon, at denying its opposition from taking the ball from D50 to F50. In fact, the Lions are in the bottom three for all the major transition denial stats and – unsurprisingly – 17th for opposition scores from the back half. Rather than a single smoking gun culprit, it’s an accumulation of several different factors: the decline in time in possession, a modest decline in the Lions’ ability to win contests around the ground, and injuries. There’s also the basic fact that the Lions are the hunted. Opposition coaches have been thinking about how to unpick their game plan for two years. The evidence thus far is that they are making progress.

None of this should frighten Brisbane supporters too much. Their side copped the occasional anomalous Home & Away result even during its Premiership years. The Lions have, from time to time, given the impression they’re playing beneath their true level from March to August. This side has won a flag from outside the top four before. Hell, they’ve won a flag from 44 points down midway through the third quarter of a Semi Final before. No one will believe this side is done until it’s actually done. But it does feel slightly different this time – as though Brisbane’s players are more sated (and more injured), and their opponents more determined.

My grade: C+

Essendon

Win-loss: 1-13

Ladder position: 18th

Next four games: North Melbourne (A), St Kilda (H), Brisbane (A), GWS (H)

Anth Proc, author of the Bombers Blog

What a 12 months it has been to be part of the red and black army. Only once since Round 11 last year have Essendon supporters seen the Bombers fly up, up. The reality of the rebuild that had been discussed, and for some, not announced loudly enough, quickly became impossible to ignore.

Having watched much of Essendon’s summer training, I wasn’t alone in thinking another evolution in ball movement was coming in 2026. Across Brad Scott’s first two seasons, Essendon largely relied on a kick-mark game style, recording a handball percentage of 41.6% across 2023 and 2024 (the Bombers were 15th for kick percentage in 2024, and 18th last season). By Round 11 last year, before injuries truly began to take hold, that figure had climbed to 44.5% as the Bombers increasingly looked to support the contest with extra numbers and then link up by hand to generate possession chains.

At that stage of last season, no side in the competition was averaging anywhere near Essendon’s 145 handball receives. For context, Sydney currently leads the AFL in this metric in 2026 – with 145. The problem was that this style often invited pressure at the source, produced very little territory, and made opposition turnover scoring far too easy.

Watching summer training created optimism that another adjustment was coming. There appeared to be a greater emphasis on territory, quicker ball movement and backing in teammates ahead of the ball, resembling much of what Fremantle has shown this season: kick long to a contest, trust the forwards to either win it in the air or bring it to ground, and be predictable for teammates arriving to support at ground level.

Unfortunately, that is not what unfolded once the season began. Three games in, Essendon was once again overusing handball, with 47.6% of its disposals coming by hand.

The long kick to contest that appeared to be such a focus over summer vanished almost immediately, leaving the forwards looking up the ground in bewilderment while Essendon gained the fewest metres via kicking in the AFL, and by a significant margin.

Then there were the defensive issues. After three rounds, Essendon was allowing 146 uncontested marks per game, including 123 in transition through the back two-thirds of the ground, numbers that would have been setting off alarm bells. In Round 4, the Bulldogs had opened a nine-goal lead by half-time, setting up a significant challenge at the main break.

After the restart, Essendon abandoned the handball-heavy approach and returned to a more controlled style. The Bombers took 48 uncontested marks, working methodically up the ground and, in doing so, defending far more effectively behind the ball.

With confidence regained after returning to a previous version of themselves, Essendon headed to Gather Round, where the control method continued. Against Melbourne, the Bombers finished +57 in uncontested marks and +99 in uncontested possessions, snapping an equal club-record 17-game losing streak with a 45-point victory. It was Essendon’s biggest win since Round 11, 2023.

Yet for all the positives, it is not a style I believe will deliver reliable long-term success.

In my view, Essendon’s two best performances of the season came against Gold Coast and GWS. Those two prefer to move the ball through handball and run, creating more chaos. Significantly, they remain the only two games this season where Essendon’s opponents were forced to win more ground balls than marks [Mateo: the ratio of ground ball gets to marks is a useful rule of thumb for “control” vs. “chaos”].

Compare that to Brisbane, Collingwood, Hawthorn and Port Adelaide – the AFL’s top four uncontested marking sides – and it is no coincidence those matches produced Essendon’s four heaviest defeats of the season.

The challenge for Essendon in 2026 has been finding a game model that is both competitive now and capable of developing the next generation at the same time. Unfortunately, the second-youngest and second-least experienced side in the competition has been unable to find consistency in most facets of the modern game.

While there have been occasional signs of improvement, the fundamentals haven’t improved enough for long enough. Eventually, after a disappointing second consecutive loss to Richmond, the club reached a conclusion many had seen coming. Brad Scott’s tenure came to an end.

From my perspective, the decision itself was justified. Many of the defensive metrics I track had trended in the wrong direction over his final 46 games, including opposition transition from defensive 50 to inside 50, opposition scores per inside 50, intercepts per opposition possession and points conceded from turnovers (the list goes on).

While most associated with the club appeared aligned on what would be required to compete with the best sides in the competition long term, turning that vision into high-level performance proved a different challenge altogether. It was fair for stakeholders to question whether Scott was the coach capable of delivering it, and not unreasonable that they decided he wasn’t.

What remains more debatable is the timing. With only three games remaining before the mid-season bye, the decision inevitably left those remaining to pick up the pieces scrambling to manage both coaching changes and on-field priorities simultaneously. The same decision could have been made with much less disruption three weeks later.

The coaching search itself will dominate discussion throughout the second half of the year. I could write thousands of words on potential candidates, club politics, media speculation and Essendon’s history of football department appointments, but that discussion misses the bigger point: whoever gets the role needs to be the best available coach. More importantly, they need to be surrounded by the best people possible.

For all the disappointment of 2026, the brightest moments have almost exclusively come from the younger brigade. Sullivan Robey has helped transform Essendon’s stoppage profile. After four rounds, the Bombers sat at a cumulative clearance differential of -53. Since his introduction, that number has improved to +33. His contested work pre-clearance has also been a significant factor, with Essendon going from -40 to +32 in that area over the same period.

Dyson Sharp immediately translated his under-18 traits to AFL level when given greater midfield responsibility against GWS in Round 9. Before injury cut his afternoon short, Sharp had 17 possessions, 10 contested, seven at pre-clearance, and converted four of his five first possessions into effective clearances in only 40 minutes of football.

Behind the ball, Jacob Farrow and Archie Roberts have shown enough to suggest both can become important pieces of the future. A system that better rewards their vision and kicking skills should allow them to play with greater confidence and aggression.

Further forward, there are also genuine reasons for optimism.

Nate Caddy ranks 15th in the AFL for marks inside 50 and ninth for shots at goal despite Essendon sitting 17th for inside 50s. Archer May is already inside the top 10 forwards for front-half contested marks, while Isaac Kako finished the first half of the season in the AFL’s top 15 for post-clearance inside-50 groundball.

There is talent. The challenge now is creating an environment where it can flourish. While wins would provide a welcome reward after an extremely difficult season, development must remain the primary focus.

Anth’s grade: D-

My thoughts

Part of what Anth’s review correctly identifies is that Essendon’s current ladder position makes the win-loss record a poor measure of success. Realistically, the Bombers are unlikely to win more than one game for the remainder of the season. If it doesn’t happen in the next four fixtures, it probably won’t happen. There will probably be more heavy defeats. Supporters should acquaint themselves with this year’s draft cohort.

Results can’t be the measuring stick. Instead, as Anth suggested, Essendon supporters – those brave enough, or masochistic enough, to keep watching – should focus on improvement in defensive metrics and the development of what suddenly looks like an exciting crop of youngsters. Essendon’s defensive numbers across the last five games have modestly improved. In that time, the Bombers are 14th for opposition chain to score, 15th for opposition D50 to F50, and 6th for opposition expected score. The softness of the fixture across that time (Essendon has played Carlton, Richmond, and West Coast in the last five) makes me sceptical that it’s anything other than a biased sample.

The reality is that, although one can quibble the exact timing, sacking Brad Scott was the right call. His Essendon side was shockingly poor defensively, to an extent I don’t believe can be wholly attributed to injuries. The Bombers played in small spaces while allowing their opponents to play in large spaces. Sure, it may have looked comical – the desperate act of a desperate club. But footy clubs can’t allow themselves to become hostages of the past or of public opinion.

The challenge will be whether Essendon is a mature enough club, with a sufficiently robust decision-making framework, to make better decisions from here. The early evidence is not encouraging. Dean Solomon was a curious choice of interim coach given his culpability for the side’s defensive woes (he was appointed as the assistant in charge of the backline and team defence, after serving on the club’s Board of Directors in 2025). The apparent chase for James Hird… well, there’s little point in me re-prosecuting arguments that have already been made hundreds of times in both directions. It’s possible Hird is a good coach who has kept up with the vanguard of modern tactics. I think the more likely explanation is that he believes he still has unfinished business at the club where he remains enormously popular with fans and influential with coteries. Regardless of the identity of Essendon’s next coach, the long-term mission remains the same: develop the young players, retain enough mature bodies that the floor doesn’t fall even lower, hit the draft heavily, and gradually rebuild the prestige of this fallen old club. There are no shortcuts, only a long road. It will involve a fair amount more pain.

My grade: D

Sydney

Win-loss: 12-2

Ladder position: 2nd

Next four games: Brisbane (A), Western Bulldogs (H), Fremantle (A), Adelaide (H)

Joe Cordy, This Week in Football contributor

Losing consecutive Grand Final appearances, particularly four, can really warp your relationship to success. I don’t know if the dynamic switched after the second, third or fourth loss, but at some point the potential of going to another big dance became more ominous than exciting. “Could we do it?” gave way to “I can’t do this again.”

I’m aware of how this looks to opposition fans and I appreciate the offers for ever-smaller violins providing ever-sadder soundtracks, but like I said, it warps your relationship to success.

Unfortunately that’s about where Swans are 14 games in: 12-2, entrenched in the top two, and aside from a couple of long-term injuries, everything going about as well as you could reasonably expect. To my eye, there are three key factors that have gotten us here and make me quietly confident (and uneasy) about playing in the last game of September.

The first is the integration of the new blood, both from within and without the club. I’ve told anyone who will listen that I’m not sure how I’m meant to explain to my currently eight-month-old son that I was once something called a “Charlie Curnow defender”. His goal contributions, both direct and indirect through the space he’s created for players like Amartey, have been awesome but expected; what I will admit I was reserving judgement for was his off- and ground-ball work, both of which have been impeccable. Jai Serong and Will Edwards have brought the depth of big-bodied defenders we’ve been crying out for since the loss of Paddy McCartin and end of the Will Gould experiment, and Malcolm Rosas Jnr. has been a genuine revelation.

The second is how much more mature we are off-the-ball and defensively, particularly when the run of play is going against us. The 2022 and 2024 teams were like bad window washers – streaky. They looked like Showtime Lakers going one direction but the worries about their porous defence, need for clean ball movement and tendency to fall behind at the start of games were fully realised in both Grand Finals. The current iteration have sacrificed some of that liquid ball movement and high-volume scoring but are overall so much stronger in defence because of it. Part of it is just having more talented players on the field. But a lot of it is how much the rest defence has been helped by the pivot from precision kicking to forward handballs and overlapping runs to break through the middle of the field. When it doesn’t come off, we’re already right in the opponent’s face to win it back.

The third is the pending return of Errol Gulden for the run-in. He’s the key to everything. Heeney’s athletic ability and nous make him our clear best player but Errol is arguably our most important. The way he coordinates the rest of the side particularly around stoppages is only paralleled by Callum Mills, and his vision for how the game is about to unfold is peerless within the side. This isn’t to say that his eye-catching highlight reel stuff isn’t more impactful, direct actions always are, but where that can be recreated in the aggregate by the rest of the team, his indirect work is irreplaceable. When he went down, the hope was just to be in touch with the top four so that we could mount a charge for a double chance upon his return, so to be in a position where we can cruise (relatively) comfortably to top two just from breaking even in the remaining fixtures is an immeasurable boon. It takes the mental pressure off of each result and provides room to experiment with lineups and tactics ahead of the finals.

The ceiling on this team’s potential performances week to week is as high as it’s ever been, and the floor hasn’t been so high in a decade. Cox has a plan, it works, and it can survive losing key players. There’s every reason to believe we can go deep into finals, again.

I cannot overstate how stressed I am.

Joe’s grade: A+

My thoughts

Across pre-season, Errol Gulden spoke about how the Swans wanted to put more speed on the ball in 2026. In my season preview, I hypothesised that that greater speed would most likely manifest as less time spent at half-back and more decisive corridor release but probably wouldn’t see the Swans become more frantic with the ball. Well, I was correct enough on the first two, but very wrong on the third! The Swans have executed the boldest in-possession changes of any side in the AFL. Consider this: last season, the Swans were 8th for marks and 5th for kicks as a share of disposals. This season, they are 18th for marks and 18th for kicks as a share of disposals. They are also 1st for handballs and handball receives and, as has been widely remarked upon, they top the league for handball metres gained. The increase is extraordinary. Last season, Sydney gained an average of 177.7 metres by hand per game. This season – 695.2. They have gone from being conventional to being an outlier.

Thus far, it’s been a smart gamble. Sport is replete with examples of sides that have leveraged short-term tactical advantages to their benefit. I suspect embracing such an extreme change in game style has been responsible for a large amount of Sydney’s return to the top reaches of the ladder (I pity the poor opposition analysts who had to report on Sydney’s game plan in the first month of this season). As Joe alluded to, it’s plausible that the pivot will make Sydney more robust when the whips are cracking in September. The 2024 Swans were too reliant on clean ball to function. That side was 14th for forward-50 ground ball gets. This side is top for the same statistic. Defensively, too, prior Sydney sides, even those that made Grand Finals, tended to be clever but brittle, and relied too heavily on dominating possession to prevent opposition scores. This one – admittedly, only halfway into the season – looks more robust. The Swans are currently 3rd for opposition shots per inside-50 entry (they were 14th in 2024).

This side has also not been cruelled by injury to the same extent. Gulden, captain Callum Mills, and Logan McDonald all missed significant time in 2025. This season, McDonald no longer needs to shoulder the burden of being the main forward, and the side was able to string together good results and performances despite Gulden’s absence. He is almost certain to return this week against Brisbane.

These Swans are good. They play an unusual and unusually explosive brand of football. I suspect pundits are probably overindexing on the fragility of past Sydney sides that have failed on the biggest stage. But it’s true that this version hasn’t truly been stress-tested yet. The next four weeks, which includes games against Brisbane, Fremantle, and Adelaide, will teach us much more about them. I’m not yet convinced that they’re better than the rest of what currently looks like a very even top four. But I’m equally unconvinced they’re any worse. The Swans have the talent. They have the game. What remains to be seen is whether they have the mettle.

My grade: A

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West Coast

Win-loss: 4-10

Ladder position: 16th

Next four games: Carlton (A), Adelaide (H), Western Bulldogs (A), Brisbane (H)

Man Seeking Merry Hell, This Week In Football contributor and newly-minted footy substacker

2025 always felt like something of a ‘Year Zero’ for Andrew McQualter. He arrived at a club undergoing one of the deepest clean outs in recent history, promising a game plan seemingly designed to be the polar opposite to his predecessor.

What was already one of the youngest teams in football became further unrecognisable by the time West Coast’s bye rolled around, thanks to the in-season retirements of Jeremy McGovern and Dom Sheed, and trade speculation looming over captain Oscar Allen. Things quickly became an exercise in getting minutes into the legs of a few key pillars, then holding on for dear life.

Flash forward to bye week 2026, and the Eagles have taken some big strides, moving from ‘historically bad’ to ‘still not great but having an honest dip’. Crucially, the gameplan we were promised upon McQualter’s arrival is showing genuine signs of life, built around taking field position and building pressure through repeat inside 50s.

While definitely more interested in process than results, I had five wins as an indicative pass mark for the season. With four under the belt, West Coast is well on its way. The year thus far can be divided into three. The opening three rounds, where a 2-1 record led by a raft of highly drafted kids and the unearthing of Milan Murdock had fans rubbing their eyes in disbelief.

Then came a 21-goal home defeat to Sydney. There were still moments to savour, such as Willem Duursma and Jobe Shanahan joining a growing list of reasons to be excited about the future, but the loss of defensive anchors Jack Graham and Dev Robertson left the Eagles far too brittle against the league’s best (…and St Kilda) [Mateo: aggrieved Saints fans, take it up with MSMH].

From the day the fixture was announced, the period on which to judge McQualter and his Eagles was Round 8 until the bye. It started as poorly as imaginable, throwing away a home game in grim fashion to a previously winless Richmond – the clear low point of 2026 despite the two 100+ point defeats.

However, from Round 9 onwards, West Coast has suddenly looked like a real team, consistently playing the game on their terms for the first time in years. Over the last five weeks, the Eagles rank #1 in the league for time in forward half, with a defence rated #1 in D50 transition, and #2 in metres gained.

While the majority of list improvement is still predicated on patience, it’s been a breath of fresh air to see healthy veterans own their roles. In addition to the biggest find of the season, the aforementioned Murdock, Eagles fans have enjoyed Bailey Williams taking full advantage of the new ruck rules, and the renaissance of Tim Kelly. We’ve also seen our fair share of interesting magnet moves (see: Brady Hough reinforcing the midfield in a tagging role, and lifelong defender Tom Cole’s redeployment as a goal-kicking pressure small forward).

There’s still no team in footy more reliant on one player than West Coast and Harley Reid [Mateo: Port and Zak Butters??], whose strong pre-season and growing in-game maturity (yes, I’m serious) has taken his output to a new level while revealing him as a surprise mentor among the club’s youngest players.

It can’t be ignored that most of the improved performances have come against teams ranging from wildcard hopefuls to outright bottom-two fodder. But equally, recent losses by 10, 6, and 1 mean that, with a bit of luck, the Eagles could be wildly over-performing on the ladder.

There’s still plenty to be solved; we’ve seen no reliable method of scoring from D50, and Reuben Ginbey’s season ending quad injury compounds Harry Edwards’ highly uncertain future. The club is likely to search for a key defender during the trade and draft period.

A poor run home will see tensions return but, for now, it seems as though West Coast has set itself up for a period of natural growth. Steal one or two wins before the offseason and it cements what we’re starting to suspect; the Eagles are finally stirring from their long slumber.

MSMH’s grade: B-

My thoughts

The Eagles have lost two games this season by more than 100 points. They have lost to Richmond – at home. And yet, I think things are looking up and that, furthermore, that’s a fairly widely held view among West Coast’s supporters. I wrote in my 2026 season preview that Andrew McQualter would be looking for progress in key indicators of his game model: scores from forward half, turnovers forced, and post-clearance contested possessions. Improve them, and a jump up the ladder (well, perhaps a step up) was within reach.

At first glance, those indicators have recorded modest progress, but not necessarily the sort you’d associate with West Coast’s clear improvement. The Eagles are 13th for post-clearance contested possessions after being 16th in that stat in 2025, 13th for intercept possessions (same as last season), and 16th for forward half scores. But, as Man Seeking Merry Hell suggests, the improvement has really happened over the last five games. Here’s a sample of how the Eagles are faring in some metrics over that timespan:

• 8th for scores from turnover

• 3rd for scores from forward half

• 16th for opposition contested possession share

• 2nd for opposition for disposal retention

• 2nd for opposition marks

• 3rd for opposition scores from turnover

• 2nd for opposition D50 to F50 success rate

What unites these statistics is how closely correlated they all are to McQualter’s high-pressure surge and turnover style (that he learnt as an assistant to Damien Hardwick at Richmond). The Eagles are getting better at forcing turnovers in dangerous areas of the ground, converting those turnovers into scores, denying their opposition easy uncontested possessions or marks, and successfully applying frontal pressure to stymie opposition ball movement. That’s the blueprint: apply tremendous pressure at ground level, patrol the skies, and surge forward following contest wins. And there’s real evidence it’s working. It’s not at all unthinkable that the Eagles could have won four or perhaps even all of their last five games. It should be said that, as bad as West Coast was last season, it was never really “one-win season” bad. The Eagles were unlucky, going 0-4 in games decided by 10 points or fewer.

It’s always worth asking how much of a rebuilding side’s improvement is being driven by older players enjoying a late-career resurgence and how much of the work is being done by younger players. Tim Kelly, Elliott Yeo and Liam Baker have been the Eagles’ three highest-rated players across the last 20 games. None are young. But you’re allowed to have senior players play well. It’s not illegal! And, crucially, any honest accounting of West Coast’s season would conclude that the club’s young players are pulling their weight. Willem Duursma has taken to senior footy like a duck to water. He looks every inch a number one draft pick. Harley Reid has shaken off his second-year blues. Jobe Shanahan has star attributes. Tom McCarthy and Milan Murdock look like excellent low-cost additions. Reuben Ginbey might not be a midfielder, but has become a very good hybrid defender. Early signs for Marcus Herbert and Josh Lindsay are encouraging. Dev Robertson and Brandon Starcevich look like good soldiers. The outline of a very good list, youth supplemented by reliable experience, is beginning to come into view. Chad Warner and Mitch Georgiades could well join as free agents next year.

What needs to happen in the Eagles’ final nine games to make the season an unqualified success? Another win or two will maintain supporter optimism without spoiling what looks like yet another tasty draft pick (the Eagles have games against Richmond and Collingwood to come). Results are good, but performances probably matter more at this stage of the build. McQualter will want to see the strong performance in the statistics I cited earlier continue. Regardless of what happens, Eagles fans should feel confident that things are finally trending the right way. Something is stirring out West.

My grade: B

I’ll be back later this week, or early next, with thoughts on how Geelong, St Kilda, Melbourne, and the Western Bulldogs are travelling.

In addition to restarting paid subscriptions, I’ve also created a “Buy Me a Coffee” page so you can give me even more money. Here’s the link.

Plus: Mateo reveals Jonathan’s footy allegiance, Cody Remembers Some Guys, and we celebrate the Socceroos’ inspiring start to the World Cup by defying the No Sherrin rule.

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I’ve put links to Cody and Jonathan’s writing after the jump. Their work is the best in the business. I’ve also added a link to the Instagram reel Cody mentioned about how players are increasingly seeking to kick with the outside of their dominant foot rather than kick with their non-preferred.

Links:

• Read Cody’s work here

• Read Jonathan’s work here

We are now into the third week of the mid-season byes. The week off provides players with a chance to rest weary bodies and coaches with virtually their only real opportunity to make substantial changes to their game plan. As the byes unfold, I want to consider how each club is travelling – not just relative to pre-season expectations, but also what’s the likely range of outcomes for the rest of the season. Thankfully, I won’t be doing it alone. I’ve asked supporters of each club – all friends of the newsletter – to share their thoughts about how their sides are going and how it’s changed their belief about what’s possible in 2026. I’ll then respond with my own thoughts.

There’s lots of meat in this third installment: two genuine flag contenders, a Carlton side that has won four consecutive games under caretaker Josh Fraser and is suddenly a chance of making the Wildcard Round, and a Collingwood side that looks well short of the top sides. Subplots and storylines abound. How will Fremantle’s players – and supporters – deal with the pressure of expectations? Can Hawthorn bridge the small but significant gap to the very best? What will the Carlton hierarchy do if Fraser keeps on winning? And how will Collingwood respond to being at the crossroads? Let’s get into it.

Carlton

Win-loss: 5-8

Ladder position: 13th

Next four games: GWS (A), West Coast (H), Richmond (A), Hawthorn (H)

Jono Baruch from The Gardiner Stand Substack

Carlton has packed a full season’s worth of drama and emotions into the first half of 2026. Major upheaval in the off-season was followed by a disastrous 1-8 start, the resignation [Mateo: “resignation”] of coach Michael Voss, the sad Elijah Hollands situation, and now – improbably – four consecutive wins heading into the mid-season bye. Remarkably, the flame on Carlton’s season is still flickering.

The first half of 2026 has felt like two completely different seasons. The opening nine rounds were a continuation of the frustrations that had followed Carlton for much of the previous 18 months. Slow ball movement, an overreliance on contest and clearance, and an inability to stop momentum swings led to games repeatedly slipping away. It was like watching Groundhog Day without the happy ending.

The coaching change has undoubtedly altered the mood and direction of the season. Under Josh Fraser, Carlton looks more composed with the ball, more willing to control tempo and, perhaps most importantly, more confident in its identity.

Fraser’s remarkable start to coaching life has vindicated scepticism of his predecessor and yielded more information about the list. Carlton entered 2026 with the sixth-oldest list in the competition and an increasingly urgent need to determine whether the next generation was ready to become more than supporting acts around the club’s established stars. The answer, encouragingly, appears to be yes.

Harry Dean and Jagga Smith have both earned Rising Star nominations and look capable of becoming long-term pillars. Lachie Cowan has continued his development after some worrying moments of stagnation, while Jack Ison and Billy Wilson have arrived at AFL level looking more comfortable than many would have expected. Talor Byrne has shown glimpses and, before his unfortunate ACL injury, Matt Carroll was producing the best football of his career and looked well on the way to becoming a set-and-forget on the wing.

For a club that has often been criticised for its inability to develop depth beyond its top-end talent, the emergence of that group may prove one of the most significant developments of the season. There remain holes to fill and difficult decisions to make. A significant number of players remain out of contract, and the incoming senior coach – whether it’s Fraser or not – will inherit a list that is still undergoing renovation rather than one ready for immediate contention. But the outlook is healthier than it appeared a month ago.

The reality is Carlton should never have been 1-8. They led at half-time in six of those first nine games. Equally, four wins don’t suddenly erase every concern. The truth likely sits somewhere in the middle.

As the Blues head into the bye at 5-8, finals remain unlikely. Making the Wildcard Round would probably require winning seven of their last 10 games. But for the first time in a long time, the conversation feels less about what Carlton lacks and more about what it might become.

Jono’s grade: C-

My thoughts

Jono nailed it when he wrote that the first half of Carlton’s season has felt like two entirely different seasons. The first was miserable: excruciating proof that refreshing the list while retaining Michael Voss was the wrong call. Losing is never fun. Losing in more-or-less the same way each week, allowing opposition supporters to draw from a bottomless reservoir of schadenfreude, really is the worst. The second quarter of Carlton’s season – or, if you want to be pedantic, the last month – has been revelatory: Josh Fraser has won four straight games while also exposing young players like Jack Ison, Billy Wilson, Talor Byrne, and Matt Carroll to senior footy.

Carlton’s statistical profile under Fraser belies the claim that the side’s major impediment was the list. Over the last five games, the Blues are second for D50 to F50 transition success rate, fourth for chain to score, second for time in possession, and third for inside-50 retention rate. There’s other stats I could quote, but the point is abundantly clear: Fraser has turned a group of players that, under Voss, resembled the Titanic – huge, slow, destined for disaster – and, with a few subtle tweaks, got them playing something resembling modern footy. Across that five-game stretch (which encompasses Voss’s final game), the Blues played Brisbane, the Bulldogs, West Coast, Port Adelaide, and Geelong – perhaps a very slightly easier than average draw but certainly not so soft that it renders the numbers meaningless.

The questions now are what does Carlton’s form in the last month mean for the club’s short, medium, and long term. Specifically, what can the club salvage from this season, how will its resurgence affect its strategy for this year’s draft, and how will it affect the club hierarchy’s beliefs about what’s possible in the next five years?

It’s still unlikely that Carlton will qualify for the Wildcard Round. For what it’s worth, Andrew Whelan of Wheelo Ratings (someone who actually understands probability) thinks there’s only a 27.9% chance the Blues finish in the top 10. But that chance would have been less than 5% a month ago. If Carlton are genuinely a different side, they could make it. Their next month will tell us more. Win four, perhaps even three of those games, and they could make a run at it.

Regarding the draft: if you’re reading this, then you probably know both that a) Carlton has a very promising father-son prospect in this year’s draft; and that b) the AFL has increased the cost of matching bids on club-tied talent. At the time of writing, it’s still regarded as a fait accompli that a club will bid on Cody Walker in the top two of the draft. That’s both good for Carlton (because it will indicate that he is highly rated among recruiters) and bad for Carlton (because the cost to acquire him will be steep). The debate about tanking for draft picks, the importance of establishing a “winning culture” is contested and won’t be resolved by what I write here. The facts are clear enough: with each win, Carlton will need to pay a higher price for a prospect the club has publicly committed to. Doing so will reduce how much else the Blues can achieve in this year’s draft.

As for the long term, I think a prudently-run club would avoid significantly changing its priors based on one month of footy. Carlton has not always been prudently run. But Graeme Wright was appointed CEO for exactly this reason: to create a sound process around important questions such as: what do we do if we keep winning? How does it change our next 2-3 years of list building? How should our form inform our coaching search? Just as important as the answers is the process used to derive them. This will be the most important storyline to follow for the rest of Carlton’s season.

My grade: C

Collingwood

Win-loss: 5-7-1

Ladder position: 11th

Next four games: Port Adelaide (H), Richmond (H), Gold Coast (A), North (H)

Leigh Eustace, author of the Get Serious Substack

Collingwood’s contradictory 2025 season blurred fan expectations entering 2026, and despite sitting 11th at the bye, the reality of where they actually are feels unclear.

Last year, the Pies were two and a half games clear on top before famously stumbling into fourth. Yet they still led the eventual Premiers at half-time of a Preliminary Final. So, what to make of it all?

Many questions remain unanswered halfway through 2026. On one hand, the red flags are well publicised: forward-half issues, questions over talent, and an ageing list. Yet despite all that, other than being torched by Brisbane on Easter Thursday, Collingwood have been competitive throughout. Even against Geelong, only Collingwood’s inaccurate goalkicking prevented them being right in the contest at three-quarter time before the margin blew out late.

In 2023, Collingwood went 8-1 in games decided by less than 10 points. This year, however, they’re 1-1-4. Who knows, with some 2023 pixie dust, this team, for all its flaws and foibles, could easily be sitting on the edge of the top four (and perceived quite differently).

Returning from the bye, the Pies face Richmond and Port Adelaide. Win both and they will be 7-7-1 with eight games to play. With 10th now effectively the new 8th, who knows?

Is there another September chapter to be written? Nick Daicos is probably leading the Brownlow [Mateo: not sure I agree but I’m leaving it in!], Jordan De Goey is having his best home-and-away season in years, and Harry Perryman, Billy Frampton and Lachie Schultz amongst others all enjoying strong seasons too.

Craig McRae’s coaching gives Collingwood a chance every week. Defensively, the system is holding up. Offense though, it persists as the elephant in the room. Some weeks they generate enough entries but are wasteful. Other weeks they struggle to generate entries at all, rendering any discussion about efficiency redundant.

Collingwood have tried multiple forward options (Dan McStay, Jack Buller, Tim Membrey, Charlie West), yet none has yet taken their chance. The pseudo no.1 key forward has instead remained the 177cm Jamie Elliott. After a slow start to the season, Elliott had rediscovered form, kicking 12 in his last six games. His season-ending knee injury, sustained in the last minute of Scott Pendlebury’s milestone 433rd game, was a brutal blow that lowers the ceiling on what the Pies can achieve this season.

If McRae can keep Collingwood competitive while giving extended opportunities to Ed Allan, Angus Anderson, Harvey Harrison, Will Hayes, West and Buller, and hopefully debuts to Liam Puncher, Sam Swadling and Joel Cochran, then a “walk and chew gum” approach may be the most appealing outcome for supporters.

If it leads to a wildcard spot and the Pies play with house money in September, terrific. If not, a clearer picture of life after the veterans and a list positioned for an aggressive offseason with an “impatient” list strategy may be the next best thing. Unrewarding, ultimately, but acceptable.

Leigh’s grade: C

My thoughts

I wrote about Collingwood’s predicament in my post last week. My basic conclusion was that the Pies’ apparent desire to continue supplementing its list with mature-aged talent, trades, and free agents to extend its contention window across Nick Daicos’s prime is probably the correct one. Keeping the floor high isn’t without risk – there is no meaningful zero-risk option available! – but the range of outcomes is narrower than committing to a three-year build through the draft which might theoretically “raise the ceiling” but is just as likely to not yield the high-end talent Collingwood needs.

The reality is, that despite results being poorer than most Pies supporters would have expected, ninth and 10th now being “finals” spots means that the season is still live. Wheelo gives Collingwood a 40% chance of finishing in the top 10. They will start favourites in their next four games. Being without Darcy Moore, Brayden Maynard and Jamie Elliott hurts, but the first two names could yet play a role in the back-end of the season. A factor which works in Collingwood’s favour is that, as Leigh wrote, they’re not far off it. The floor is high and the defensive system is intact. Despite the close game magic having worn off, Collingwood’s craftiness keeps them in games. It’s not hard to see a couple of close losses turn into close wins, a September berth, and an Elimination Final.

Beyond this season, there is also cause for optimism. Should Collingwood’s season peter out, the Pies will finally be able to do something they’ve not done since 2021: have a properly early pick in the draft. The consensus seems to be that the biggest gaps on the list are a running mate for Daicos and a true key forward. Both types are likely to be available around Collingwood’s natural first-round pick. Both types are also likely to be available during Trade Week. Media reports currently suggest Collingwood is leading the pack for Lachie Neale. They are keen on Jed Walter. I have little doubt the club hierarchy has inquired about the availability and willingness of the likes of Ben King, Zak Butters, Max Gruzewski, Charlie Ballard, Darcy Wilson, Bailey Humphrey, and Zac Bailey. The Pies won’t get all of them. Just getting two of them could vault a healthy Collingwood back into contention, or something close to it, in 2027.

That’s the optimistic case. The pessimistic story is the one told by reality: Collingwood are losing ground to the best teams in the comp, and a list management strategy that revolves around topping up with low-ceiling types and competing in a sellers’ trade market will only see that gap widen. It’s not just the distance between them and the best (although they could well have beaten Fremantle in Gather Round), it’s the number of sides that appear clearly better than McRae’s side. Getting important players back from injury and acquiring some key trade targets will undoubtedly make Collingwood better. But it’s now been a year since the Pies looked close to being the best side in footy. And a year means a lot for the oldest team in footy.

I wonder: in a world where tanking didn’t elicit penalties and senior club officials spoke candidly about their intentions, what would Collingwood do for the rest of this season? Would the club acknowledge that a flag is a remote possibility and instead make choices geared toward the long-term, including maximising the value of its hand in the last uncompromised draft before Tasmania enters the league? The club’s recent list management decisions suggest not. But I’d argue 2026 is a different type of opportunity. Success looks further away and the cliff looks closer. Wouldn’t getting a top-eight pick, securing some coveted trade and free agency targets, and reloading for another tilt next season be better? I suspect we’ll never know. Instead, the Pies will probably do what they’ve been doing all year: stick close to good teams, trust their system, and run everything through their talisman #35.

My grade: C-

Fremantle

Win-loss: 12-1

Ladder position: 1st

Next four games: Geelong (H), Gold Coast (H), GWS (A), Sydney (H)

Mim Birch, author of Mim’s Substack

There has been no overhaul by the Fremantle Dockers. This is basically the same team playing basically the same defence-first game plan. Improvement has largely been demographic: young, inexperienced players are one year older, and one year wiser. They win more physical contests, and have less stupid turnovers.

The throughline of Freo’s 2026 is that this side simply does not let its opponents kick a winning score. Coach Justin Longmuir has made it his mission to prevent the stand rule’s intended outcome, a free-flowing game. Freo have conceded the lowest points against by adding the following layers to its already solid defensive game:

1. Freo’s previously zoned defence has become tighter. The Dockers do not want the opposition to have an easy option, even laterally. This is a much needed fix to kick-mark vulnerabilities in 2025.

2. Players have been instructed to sprint over to man the mark, ensuring they’re inside the zone when ‘stand’ is called, preventing opposition play on.

3. Freo is relentless in preventing a run-past handball receive. (The Dockers boast the lowest opposition average for handball receives – by a significant margin.) Any dashing half-backs or zippy outside mids are forced to confront a direct opponent running with, bumping, and scragging them.

This is a lot of hard running baked into the gameplan before any Freo player even touches the ball. Effectiveness hinges on not only this aerobic effort, but also unerring attention to direct opponents, communication for hand-overs. (These high demands help explain some in-game lapses.)

While in possession, Freo denies turnovers in dangerous positions. If the Dockers succeed in generating overlap or a man out, they back the skills and speed of Murphy Reid, Shai Bolton, Michael Frederick, etc. Without a clean option, defenders switch, sometimes multiple times. Nothing forthcoming, Freo take the neutral long-down-the-line to their reliable talls (usually resulting in a stoppage) over a 60-40 kick that could result in a fatal corridor turnover.

This side enjoys a stoppage. The midfield bats deep (attested to by the recent win over Brisbane without Caleb Serong or Hayden Young). Longmuir’s side is second in scores from stoppage differential in 2026 – a significant improvement from 9th in 2025. So far in 2026, the Jackson/Some Big Goober Playing 55% time on ground combo is second for Hitout to Advantage differential, behind only Hawthorn.

Freo’s tall forward line is a proof of concept for the much-maligned concept of organic improvement. Treacy, Amiss, Voss are a year closer to the age that AFL key forwards ought to be. More contested marks stick, more physical contests go Freo’s way. Patrick Voss is first in the AFL for inside-50 tackles among players who’ve played more than five games. He’s more than just a meme.

After an uninterrupted pre-season learning inside midfield running patterns, Shai Bolton has been revelatory. His chaotic brilliance is no longer fighting against structure, but utilising space created by teammates. There’s also been big improvement in Fremantle’s bottom six players. Karl Worner is getting the ball five times more per game this season compared to last. Matthew Johnson and Neil Erasmus are now mature bodies with cool heads. Isaiah Dudley’s improved fitness has transformed him into a genuine pressure forward.

My primary concern for Freo is the close wins against quality opposition. A gameplan predicated on reducing in-game variance can, paradoxically, increase it. Smaller margins increase exposure to luck: umpire decisions, skill errors, moments of individual brilliance from the opposition, in-game injuries.

The bad scenario is that Freo’s perilous habit of letting good opponents back in proves costly. The side picks up injuries to players that they cannot afford to lose, misses the top two, then youth and finals inexperience hobbles them away. The good scenario? Well… I’m daring to dream.

Mim’s grade: A

My thoughts

The only reason I’ve not awarded Freo an A+ for its first half of the season is because of that fade-out loss to Geelong in Round 1. There’s a world very similar to this one where the Dockers are 13-0. How have they done it? Simply put: Justin Longmuir, the architect of the process, has trusted the process. He and list manager David Wells have built the foundations. It took years. It stirred discontent among fans who wanted the Dockers to rise up the ladder sooner, or Longmuir to be more charismatic in front of the media. But they persisted. And now, helped by the subtle tweaks Mim outlined in her superb review, they’re building the cathedral.

Longmuir’s most distinctive trait as head coach is his stubbornness. That can often manifest in ways which tick supporters off: conservative selection, deadpan press conferences, and a refusal to adopt a semi-mythical “Plan B”. But the reality is that most coaches believe the best way to win is to optimise Plan A, not invest time in Plan B and end up with half-baked versions of both. That’s what Longmuir has done. As most of the rest of the league has rushed to embrace the forward handball, his Dockers have remained circumspect; they are gaining precisely 53 more metres via handball this season compared to last. This Fremantle side prefers gaining territory by foot. The main change in possession (Mim has described the main out-of-possession changes) has been that the Dockers are taking riskier kicks. They were midtable for expected threat per kick last season – a product of playing on too rarely and being forced to kick down the line. Many coaches in today’s AFL talk about earning permission to take risks. Fremantle in 2026 is a great example of that philosophy: it’s because of the trust the coaches and players have in the side’s defensive robustness, and the confidence they have in their ability to win post-clearance contests, that enables them to bite off kicks they weren’t attempting in past seasons. That risk is the product of trust and continuity. Learn your footy. Learn your role. Learn your responsibilities. Earn the right. It’s not flashy. But it’s working.

The Dockers are genuine contenders. They concede the fewest points (more than 10 fewer than the second-best side) and the fewest shots. And although I’d have them as a good rather than great attacking side (they’re fifth for expected score), they’re ranked first for chain to score leaguewide. So what, besides the anxious palpitations of a success-starved fan base, can bring them undone? The first reason is banal. Although they’re very good, I’m not yet convinced they’re clearly better than the other three occupants of the top four ladder positions. The second is structural: the sort of variance-reducing conservatism that Longmuir practices can become a liability in key moments. The Dockers are fourth in scores from turnover in 2026. But the three sides above them are the sides they’re most likely to be competing with for the flag in late September. They’re also only 13th for D50 to F50 transition success rate (while still being second for back-half scores). Adelaide had a very similar profile last season – a low success rate and a high scoring rate that was the result of kicking to contests rather than manufacturing elaborate uncontested chains. That’s fine when you’re winning contests. But winning contests in September, when all your best guys are sore (Freo have used just 30 players this season, the fewest of any side), can be fickle. The Crows came undone. The Dockers bat deeper, especially in the midfield. It’s unlikely one of their best players will get himself suspended in such an ignominious way. If there’s a flaw, that’s where it is. But it’s hidden behind what looks like an increasingly impermeable suit of armour.

My grade: A

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Hawthorn

Win-loss: 8-4-1

Ladder position: 3rd

Next four games: Gold Coast (A), GWS (H), Melbourne (H), Carlton (A)

Nat Martin, contributor to the Hawks Insiders Substack

If you’d told me before the season started that, at the bye, Hawthorn would sit third with a record of 8-4-1, I would’ve been quite content. The Hawks have played 10 of the current top 12, and haven’t played West Coast, Richmond, North Melbourne or Carlton yet. On paper, this seems like a good launching pad from which to attack the rest of the season. However, there is a tinge of frustration.

Since this unusually constructed side began its rise in 2024, I have been looking for a sign from this group to truly believe we were good enough to win the flag. The 2024 season was so joyful and felt like simply we were playing with house money – whatever we achieved was a bonus. Despite making a preliminary final last year, I still felt as though we were a rung below the very best.

The thing that has frustrated me about Hawthorn this year is that there have been times this year, both visually and in the data, where I have actually believed our best is good enough. The last quarter dismantling of Gold Coast in Tassie to go 6-1, finally being on the right side of Easter Monday, leading the red-hot Freo at Optus by 3 goals with 7 mins left, and putting 29 scoring shots on the Swans – admittedly a Swans side missing Heeney and Gulden – all suggests Hawthorn, at its best, has what it takes to compete in 2026.

That’s what makes the draw with Collingwood, getting run over by the Dockers and the unfathomable loss to the Bulldogs (where we kicked 9.17) all the more irritating. The Bulldogs loss was especially jarring – leading a side we’ve had the better of in recent meetings by 27 points at half-time. A win would have given Hawthorn a game-and-a-half advantage over third. The club’s GM of Football, Rob McCartney, said at our Hawks Insiders pre-season live event words to the effect of “there will be times this year where you think we can win the flag, and times where you think we are still a way off”. He wasn’t wrong.

What has made me believe more this year is a clear change in our ball movement, and our stoppage clearance game. Hawthorn’s default mode in 2024 and 2025 was to make the ground as big as possible by using long, diagonal kicks out of D50 and using our half-forwards to overload key areas. Opposition teams cottoned onto this, and understood that defending our outside shoulder as a starting position and forcing us back into the corridor took us out of our comfort zone. As a result, the Hawks were only the 11th best offensive side in 2025 – not the profile of a Premiership-winning side.

In 2026, Sam Mitchell has been much more willing to use the corridor and move the ball faster by either forward-handballing or kicking shorter to keep the ball in constant motion. As a result, Hawthorn is first in the competition for defensive half to inside 50 transition success rate and second for points from turnover. We are more dangerous. Our stoppage game has also improved – currently second in the competition for stoppage clearances, after being 10th in 2025, allowing us the chance to control more territory.

This has seen Jack Gunston once again defy father time to kick 35 goals from nine games, using the ‘disconnected forward’ role to full advantage. Nick Watson is the 10th rated player in the entire comp; frankly ridiculous for a 21-year-old small forward. Jarman Impey would be top 3 in our B&F, getting the balance between brave, bold defending and attacking drive right, and Jai Newcombe has once again been a colossus.

This all sounds good. However, the same frailties that have plagued us for a few years still remain. Despite being second in the comp for stoppage clearance wins, Hawthorn is a lowly 13th for points from stoppage. Our centre bounce game (vital in 2026 football) has been poor, ranking 15th for points from this source, 16th for opposition points against and 11th for centre clearance differential. It doesn’t need to be the best in the comp for us to give the flag a shake, but it needs to improve.

In addition, our reliance on Gunston has been a worrying trend, with teams (Collingwood, Melbourne and the Bulldogs) successfully being able to get numbers behind the ball to clog up leading lanes and space to force us into poor entries. Losing Tom Barrass for the last four games made us uncomfortably vulnerable in the air. This is less than ideal given one of those players is 34 and the other is nearly 31. The form of Dylan Moore has been a concern. He hasn’t been able to get near his 2024 All-Australian level. Lloyd Meek has suffered significantly with the advent of the new ruck rules and Karl Amon has been slightly down on a top-three B&F placing in 2025.

Can we win it? Yes, but a lot has to go right. I believe we will still finish in the top four. Our best is good enough. But the question is can we produce it for long enough when it’s needed? I need some more convincing.

Nat’s grade: B

My thoughts

One of the throughlines of my Hawthorn season preview was a recognition of the quality of the system that Sam Mitchell has built alongside a nagging doubt that there was quite enough star quality to break through against the very best. The Hawks’ rise up the ladder was swift; they only had four top 10 draft picks between 2020 and 2023, and one of them – Denver Grainger-Barras washed out of the AFL system in four years. Although they drafted very well outside of the first round and did a superb job acquiring best-23 talent for bargain prices (Impey, Amon, Ginnivan, D’Ambrosio), I wasn’t totally convinced that the growth curve of the club’s most promising younger players lined up well enough with the timeline of important older players like James Sicily, Jack Gunston, and Tom Barrass. It’s safe to say that Nick Watson’s ludicrous breakout season has allayed many of those concerns. Contrary to the claims made by people who cited his inaccurate early goalkicking as proof that he had a tough start to AFL life, Watson has been good from day one. But he’s made a gigantic leap this season. He’s probably Hawthorn’s best player and almost certainly a top-20 player in the league. The choice now looks like being the game’s best small forward – and perhaps the best ever – for the next 10 years, or be an elite midfielder, or some optimal combination of the two. He is cocky, and annoying, and outrageously brilliant.

Hawthorn has a strong claim to be the best “post-clearance” side in the league. As Nat explained, Mitchell has sharpened his side’s ball movement scheme while remaining defensively solid (the Hawks are fourth for chain to score and second for opposition chain to score – a winning combination). The vulnerabilities arise in three distinct phases of the game. The first is stoppages; specifically, Hawthorn’s inability to punish and contain. The Hawks are 14th for scores from stoppage differential, and 17th across the last five games. Perhaps more concerningly – although it is still very early in his latest return from injury – two of those five games have featured Will Day.

Hawthorn’s second potential weakness is the one Nat identified: despite Watson’s brilliance, the Hawks can be easy to blunt without Jack Gunston in the side. Gunston’s gravity stretches opposition defences vertically and distorts their spacing inside D50. if he doesn’t get you (and this season, he almost always has), then the space his presence creates will generate opportunities for other forwards. It looks a lot less dangerous when he’s not there or if Hawthorn’s opposition can disrupt their forward entries. Hawthorn are second in the AFL for marks on the lead (a proxy for clean entries) but only just above league-average for marks inside 50. Finals footy is much more contested, and clean leading lanes much scarcer, than in the Home & Away season. Do the Hawks know how to win dirty?

The third vulnerability is at ground level inside Hawthorn’s defensive 50. Tom Barrass is an excellent defender and a true double threat – he can intercept or lock down. He also looks like an old man when attempting to bend down to gather a ground ball. One of Sam Mitchell’s tactical innovations since being appointed coach is his preference for hybrid-sized defenders who can impact aerially or on the ground (think Weddle, Battle, Scrimshaw, Hardwick, even Impey). That sounds great – and it has largely worked – but it can create an uneasy balance between being slightly too small to intercept mark and slightly too large to compete effectively at ground level. When Barrass is there, it usually looks fine. His weakness is offset in the aggregate and his strengths can shine. When he isn’t, as he hasn’t been for the last four and a half games, it can look fragile.

None of these are necessarily fatal weaknesses. Hawthorn has the system and I’m more confident they have the elite talent than before the season began. But I think I ultimately share Nat’s concerns: there are questions that don’t have answers just yet. The good news is that, once Barrass and Gunston come back into the fold, the Hawks will be healthy. A dividend of a very tough fixture to start the season means they have a soft run from here until September. They should do something they’ve not yet done under Mitchell: finish in the top four. From there, they have a chance. And, in The Wizard, they have a player who can make all those question marks disappear.

My grade: B+

I’ll be back later this week, or early next, with thoughts on how Brisbane, Sydney, Essendon, and West Coast

are going so far.

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According to legend, guitarist Robert Johnson acquired his supernatural ability by selling his soul to the devil at a Mississippi crossroads. When he died – at 27, the inaugural member of that infamous club – he left behind the founding canon of the Delta Blues. Johnson probably didn’t literally sell his soul to the devil. But the legend captures something real about making choices from which there’s no going back.

St Kilda and Collingwood are standing at the same crossroads, facing opposite directions. The Saints are facing east. Their sun is rising. The Magpies, meanwhile, are staring west, raging against the dying of the light. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure who out of Craig McRae, Nick Daicos, Ross Lyon or Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera is the Robert Johnson, and who’s the devil in this analogy. A diligent editor would ask me to tighten up the analogy or, better yet, discard it. But I don’t have one of those.

Both clubs have won five of their first 13 games this season. Neither is in crisis, exactly – but it’s also fair to say that neither is where they hoped they would be. They have arrived at the crossroads from very different origin points: Collingwood have made at least a prelim final in three of McRae’s seasons at the helm. In the same year the Pies won the flag, 2023, the Saints made the finals for just the second time since 2011. They haven’t featured in September since. Yet despite those differences, both clubs are united by the same tension: the presence of a player whose influence is so profound that he fundamentally changes the trajectory of the club’s decision-making.

Only 12 times in VFL/AFL history has a player averaged 30 disposals and a goal across a season. Gary Ablett Jr., inducted into footy’s Hall of Fame this season, accounts for five of those instances. Nick Daicos is currently on track to equal that dazzling statline. He is, by most reasonable measures, one of the five best players in the game. His commercial and spiritual value to Collingwood is as great as what he does with the footy. Collingwood’s problem is not Nick Daicos. Except it sort of is. Because his brilliance, and the immense fear created by the prospect of him leaving, or his prime years going to waste, has driven a list management approach that most clubs in Collingwood’s demographic position would avoid. The Pies have the oldest list in the AFL. Beyond Daicos, a concerning amount of heavy lifting is done by players in their mid-30s. With respect to promising but still speculative prospects like Charlie West and Ed Allan, most clubs would rate their youth over Collingwood’s. That’s hardly a surprise: this is a club that has recently won a flag while publicly signalling its preference for permanent contention over the uncertainty of a trip down to the lower rungs of the ladder. If anything, it’s the way things are supposed to go.

Collingwood opting to win now while they have Daicos, Scott Pendlebury, Steele Sidebottom, Darcy Moore, and Jordan De Goey is defensible. But that competitiveness has created a deficiency of the young talent that’s typically considered essential for a sustained tilt at Premierships. And the senior core, partly because of injury, and partly because of the depredations of age, isn’t pulling as much weight as it used to.

It’s by no means a perfect measure, but the Pies currently have just one top 20-rated player in the competition – Daicos, who else? – and only three in the top 100. Topping up with mature-aged players and free agents has yielded some success. Harry Perryman has been a good addition. Angus Anderson, Roan Steele and Oscar Steene all look as though they’ll generate more value than what should be expected from the speculative picks used to draft them. Other moves – Dan Houston’s mediocre first 18 months in black and white come to mind – haven’t helped as much as the Magpie Army would have hoped.

Winning flags requires elite talent. It also requires elite depth. One of the things which makes sustained contention so hard is that playing longer seasons and having weaker draft hands year after year means you’re usually replenishing solid role players with paler imitations. It’s extraordinarily hard to keep up with the Joneses when, most of the time, you’re shopping from the clearance aisle. The evidence, halfway into the 2026 season, is that diminishing returns are beginning to bite.

Collingwood’s approach is governed by big-club hubris and shaped by Daicos. The club’s football department thinks the club has a better shot at winning the belt by throwing their best punch every year – even if it’s a weak one – than by throwing in the towel and getting back in the gym. There are some important details that make me lean their way. The first is that Collingwood’s glamour, the prospect of playing in front of huge crowds in marquee games, and the prospect of playing with Daicos, will make them an attractive destination for free agents. If the Pies land Ben King and Lachie Neale this summer without using a draft pick, they could well bounce back into the top four in 2027. The second is that rebuilding through the draft is hard and getting harder. Tasmania will enjoy significant draft concessions as it enters the league. The AFL is determined for the 19th side to become competitive quicker than the 17th and 18th. The late 2020s will be a rough time to rely on the draft. More attention will shift to trades, picks later in the draft, and alternative talent development pathways. Collingwood has reasonable form in this area.

St Kilda’s dilemma is different but recognisable. The fan base is not becalmed by a recent flag. The club is not a Mecca for free agents. But it does orbit around a superstar. Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera is one of the most electrifying players in the game. His ascension to superstar status and eventual decision to re-sign with the club in late 2025 was the most cathartic storyline of the season. But the softly-spoken South Australian’s choice to only extend through to the end of 2027 sent a loud message: you have two years to show me what you’ve got. That contract situation hangs over everything the Saints do. It makes every setback in Max King’s attempt to escape from injury hell even more painful. The aggressive trade period last year felt like a move made by a club which believes it must show progress on a timeline set not by the football department, or the natural growth of a young core, but by a contract offer.

There are several other factors which complicate the easy narrative that Nasiah is calling the shots at Moorabbin. The first is that, much like Collingwood’s public declaration of its desire to maximise its contention window (McRae spoke this week about being “impatient” to bring in talent – not the words of a coach eagerly contemplating a rebuild), St Kilda has openly expressed a belief that rebuilding through the draft is no longer a viable means of improvement. Club president Andrew Bassat said so when he criticised the Northern Academies and bemoaned Josh Battle’s choice to depart to Hawthorn in free agency. The slow start to AFL life for St Kilda’s two top 10 picks in that 2024 “super draft” – Tobie Travaglia and Alix Tauru – shows that good picks aren’t a cure-all. Liam Ryan and Jack Silvagni have been the best of the new recruits. Tom De Koning has helped them become better, although his individual output hasn’t moved the needle as much as a player on his purported salary probably should. Sam Flanders lasted less than half the season in the midfield before being moved to half-back. His Achilles tendon injury has robbed him of the chance to prove he was worth what the Saints paid to get him. In a flash of irony, Flanders was pushed out of the midfield rotations by two players who herald a bright future and have been key to St Kilda’s real statistical improvement this season – Hugo Garcia and Max Hall. Combined, the two players cost virtually nothing: Pick 50 in the 2023 draft and Pick 4 in the 2024 mid-season draft. Both have added skill and speed to the Saints’ midfield, which is currently ranked 2nd in the AFL for clearance differential.

That improvement, along with the rise of Darcy Wilson – this season’s unwelcome contract saga – has ameliorated but not fully solved the Saints’ dilemma: the moves they’ve made to drive short-term improvement are in tension with the goal of long-term competitiveness. The list genuinely looks better than this time last season. Improvement hasn’t shown up in the place it matters most – the win-loss ledger – but it has shown up virtually everywhere else.

The Saints are currently 7th for quarters won, and have won the most first quarters of any side. They’re 7th for expected score after being 12th in 2025. But they’re still 12th on, you know, the ladder. I’m sure Wanganeen-Milera has noticed the improvement. He seems to enjoy life at the club. But have the Saints improved by enough to convince him that’s where his long-term future lies? Trying to be just one thing at once is hard enough in footy, especially for the league’s most snake-bitten club. Trying to do two things at once – win now and win later – is playing footy on permadeath mode.

When a club possesses a player of the ability of Daicos or Wanganeen-Milera, decisions are filtered through a simple question: does doing X help us be good while he is here? It can seem obvious. Of course you want to maximise the time you spend being competitive with your best player available. But there’s actually competitive [Lionel Hutz smiling face] and technically competitive [Lionel Hutz frowning face]. Footy isn’t like basketball, where one guy is 20 percent of the team. You need stars and you need depth. It’s hard to find enough of either if you finish around the middle. No club has won a flag while paying a guy $2 million a year. I’m not sure a club has won a flag with a list management strategy geared around retrofitting contention around a single superstar. Stars need planets. The trap that both the Pies and the Saints are in danger of falling into is that optimising for the short-term often means you make decisions which appear locally rational but are irrational in the aggregate. Each free agent signing is defensible (hey, they only cost salary!). Each traded pick feels like a price worth paying. Until, that is, you’re left with a list with one superstar and a bunch of guys that bring to mind the more obscure Wu-Tang Clan associates. That’s Collingwood’s dilemma. I think they’re probably making the right choice, given the fact that the alternative is freighted with all sorts of danger beyond the mere danger of the unknown. But it’s by no means guaranteed to work.

St Kilda is trying to build sustainably and build urgently. Losing Wanganeen-Milera, a superstar all their own, would be a hammer blow. It would destroy supporter morale and there’s no way that, in a draft environment compromised by the entry of Tasmania, the club could be fairly compensated for his departure. So again – what looks like recklessness might actually be their best bet. But on the other hand, maybe the task is, instead of compromising the future and hoping it persuades him to say, perhaps the thing to do – difficult as it is – is to craft a list that is worth playing for regardless. Either choice feels like a gamble. Saints supporters should feel a measure of comfort that their side appears to be on the right trajectory. The problem is not knowing where it ultimately leads. When you’re at the crossroads, you usually don’t get to choose your destination. You take the road that’s being offered, and you figure out where it goes.

The Video Room

The volume and diversity of close finishes in Round 13 is the perfect opportunity for the (long overdue!) return of The Video Room. The clips I’m reviewing this week – spanning four of the close games – each tell stories about how many decisions players and coaches need to make in crucial moments.

To begin, I’ll consider two clips from the end of last Thursday’s epic, rain-lashed game at Adelaide Oval between the Crows and the Cats. The first begins with the ball in the hands of debutant Hugo Hall-Kahan, who’d just won a holding the ball free kick.

Before I get properly into it, a quick explanatory note: a source of consternation among many Adelaide supporters is the side’s tendency, in late-game situations, to seek contests instead of retaining possession. The cue for the Crows to enter their particular kill-the-game mode is this sign:

I think it refers to protecting the defensive “T” – the area encompassing the corridor and the half-back zone – while seeking to keep the ball in contested, congested situations (the simpler, still plausible explanation is that the T just means “time”). It’s understandable in the context of Adelaide’s main strength being its contested work and its main weakness being its foot skills. But the way it’s deployed has arguably allowed opposition sides to come back into the game, safe in the knowledge that the Crows are more interesting in containing than scoring.

All of this, together with some good one-on-one checking by Geelong, serves to explain why Hall-Kahan didn’t have any teammates presenting for the short kick. Instead, he sent it long down the line.

Geelong are a chameleonic side under Chris Scott. But one constant is his desire to maintain numerical superiority behind the ball to leverage his defensive unit’s excellent intercept marking. The Cats will go to often-absurd lengths to preserve a defensive +1. They outnumbered the Crows at this aerial contest.

The next thing worth noticing is Taylor Walker’s split-second recognition that, because Geelong didn’t want a stoppage, he was free to instead gain some territory and push the ball into space. The eventual result was another stoppage, just what the Crows were craving. Not many players would have taken the extra beat in that situation.

Let’s fast-forward to the second stoppage at Adelaide’s attacking 50-metre line. Walker and Darcy Fogarty were both up at the stoppage. In a normal game state, at least one would have stayed deeper, a quick kick ahead of the ball. Here, their brief was simple: help contain Geelong. If you pause at the minute mark, you can see that each Adelaide player was content to have his direct opponent control the inside “bubble”, so long as they remained close enough to apply physical pressure. The Cats wanted to get the ball to the outside. The Crows wanted to prevent it. And they might have, had Josh Rachele not lost touch on Oisin Mullin and allowed him to squeeze a kick out of the congestion.

From here, Patrick Dangerfield and Max Holmes were good enough to get to the outside. Adelaide, however, had some insurance in the form of Dan Curtin, whose size and intercepting made him the ideal response to Scott’s choice to push Mark Blicavs forward to mark or bring the ball to ground. It’s great to have a two-metre tall unicorn to neutralise your opponent’s two-metre tall unicorn.

That wasn’t quite the end of things. The second clip resumes with a ball-up on the central wing with just 11 seconds left in the game. Darcy Fogarty was positioned as a spare on the defensive side of the stoppage. His job was to try and stop Dangerfield should the Geelong champion take the ball and run through the contest.

That didn’t happen, however Lachie McAndrew’s handball out of bounds meant they came up with the clearance regardless. Bailey Smith bombed it to half-forward, where Jeremy Cameron was in the box seat to mark in front of Max Michalanney. The ball bounced off Shannon Neale’s big paw and spilled to Tom Stewart, whose progress was impeded by Michalanney just enough to run out of time. Another 10 seconds and the Cats might have done it.

Let’s move to Friday night’s game at the MCG, which saw the Western Bulldogs overcome a profligate Hawthorn side. In this clip, the Hawks were a goal down – but had a forward-50 stoppage.

Every side chasing the game in this situation wants the same thing: to clear space behind the ruck contest, on the goal side of the stoppage. Hawthorn manufactured it with an excellent left-handed, over-the-shoulder tap by Lloyd Meek, Conor Nash creating a lane for Will Day by blocking Aaron Naughton from the contest, and Day giving his direct opponent Joel Freijah the slip. You don’t want to be too critical of young players, but Freijah made a couple of errors here: he gave up the goalside position too easily, lost touch with Day too easily, and was slow to react to the situation. The one advantage was that Day was on his wrong side, and couldn’t generate enough power with his right-foot snap. Rory Lobb, serving as the sweeper, marked in the goal square.

The next event in the game was Rory Lobb’s exit kick and the ensuing contest.

This clip is a small but neat illustration of a central trade-off that sides protecting leads late in games must confront: congesting defensive 50 often leaves the defending side outnumbered at the landing zone of the exiting kick. Hawthorn had numerical superiority at the drop of the ball here. The Bulldogs’ buffer was that even had they conceded a clean intercept mark, Hawthorn would have been too far out from goal to score directly – and the Dogs would have had enough numbers behind the ball to probably neutralise the ensuing contest.

Still with me? Good, there’s still a way to go. The third clip from Friday night’s game shows another stoppage in Hawthorn’s attacking 50. As with the first clip I showed from the Adelaide vs. Geelong game, the Dogs’ objective was straightforward: deny the Hawks’ most dangerous players the ability to get into space. But straightforward isn’t the same thing as easy.

The fact that neither ruck decisively won a hit-out actually created a dangerous situation for the Dogs because it meant that half a dozen players instinctively collapsed towards the ball, creating space on the outside of the contest. Mabior Chol and Connor Macdonald were quick to realise this, and had their positions swapped, the Dogs might have punished for a brief lapse in positional discipline.

The final clip from this game illustrates the split-second decisions that players must make under physical and psychological pressure. There were barely 20 seconds left in the game. The Dogs, once again, were kicking out from D50. Jordan Croft did really well to halve an aerial contest. A second later, he gathered a loose ball.

What do you think he should have done in this situation?

Croft could have held the ball in. He effectively would have been challenging the umpire to penalise him for holding the ball. That was probably a small risk – but a real one. So instead, he chose to gain territory with a kick. The problem was, that because of his body position and the shape of the contest (i.e. Hawthorn’s strength on the boundary side of the secondary contest), his only valid choice was to kick into the corridor – into a nest of waiting Hawks. He didn’t protect the T. All of a sudden, Jack Ginnivan had possession level with the centre circle. What he didn’t have was enough time to launch a deep ball. Time ran out for Hawthorn.

What would you have done in Croft’s position?

Sunday night saw Carlton beat Essendon in a game that felt distinctly like a Round 24 contest between two tired sides that know they won’t be playing finals. It was bad, but also sort of fun. Seeing as other outlets and pundits have already covered the controversial choice to allow Harry McKay the full 30 seconds to kick for goal from 65 metres out, I thought I’d just focus on the final centre square ball-up. According to Channel 7’s clock, the Bombers had just nine seconds to manufacture a goal.

Pause at the five-second mark of this clip, which shows the stoppage set-up. What do you see? I think a few things stand out. The first is that Carlton didn’t put a sweeper on the defensive side, although as the contest contracted, Patrick Cripps (matched up against the impressive Sullivan Robey) became a de facto sweeper. The second thing to notice is that Zach Merrett didn’t physically engage in the contest whatsoever. He wanted to act as a half-back, running from deep on the outside to receive and send it forward. That positioning probably confused George Hewett, who’s used to having a direct opponent in those situations. With Hewett trailing a metre behind, a clean gather from Merrett would have created the inside-50 kick the Bombers needed to stand a chance of snatching this game. Alas.

We’re into the home straight – just one game and three clips to go. Let’s go to the SCG. The first of the clips I’ll show from this instant classic begins at the point Marcus Windhager thought he took a mark inside 50 that was adjudged to have not travelled the required 15 metres. Rushed – and possibly pushed in the back – Windhager turns the ball over with his kick. But it’s what Callum Mills and the Swans did next that’s important.

One of the main reasons the Saints so nearly won this game was how well they denied Sydney corridor access. The first thing any decent opposition analyst will identify about Dean Cox’s side in 2026 is the priority they assign to getting to the middle band of the ground, and how it unlocks their ball movement. In this respect, the Saints coaches nailed it.

But in the final two minutes of the game, the Swans exploited St Kilda shifting its defensive shell back (a natural tactical and psychological response to being up by less than a goal with so little time left) to repeatedly access the corridor. The key moment in this first clip is Brodie Grundy’s recognition of the movement and ability to override his natural instinct to handball to James Jordon on the wing and instead look inboard, where Jake Lloyd had continued his run. The ruckman’s handball was perfect, and created a concertina effect where the next Saints player had to push up, eventually freeing Isaac Heeney, whose kick found Chad Warner. Warner found the lizard – Nick Blakey – in his natural element: alone, on the fat side, on the attacking side of centre. He got past Mason Wood rather easily and, had he made slightly better contact, could well have kicked the go-ahead goal.

The second clip shows the forward-50 stoppage which did result in the winning goal. Again, consider what Sydney wants to achieve here – space outside “the bubble”, either side of goal, but ideally on the goal side. Then consider what resources St Kilda had to counteract that.

Before discussing Heeney’s role in the goal, I want to discuss the role of Ryan Byrnes, St Kilda’s spare on the defensive side of the stoppage. He’s the guy standing between Rowan Marshall and Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera. As the ball gets thrown up, he takes two steps to the boundary side, effectively depriving himself of the ability to disrupt Jai Serong’s kick for goal. But he didn’t take those steps for no reason. He could see that Chad Warner had shaken the attention of Hugo Garcia, and that a decisive forward tap by Grundy could have released Warner on goal.

Byrnes’ choice to attend that spot-fire created a small pocket that Grundy and Heeney exploited to perfection. Grundy’s goldilocks tap – just strong enough to escape congestion, just soft enough to land in between three Saints – allowed Heeney to gather. The Sydney player was well-corralled by Darcy Wilson, but had the presence of mind to shift hands and handball with his left hand, which created a tiny amount of extra space that was enough to prevent Wilson from getting a hand in. Serong, alone 30 metres in front of goal, did the rest. The trade-off between guarding the inside and the outside of the contest is not always easy to solve.

There’s just one more clip – the final centre square ball-up. There were just 14 seconds left in the game, and tables had turned. Suddenly, the Swans snapped into lockdown mode, and the Saints had to win the game. Of course, St Kilda has (relatively) recent experience of winning the game with a Hail Mary centre clearance – just ask Melbourne supporters. That clearance was made possible by a really unusual spatial configuration and quick thinking by Nasiah and friends to create space inside 50. I suspect this last set-up on Sunday was motivated by similar reasoning: Nasiah is the guy we want to get on the move, and we want to manipulate it so he can receive the ball running forward.

Pause the clip at four seconds, just as the umpire is preparing to throw the ball up. There is, uh, something unusual here: each side has a player “missing”. Instead of four separate one-on-ones, only three are actually visible on the screen. James Jordon was briefly visible before the shot tightened, but there was no one particularly close to him. The reasoning for this wide spacing was clear – the Saints wanted variance. Losing the clearance wouldn’t have hurt them, they just needed to win it. Tom De Koning did his job – he won the tap decisively and hit the ball into space. Wanganeen-Milera did his job, too: he was ahead of James Rowbottom.

The role I don’t understand here is the one played by Marcus Windhager, normally St Kilda’s defensive midfielder/tagger. He came into the shot only when Jordon, who had gathered the loose ball from De Koning’s hit-out, was kicking the ball forward to ice the game. I’m not a coach, nor any sort of expert in stoppage set-ups. I presume there was a reason here – Windhager laying a block to clear Wanganeen-Milera’s path to goal, perhaps – rather than just a dropped coverage. If anyone at St Kilda is reading this, please get in touch. Whatever the intention, the result wasn’t the one the Saints were after.

There you have it: 10 clips. Each, hopefully, revealing something about the dozens of choices and actions that players and coaches are forced to make in the dying stages of the game. Often there are no perfect solutions, only different flavours of trade-off. Good thing we’re just watching on TV, eh?

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Straight from the chart

Instead of becoming the juggernaut that I and others expected, Gold Coast have instead had a stuttering first half of the season. To a significant extent, that decline in form has been driven by a drastic deterioration in the Suns’ clearance game. The numbers illustrated in this week’s first chart are rather stark.

Across the entire 2025 season, Gold Coast had a cumulative clearance differential of +77. Through the first 12 games of this season, they’re -82. Scores from clearances tell a similar story: +230 for the whole of 2025, just +21 so far this season.

Rowell, Anderson, and Petracca looks like a formidable midfield trio on paper. But that’s not where the game is played. Damien Hardwick and his coaches are no doubt searching for a better balance.

Readers with long memories will remember my promise to do something slightly more ambitious with the possession chain data I present most weeks. I believe I specifically said I’d look at the correlation between chain volume and ladder position (or win-loss record), but what’s a small difference between friends? Instead, now that we’ve ticked over the halfway point of the season, it’d be worth looking at how many possession chains sides are generating compared to last season.

Some of the differences are marginal. Sydney’s is gargantuan. Others are smaller but still meaningful – Collingwood, St Kilda, Geelong, West Coast. It’s not quite as simple as “more chains = better”. It depends where the increase comes from, and how it correlates to a side’s preferred style. If you want to play quickly, creating more intercepts is good. Winning clearances – which implies stoppages – may not be so good. And taking more kick-ins (the third component of possession chains) is probably bad, because it means you’re conceding more shots on goal.

Still, they work as a rough proxy for team improvement. And, in the case of Sydney, St Kilda, and West Coast, that improvement is real.

Zooming in, we can consider how many possession chains each side created during Round 13. Unsurprisingly, given both the conditions and the fact that these two sides are both in the top three for total chains, there were a heap of them in the Adelaide-Geelong game. Part of why watching Crows games is so stressful as a supporter, beyond the close finishes and the bonehead errors, is how choppy they are. There are lots of intercepts and lots of stoppages. It’s an intense experience.

The smaller volume of chains in the North Melbourne-Fremantle game is quite typical for a blow-out result: North couldn’t generate chains because they couldn’t win the ball, while the Dockers didn’t generate that many because they tended to kick goals on their first attempt (kicking a goal ends a chain). The low number of chains in the Essendon-Carlton game, meanwhile, is also another common feature of games between poor sides: low on pressure, low on stoppages, and relatively low on intercepts.

Turning our attention to how efficiently each side converted clearance and turnover wins into scores and… what is there to say, really? The Dockers scored an average of 2.03 points for each clearance win, and 1.42 points for each interception. I’m sure North supporters didn’t need another way of seeing how badly their side was beaten.

The other noteworthy statistic is how bipolar the Bulldogs’ scoring distribution was: almost completely impotent from intercepts, deadly from stoppages. That says something about their opponents, too: Hawthorn are fourth in the AFL for preventing opposition scores from turnover, but below league average in preventing opposition scores from stoppages.

Footnotes

• Some stats that would encourage Andrew McQualter and West Coast Eagles supporters. Over the last month, the Eagles are: 1st for forward-half differential, 1st for opposition D50 to F50 transition success rate, 2nd for inside-50 differential, 2nd for forward-half intercepts and points from that source, 3rd for pressure, and 4th for points against. That is precisely the sort of growth – in the metrics which underpin McQualter’s style – that suggests things are finally on the right track. (H/T this tweet, which shows an image from Footy Classified)

• Collingwood’s record under Craig McRae in games decided by 10 points or fewer: 9-3 in 2022, 8-1 in the 2023 flag year, 6-2-1 in 2024, 3-4 in 2025, and currently 1-1-4 in 2026. The line between contention and decline can be very thin. (H/T Footy on Nine)

• Teams are 5-0 when scoring exactly 92 points in 2026. They are 4-0 when scoring 99 points. They are 5-0 when scoring 103 points. They are 6-0 when scoring 104 points. But when a side scores 102 points? 0-4. (H/T AFL Live Ladder)

• Round 13, 2026 stands alone as the VFL/AFL round with the lowest-average winning margin despite including a 100+ point margin The average margin over the weekend was 22.88 points. Take away the Bunbury Massacre and the average margin drops to 8.43. You’ll never sing that. (H/T Sirswampthing)

Recommended reading

• New footy Substack alert!!! Man Seeking Merry Hell, West Coast supporter and friend of the newsletter, considers an important question: what if Sliding Doors (the AFL website ragebait column, not the film) made sense?

• The Gardiner Stand and friends consider Carlton’s topsy-turvy first half of the season.

• Sean Ross does something similar, only solo and with fewer wins to celebrate.

• It’s six days old, but This Week In Football’s Round 12 newsletter is a cracking read.

• Ahead of the Under-18 National Championships, which begin this weekend, Tommy Wolfe reveals his top 50 of the upcoming draft crop.

• The Vulture Street Journal reviews Brisbane’s QClash win.

In addition to restarting paid subscriptions, I’ve also created a “Buy Me a Coffee” page so you can show your support for One Percenters with a one-off (or recurring) donation. Here’s the link.

Plus: Cody uses the word ‘vectorisation’, I use the word ‘succour’ (as well as saying ‘you know’ far too many times – sorry), and Jonathan drops an incredible bit of personal lore.

New episodes of 110 Percenters are published here. You can also find us wherever you get your podcasts, including:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Pocket Casts

• YouTube Podcasts

Listener feedback will be key to making us better, so if you took the time to listen, please also consider taking the time to share your thoughts about what we did well and what we could do better.

If you’re liking what you’re hearing, please rate 110 Percenters on your podcasting platform of choice, and share the show with other people!

I’ve put links to Cody and Jonathan’s writing after the jump. Their work is the best in the business. I’ve also added a link to the Deadspin piece Cody mentioned in our first segment.

Links:

• Read Cody’s work here

• Read Jonathan’s work here

• A Philosopher’s Definitive (And Slightly Maddening) Case Against Replay Review

We are now into the second week of an increasingly-prolonged sequence of byes. The bye is an opportunity for players to rest weary bodies and virtually the only chance for coaches to spend real time pondering how to iron out flaws in the game plan. As that happens, I want to consider how each club is travelling – not just relative to pre-season expectations, but also what’s the likely range of outcomes for the rest of the season. Thankfully, I won’t be doing it alone. I’ve asked supporters of each club – all friends of the newsletter – to share their thoughts about how their sides are going and how it’s changed their belief about what’s possible in 2026. I’ll then respond with my own thoughts.

In this second, smaller tranche, I’ll consider two sides travelling in opposite directions and with very different priorities for the remainder of the season: Richmond and Greater Western Sydney. The Tigers’ main objectives from here are to reduce the size of the injury list, see more of the next generation (the likes of Josh Smillie and Taj Hotton), and win another one or two games without endangering what looks certain to be another juicy draft pick. The Giants, meanwhile, have found form and have welcomed back some key players. They appear primed to make a run for finals. Let’s get into it.

Greater Western Sydney

Win-loss: 6-6

Ladder position: 10th

Next four games: St Kilda (A), Carlton (H), Hawthorn (A), Fremantle (H)

Dane Gade from SuperCoach Co-Captains podcast

The GWS Giants head into their bye round as the AFL’s ultimate mystery. Every week feels like opening a Kinder Surprise: sometimes you get something brilliant, sometimes you get a piece missing and no idea how it fits together. Despite a horror run with injuries, they’ve somehow kept themselves firmly in the finals conversation and continue to look capable of troubling the competition’s best when everything clicks.

The season looked destined for disaster when midfield star Tom Green went down for the year. Add smooth mover Josh Kelly and “the Kid with the Lid”, Darcy Jones to the long-term injury list, along with defensive superstar Sam Taylor, who sustained a nasty hamstring injury playing for Western Australia, and you can understand how the Giants got into this awkward position. Taylor only returned in Round 12, prompting supporters to check whether they’d accidentally skipped half the season. His return couldn’t have come soon enough for a defence that had been held together by duct tape, crossed fingers, and Adam Kingsley’s ability to keep a straight face during press conferences.

The injury curse hasn’t stopped there. Jesse Hogan has managed just seven games for the season, meaning the Giants have spent much of the year trying to replace one of the competition’s most dangerous key forwards. Fortunately for GWS, Max “Gru” Gruzewski has grabbed his opportunity with both hands. What began as a depth player filling a role has quickly become a genuine breakout season, with Gruzewski showing he belongs at AFL level. He’s provided a strong marking target, kicked important goals and given Giants fans plenty to get excited about for the future. At this point, the club should be locking him away on a new deal before rival recruiters can pounce. Missing Hogan for much of the season could have crippled the Giants, but Gruzewski’s emergence has softened the blow and possibly unearthed a key piece of the club’s future.

Remarkably, despite missing Green, Kelly, Jones, Taylor and large chunks of Hogan, the Giants have hung in there. To the Giants’ credit, they’ve somehow found reinforcements from the football equivalent of the clearance rack. Clayton Oliver arrived from Melbourne for a pack of durries and a half-full fuel card. Oliver has been outstanding, collecting possessions at a rate that would make a Dyson vacuum cleaner jealous [Mateo: he’s #1 in the AFL for contested possessions among all players with more than five games]. Jayden Laverde was picked up for next to nothing and has slotted seamlessly into the backline during the injury crisis. Somewhere at Essendon, fans are wondering why he suddenly looks like an AFL-calibre defender.

Meanwhile, Finn Callaghan has gone from emerging star to public enemy number one for opposition taggers. Rival coaches have realised letting him roam free was a terrible strategy, so Callaghan has had to learn the weekly challenge of dealing with a hard tag, something every elite midfielder eventually faces. The numbers haven’t always been as eye-catching, but the growth has been obvious. At the same time, Lachie Ash’s move into the midfield has been a mostly successful experiment. Initially appearing to get in Callaghan’s way, Ash has provided speed, run and dare through the middle, proving necessity really is the mother of invention. He will likely return to the half back flank, but the Giants now know they have an option to roll through the middle if needed.

Another huge positive has been the return of Brent Daniels. While most fans know him as one of the competition’s best small forwards, “Midfielder Daniels” has become one of Kingsley’s most important game-breaking weapons. The Giants are careful not to leave him in there for too long, generally only unleashing him around centre bounces in the second half of games. When they do, chaos follows. Daniels turns orderly stoppages into absolute carnage, bringing speed, pressure and unpredictability that few players in the league can match. In a midfield missing Green and Kelly, those bursts have often changed the momentum of games and given GWS a genuine point of difference. Can Daniels’ body hold up? Who knows! I’m just enjoying “Midfielder Daniels” while I can.

Up forward, one of the biggest positives has been the emergence of Phoenix Gothard. He looks more comfortable at AFL level by the week and it’s becoming increasingly obvious he’ll be a major part of the future. He brings energy, pressure and excitement whenever he’s near the ball, and Giants fans are already imagining what the forward line could look like in a few years with him playing a prominent role. In a season where injuries have forced younger players to step up, Gothard has grabbed his opportunity with both hands. In a forward line that can stack goals on or kick a record number of behinds to frustrate you, Gothard always provides an option, finding space and setting up others for that scoring opportunity.

But, nothing sums up the 2026 Giants better than a two-week stretch that should probably be studied by sports psychologists. One round, GWS managed to lose to lowly West Coast, leaving supporters questioning their life choices and wondering whether the club had accidentally boarded the wrong flight. Seven days later, they responded by producing one of the most ridiculous quarters of football in VFL/AFL history, kicking 14 goals in the third quarter and completely humiliating the reigning back-to-back premiers Brisbane. It was the football equivalent of failing your driving test on Monday and winning a Grand Prix on Sunday.

The performance against Brisbane was peak Orange Tsunami. Everything clicked. Yet the week before, the Giants had somehow found a way to lose (deservedly) to a wooden spoon contender. If GWS supporters ever need a definition of emotional whiplash, they can simply replay those two games back-to-back. Shout out to the baby-faced assassin Harvey Thomas as well, this man took on a new role along the wing and has been absolutely amazing and one of the quiet achievers for the Giants. What happens if/when Josh Kelly returns? I don’t know. But right now, he is doing everything right.

The one area that still has Giants supporters nervously reaching for the antacids is the ruck division. While the midfield has somewhat adapted and the defence has survived an injury apocalypse, the ruck stocks remain a genuine concern. Every week feels like an adventure, and not the fun kind. Against the competition’s stronger ruck combinations, GWS can still be exposed around stoppages, and if there’s one thing capable of derailing a September campaign, it’s getting monstered in the middle. Leek Aleer needs to keep getting a chance to roll through there when he is healthy. Watching him leap a foot over Max Gawn, to then see him only know how to tap in one direction and have the ball sharked by the opposition is frustrating, but if he can develop ruck craft, he could become a real wildcard.

Losing Tom Green, Josh Kelly, Darcy Jones, Sam Taylor, Jesse Hogan and Brent Daniels for big chunks of the season would have buried most clubs. But not these Giants. Their best football is arguably better than almost anyone’s. Their worst football can leave supporters staring blankly into the distance wondering what they’ve just witnessed. They could make a deep finals run, or they could finish 8-10th and lose a wildcard final by four points. Because at the end of the day, nothing is more predictable than the Giants being completely unpredictable.

Dane’s grade: C

My thoughts

Of the many adjectives one can use to describe Adam Kingsley’s side, doggedness isn’t usually one of them. This has been a side renowned for flashy footy: absorbing deep inside-50 entries before unfurling exhilarating counterattacks. That fundamental identity has remained. The wild oscillation between brilliance and banality has remained. But it has been supplemented by some steel. As Dane alluded to, the Giants have been whacked hard with the injury stick this season. Green, Taylor, Hogan, Daniels, Kelly and Jones are all arguably top 10 players for the Giants. All have missed most of the first half of the season. Given that, and a front-half fixture which has included games against Hawthorn, Sydney, the Bulldogs (before Sam Darcy did his knee), and Brisbane, and the Giants are doing OK to be 6-6 at the bye.

Smarter observers can tell me if I’m wrong – this applies generally to all my writing – but I have noticed a subtle shift to how the Giants are trying to play this season. As I wrote above, the fundamental identity is stable. They are currently second in the AFL for D50 to F50 success rate (they were seventh in this metric last season), fourth for defensive half scores (same as in 2025),13th for clearance differential (same), and 15th for forward half possession share (13th in 2025).

The Giants are comfortable playing a back-half game. What hasn’t been stable is player availability. But Adam Kingsley has largely succeeded in using that to his side’s advantage. Deprived of dominant aerial players like Taylor and Hogan, the Giants have switched to a ball movement scheme that prioritises moving the ball at ground level. Kingsley’s men took more than 10 contested marks per game last season. They had aerial security at both ends. This season, they’re taking 2.5 fewer. That’s been offset by a massively improved ability to win the ball after the initial contest. Last season, the Giants were ninth for post-clearance ground ball gets differential – the measure of how well they win the ground-level contest after the clearance. This season, they’re first by a mile, almost twice as much as the second-ranked side (Gold Coast). The adaptation has been possible because of the (surprising?) renaissance of Clayton Oliver, and the breakout form of Harvey Thomas (enjoying a change of role to a wing). Oliver has been a revelation. It will be interesting to see how Kingsley makes it work once Tom Green returns to the side (almost certainly in 2027).

The short-term question is what this Giants side looks like as those stars reintegrate into the side. The evidence of the last two games – Taylor returned for their most recent game, against Melbourne in Alice Springs – has been very positive. As enigmatic as the Giants are, and as anomalous as that game was, you can’t dismiss beating the back-to-back Premiers by 13 goals. The ceiling isn’t easy to find. But it remains scarily high. Over the next five games, the Giants play St Kilda, Carlton, Hawthorn, Fremantle, and Geelong. Literally no sequence of results over this stretch would surprise me. But they’ve given themselves a shot. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve come home with a wet sail under Adam Kingsley.

My grade: B-

Richmond

Win-loss: 2-10

Ladder position: 17th

Next four games: Brisbane (H), North Melbourne (H), Collingwood (A), Carlton (H)

Toby, author of the (excellent) Jousting Sticks substack

For Richmond, it’s been a season of ‘yeah, but’. Everything that’s happened has been simultaneously despairing and understandable, with scarce moments of joy. It’s the dichotomy that defines the journey the club is on, where team and fans alike have accepted short-term pain, long-term gain. Yeah, it sucks to be 17th at 60.4%, but it makes sense and is certainly justifiable when you consider the wider context.

It’s frustrating, but you can’t talk about the Tigers season without mentioning injuries. They’ve been perilously close to needing top-up players. The significant aspect of the injury disaster has been its compounding impact on both veterans and youth. Richmond had a solid contingent of experience, capable of providing the team with a floor of stability that ‘protects’ the kids. Concurrently, Richmond has a brigade of highly touted youngsters. Both groups have been ravaged by injury. From the seven selections made pre-pick 30 in 2024, only Luke Trainor is healthy, whilst Toby Nankervis hasn’t played since Round 2, and injuries have hit Tom Lynch, Tim Taranto, Dion Prestia, and others. The floor has fallen out beneath them, while the kids haven’t had a chance to start building the ceiling yet. The injuries have been the ultimate ‘yeah, but’ of 2026. Yeah, they’re losing, but they’re putting a VFL side out there each week because Punt Road was apparently built on a cursed gravesite.

Adem Yze is coaching with both hands tied behind his back. If we briefly ignore the availability crisis, and the mega-washed status of some veterans, there are some interesting tactical evolutions happening. The prevailing criticism has been the lack of risk; long down-the-line, sideways kicks around defensive 50, all the usual hallmarks of ‘boring’ football is apparent at Richmond, acting as a safeguard. However, they’ve occasionally ventured into what we can consider the first iterations of Yzeball. It’s a similar style to most teams, utilising the forward handball to break stoppages and create overlap run. In moments of confidence, they switch the ball frequently to create width, before attempting to attack the seams through the middle with speed that their improved running capacity has created. It mostly falls apart because it’s a team full of kids, but if you squint, you really can see the bones of a cohesive style. It’s a modern game plan fitted for modern players. Yeah, it’s not yielding wins right now, but you can see it come to fruition if the players who the system is built for ever become available.

I’ve ‘joked’ about Richmond’s season beginning after the bye. We should be seeing the return of Taj Hotton and Sam Lalor in the coming weeks, and the club remains hopeful 196cm(!!) midfielder Josh Smillie will debut too. Add in the returning Nankervis and Lynch, the floor begins to take shape, the construction on the ceiling occurring simultaneously. The off-season looms with the Zak Butters shade over it, but regardless of how that turns out, Richmond will have another top 3 pick and the hope created by uninterrupted pre-seasons and houses being trained down. I’d prefer to limit the smashings and maybe scare a team hoping to play finals in the run-in, but really, I can’t imagine winning more than 1-2 more games. It’s really hard to talk about Richmond with detailed nuance because so much is up in the air, but what’s the point in being a fan if I can’t be optimistic about it?

Toby’s grade: D-

My thoughts

How do you begin to assess a season so cruelled by injuries? That’s the challenge Toby confronted and the one I now face. The best place to begin is with an acknowledgement that, subjectively, it’s felt like a lousy season for Tigers fans. I covered some of that ground in my recent piece about the progress of the rebuild. Lousy results are leavened by seeing kids weave a brighter future. They’re harder to stomach when some of the most exciting of those kids are stuck on the sidelines and you’re instead watching Oliver Hayes-Brown try and replicate Toby Nankervis.

The green shoots are there – if you squint hard. Seth Campbell has consolidated his rise. At the time of writing, he’s the 121st highest-rated player in the AFL this season and the fourth highest-rated Tiger over the last 20 games. He’s impish and skilful, and I’ve enjoyed Yze giving him some midfield reps. Sam Cumming has made a bright start to his AFL career (if only the poor boy didn’t always look so worried). Patrick Retschko, traded in for a token pick from Geelong, has looked at ease on a wing. Sam Lalor, meanwhile, showed enough in his seven games to vindicate Richmond’s choice to take him with the first pick in the 2024 draft. The problem is that, in a microcosm of Richmond’s frustrating year, he suffered a partial Achilles tear that will rule him out for most of the rest of the season. Lalor, Gibcus, Smillie, Hotton, Armstrong – these players will define the next decade at Punt Road. But you can’t get better if you don’t play.

On the field, it’s mostly been awful. It was never going to be any other way, even with a full complement of troops. But there have also been a couple of gritty wins against fellow cellar-dwellers, driven in large part by younger players. When the Tigers beat Essendon in the Dreamtime at the ‘G game, Campbell and Retschko were their two highest-rated players. When they beat the Eagles in Perth, Campbell, Jonty Faull, Tom Burton, Kane McAuliffe and Tom Brown all played well. These are the things you need to hold onto. And they’re data points about the future. With respect, the likes of Burton, McAuliffe and Burton are unlikely to become stars. But if they can take the opportunity that’s been extended to them by injury to become long-term contributors, that’s a win for everyone.

Beyond that, there have been flashes against decent sides. Richmond led Adelaide at half-time. They should probably have beaten Carlton in Round 1 (OK, Carlton was not “decent” at the time). The Tigers hung in for most of the day against Melbourne and St Kilda before young legs tired. Their next four games are not especially kind – but there are no easy games at this stage of the rebuild. Brisbane will be a damage limitation exercise. Instead, progress will be measured by the performances against North Melbourne – the first meeting between those sides was the on-field nadir of Richmond’s season – Collingwood and Carlton. If Richmond could jag a win, or run a couple of those sides close, their supporters should be pleased. Some of the kids will come back and get a glimpse of senior footy in the run home. And, come November, Punt Road will become the new home of a couple of the country’s most-talented 18 year-old footy players. It won’t be dawn for a while. But there’ll be some stars in the night sky.

My grade: D+

I’ll be back later this week with thoughts on how Collingwood, Carlton, Hawthorn and Fremantle are going so far.

In addition to restarting paid subscriptions, I’ve also created a “Buy Me a Coffee” page so you can give me even more money. Here’s the link.

New episodes of 110 Percenters are published here. You can also find us wherever you get your podcasts, including:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Pocket Casts

• YouTube Podcasts

Listener feedback will be key to making us better, so if you took the time to listen, please also consider taking the time to share your thoughts about what we did well and what we could do better.

If you’re liking what you’re hearing, please rate 110 Percenters on your podcasting platform of choice, and share the show with other people!

I’ve put links to Cody and Jonathan’s writing after the jump. Their work is the best in the business.

Links:

• Read Cody’s work here.

• Read Jonathan’s work here.

The byes are here. Over the next month, every club will have a week off. As they do, I want to consider how they’re travelling relative to pre-season expectations. Thankfully, I won’t be doing it myself. I’ve asked some friends to share their own thoughts about their teams, and how the first half of the season has updated their beliefs about what’s possible in 2026. I’ll then respond with my own thoughts. The first batch of clubs perfectly illustrate that there are good byes and there are bad byes. Adelaide and Gold Coast are both probably relieved to get some time off, address specific tactical problems, and give key players time to rest and recuperate. North Melbourne’s players and supporters, meanwhile, would probably prefer the opportunity to capitalise on the momentum created by the side’s stirring comeback victory against Gold Coast last Saturday. Let’s get into it.

Adelaide

Win-loss: 6-5

Ladder position: 7th

Next four games: Geelong (H), Western Bulldogs (A), Melbourne (H), Port (A)

Michael from the Adelaide FC subreddit Discord server (shout-out)

Losing Mark Keane, Mitch Hinge, and Dan Curtin for most of the first half of the season has brutalised us this season. However, while it is an excuse, I’ve seen enough to put it plainly: we aren’t nearly good enough to contend with the best sides.

Regression from last year’s surprisingly dizzying highs were expected, but when you watch us and then watch the benchmarks of the competition (Sydney, Freo, Brisbane) you can’t help but notice the chasm between game styles. Theirs are built for winning premierships; ours is built to limit as much damage as possible – unless the opponent has big flaws, in which case Adelaide adopts a more aggressive game plan. However, it’s not all bad. The Crows have shown that there’s talent on multiple lines, and Jordan Dawson is the perfect leader to nurture and lead that talent. Add a Zac Bailey in the middle, Darcy Wilson and/or Kade Chandler and/or Tom Swallow in and around the forward/mid rotation [Mateo: surely that’s not too much to ask?] and optimism will return to West Lakes.

Perhaps the biggest concern, beyond player availability, is the reluctance to use overlap handball or move the ball with urgency – especially compared to 2023 and (parts of 2025), when Adelaide was one of the most exciting teams in the competition. The Crows’ continued reliance on aerial and ground-level contest wins means they’ve been left by the wayside. The coaching staff has recognised this over the last couple of games, but it might be too late to salvage the season. The Crows are 18th in the AFL for average metres gained per handball at 0.7m; Sydney, who are the best team in the competition at the time of writing, are running at 4m gained per handball. There’s nothing wrong with going with your own style, and you can understand Matthew Nicks’ reluctance to depart from a game plan which was successful for most of 2025, but it clearly isn’t working anywhere near as well in 2026.

Brayden Cook has been the silver lining. How he’s gone from the last-chance saloon to a near AA-calibre wing option is the story of the season. Credit to the club for sticking with him when everyone was just starting to ask, ‘if only’. Shoutout to Sam Berry too. I’m [Tom] a big, big critic (and I still think he’s too fumbly at times) but his centre square clearance work has gone from merely okay to very good. If he can get his kicking and ground ball game sorted, the Crows have a viable long-term prospect in the engine room.

The worst-case outcome for the rest of the season would be for Adelaide to continue on its current trajectory and finish 9th-10th – not good enough to be a “true” finalist, yet not bad enough to get one of the best players in the draft. To be avoided. The normal outcome would be finishing near the bottom of the top six. Given the current issues, an Elimination Final berth (and win) would be a good season, all things considered. There are two types of good outcomes. The first would be if Adelaide had the sort of resurgence it did after the bye last season [remember: the Crows lost their game immediately before the bye to Hawthorn at Launceston before winning out for the rest of the Home & Away season]. The other is to completely fall off a cliff, draft one of the best midfielders in the draft pool, and appoint a new coach. It might be the recession the club needs to have.

Michael’s grade: C-

Tom from the Adelaide FC subreddit Discord server

As a Crows fan who leans on the more pessimistic side, I tend to feel Adelaide is at the level I expected heading into the season; a bottom eight to wildcard side – but I do feel we are quite lucky to be around that mark on the ladder. To be frank, we don’t pass the eye test. A team that realistically overachieved last season, off the back of some luck, easy fixtures and the cohesive rhythm of healthy star players carrying the side (Rankine, Dawson, Thilthorpe, Worrell, Keane). Yet, despite trying to maintain a sense of pragmatism, I still feel as disillusioned as I did after the horrendous 2025 finals.

Once the excitement of watching a young side grow – from new faces debuting and inexperienced players showing glimpses of star power – deteriorates and the expectations rise, you lose a sense of enjoyment for the game. Your enjoyment becomes results-driven. In those early rebuild years, you could excuse the inability to control games, lack of proactive decision making and sometimes leaders not standing up in big moments. But your patience as a fan becomes thin and, as time goes on, entitlement grows. Adelaide might be having a down year, but I feel I’ve seen this movie before under Matthew Nick’s tenure and I hope post-bye the club can start banking some results and look like a more competent side.

As you articulated in your season preview [Mateo: I promise I did not add this in], Adelaide’s game plan in 2025 had a scheme of piercing and slicing kicks, creating space for your one-on-one contests. But being first on the ladder means you become the hunted. Teams have gone to work and the failure to adapt to the stand rule is part of why Adelaide has become a very predictable side in possession. While other teams embraced the changes in their offseason, Adelaide has been caught on the hop.

It’s not necessarily doom and gloom as a fan. Players like Brayden Cook, Wayne Milera and Sam Berry have exploded onto the scene and as a strong past critic of all three, I’ve been thoroughly rapt to see them performing to a high standard. Cook’s development has honestly kept me engaged with this season. As for the most disappointing player, I know most fans would say Thilthorpe, but I am going to say Jake Soligo. Pre-season health scare aside, he’s been pushed out of a vanilla midfield. It’s left me contemplating where he goes from here.

Tom’s grade: C-

My thoughts

Adelaide has regressed in more or less exactly the ways I warned of in my season preview. In 2025, the Crows leveraged real physical advantages to become the league’s best post-clearance contest team. They took big grabs, brushed off opposition tackles while making their own stick, and regularly won contests in high-value parts of the ground. But relying on winning contests is dangerous, both because it’s so sensitive to the form and fitness of the players who make it work and because it can defer the creation of a more unsustainable style based on the manipulation of space. As that advantage has been whittled away, the Crows have regressed. They are currently a middling side.

Tom and Michael both lamented the rigidity of the Crows’ game plan under coach Matthew Nicks. I have a small measure of sympathy for Nicks here. I think it’s reasonable to believe that a style which helped deliver a club-record 18-win season is viable. Losing Dan Curtin and Mark Keane to freak injuries in pre-season was a bigger blow than most non-supporters realise. But the most devastating riposte is that Nicks and his assistants successfully overhauled how the Crows played out-of-possession after a month of last season – so why have they been largely unable to improve the side’s rudimentary ball movement scheme thus far this season? The charitable answer is that it’s tougher to change how you attack than how you defend mid-season, and that without Mark Keane, Adelaide doesn’t have enough good kicks in its backline. The other answer is the one that an increasing number of Crows fans have reached on their own: if your style relies on Izak Rankine, or Jordan Dawson, or Riley Thilthorpe winning their direct contest more than it does on structured possession chains – that’s probably not a viable style in 2026. It’s true there have been some changes. For the last month, Adelaide has been handballing more often and moving the ball slightly better. The defence remains a strength. But it still looks like a low-tech brand in a high-tech world.

The club’s injury burden (not catastrophic, but a big change from a relatively serene run in 2025) is largely out of its control. Keane’s return could make a big difference. The most perplexing question, and probably the one in most need of an answer, is what the hell’s happened to Thilthorpe. The ideal outcome is the extended break afforded by the bye and his one-week suspension for a gut punch on Lloyd Meek gives him the chance to physically and mentally refresh. If he rediscovers his 2025 form, the Crows become a significantly better side. If he can’t, the wildcard round (or worse) looms. That’s probably the most likely outcome for the remainder of this season. The worst-case scenario – the bottom falling out of the season – has a silver lining: a good draft pick and a new coach.

My grade: C

Gold Coast

Win-loss: 7-4

Ladder position: 5th

Next four games: Brisbane (H), Geelong (A), Hawthorn (H), Fremantle (A)

Keegan from the Turnover the Tape podcast

The first half of the season for the Suns has been one of underperformance while still putting wins on the board. The club has been saying it has taken one step back to take two steps forward, and so far this season feels like that. We have shed some experienced depth (Ainsworth, Fiorini, Budarick) to fit in more academy players and big name recruits which has left us with a bottom five or six players that are currently not producing at AFL level each week.

At the start of the season I had us down for a top six finish, and I still believe we are capable of that at our best, but some down performances are a cause for concern with a hard run of games incoming. The forward line mix has been a headache for the club and continues to be so, with Damien Hardwick rotating in search of a forward line that can do the things he wants. The Jed Walter story continues to bubble in the background. I’m unsure about where he will play next year. The lack of a quality small forward has hurt, especially when our tall forward can’t take a mark as well.

Ned Moyle has now ascended to the #1 ruck role and looks like he will keep a hold of it going forward, helping with clearances while also being a threat forward. This has relegated Witts to the backup spot after he has struggled with the new ruck rules. Christian Petracca has exceeded all expectations since coming to the club. I haven’t been this excited to see the ball in a player’s hand since prime Gaz – his ability to hit the scoreboard is not something we have seen in our midfield in some time. Uwland is looking to improve on his second-place Best & Fairest finish from 2024 and has been so solid down back, adding rebound to his game and no doubt piquing the interests of some All-Australian selectors. He’s been a key part of our defensive unit which has been our strongest line this year. Sam Collins is in career best form, Mac Andrew is playing well, while Oscar Adams has improved out of sight holding Charlie Ballard out of the team. The Rioli and Noble combo off HB continue to be so important to our ball movement.

Conversely, despite the names on the sheet, the Suns’ midfield has been subpar with Rowell and Anderson being impacted by injury and sickness for parts of the year. We have been conceding clearance deficits most games and the inability to defensively pressure has meant opposing midfielders have been able to slice through and hit up forward targets at will, not giving our defenders a chance.

The worst-case plausible outcome from here would be failing to make the top eight and travelling away for the first wildcard game ever played. A normal outcome would be finishing in the top six and hosting our first-ever home final. A good outcome would mean beating the teams around us in the second half of the year – starting in the next four games – and pushing for the double chance.

Keegan’s grade: C+

My thoughts

Following the first month of the season, I was halfway convinced the Suns were already the best team in the league, and, given their absurd wealth of academy talent, concerned about what portended for the rest of the decade. I arrived at the MCG on April 5th fully expecting them to dispatch the Demons and frank those credentials. Instead – and admittedly, they were without Petracca that day – they lost by 20 points and showed the first signs of the frailties that have plagued them since.

I don’t think I was alone in expecting a core midfield trio of Petracca, Rowell, and Anderson to be one of the league’s most formidable. In some respects, it has. Gold Coast is ranked seventh for scores from stoppages, and Petracca is, implausibly, enjoying a career-best season. But the deterioration in the Suns’ ability to win first possession or defend clearance losses is alarming. They are currently 14th for first possession, 15th for clearances won, and seventh for scores from clearance differential. What should be a great strength looks instead like a liability. Hardwick has moved some magnets in search of a more defensively secure on-ball rotation, giving the likes of Alex Davies, Touk Miller, and Bailey Humphrey more CSB attendances in over the past month. Part of the problem, as identified by Keegan in their write-up, is that neither Rowell nor Anderson have been able to be quite at their best so far. But part of the problem is structural: Petracca’s ability forward of the ball will mean he takes up aggressive positions both at stoppages and in transition. That looks great when it works, but it often requires a player assuming a more sacrificial role to patch up defensive holes. At Melbourne, that role was often performed by Alex Neal-Bullen. I’m not sure Hardwick has quite found the answer yet.

I also share Keegan’s concerns about the composition and efficacy of the forward line. I’m not sure I see what many others claim to see in Jed Walter. Ben King is an elite finisher, but his non-contributions both in build-up and out of possession is part of the reason why the Suns are mediocre in preventing opposition transition. The lack of a true small forward is obvious – Ben Long, Bailey Humphrey, and Leo Lombard do an admirable role, but it means that Gold Coast aren’t as dangerous at ground level inside-50 as most true contenders are. It’s up to Hardwick to see if the solution to these issues exists on the current list.

The collapse against North Melbourne was the product of the fatigue accumulated by a fortnight in Darwin. But it was still inexcusable, and followed a concerning string of performances. Since that defeat to Melbourne (a side we now know is much better than most expected them to be), the Suns have been comfortably beaten by Sydney and Hawthorn, and registered unconvincing victories over Essendon and Port Adelaide. It’s not the formline of a top-four side. They’ve banked enough wins to still be in touch with the leading pack. But they need to improve.

My grade: B-

North Melbourne

Win-loss: 5-6

Ladder position: 13th

Next four games: Fremantle (H – but in Bunbury), West Coast (H – but in Perth), Richmond (A), Essendon (H)

Ricky Mangidis of The Shinboner

Through six rounds, it was obvious to anyone with a functioning set of eyes that North Melbourne had improved. It was the level of improvement which remained a mystery due to the level of opposition. Five of those six games against Port Adelaide (home), West Coast (away), Essendon, Carlton, and Richmond didn’t exactly scream murderer’s row.

Five rounds later, after GWS (away), Geelong (GMHBA), Sydney (home), Adelaide (away), and Gold Coast (home), the improvement is now large enough to be notable. While those five rounds only yielded one win, there were just three poor quarters – the fourth vs. Geelong, a historically bad second vs. Adelaide, and the second vs. Gold Coast. Elsewhere the underlying process remained relatively sound, with a couple of key focus areas.

Scoring from forward half turnovers: It may shock readers to learn that in the last four years, North ranked 18th (2025), 16th (2024), 15th (2023), and 18th (2022) in points scored from forward half turnovers. After 11 games this year, North ranks seventh in the same stat. It is slightly inflated because of their blinding efficiency at scoring from those turnovers – second in points per turnover forced – but that efficiency had also been non-existent in previous years.

Possession as control: While it’s a thin line between using possession to defend, possession to progress, and then knowing when to shift between each, North have been much better in achieving both so far this year. The side is ranked first for uncontested possession differential and sixth for time in possession differential. Combine it with a simplified system behind the ball and it’s allowed the defence to be protected more often after turnover while dedicating a larger focus on forward half play. There’s still a long way to go in the area, of course, but the steps forward are obvious.

Individually, with the exception of bedding Colby McKercher down into his best position as – opinion alert – a high half-back coming up to contests and playing with the field in front of him – the first choice on-ball unit has consolidated into the look we’ll see for the medium to long term, health pending. Finn O’Sullivan has been the revelation to some outside the North bubble, graduating into a position as the midfield glue to unlock his teammates. Whether it’s Luke Davies-Uniacke as the explosive ball winner, Harry Sheezel as more of a first receiver, or George Wardlaw as the manic wrecking ball, it’s O’Sullivan’s presence, positioning, and work without the ball making most of it possible without having to sacrifice too much elsewhere.

Looking forward, while the last month of Hawthorn, Bulldogs, Geelong, and Sydney is brutal, the eight weeks beforehand present real opportunities. Put Fremantle to one side and the other seven opponents read, in order: West Coast, Richmond, Essendon, Port Adelaide, Collingwood, Melbourne, and St Kilda. None of those outfits should present North with any nightmares. It’s not to say they should or will go anywhere close to running the table, but it presents the perfect opportunity for football with actual (relatively low) stakes as they aim for a wildcard position. It’s a position they haven’t been in for a decade.

Ricky’s grade: B

My thoughts

As I made clear in my 2026 season preview, I was a committed North Melbourne sceptic. I wasn’t enamoured with their list build and really didn’t like their style of play under coach Alastair Clarkson. North were almost totally dependent on clearance wins to generate scores and well below AFL standard at defending turnovers, which is increasingly where games are won and lost. So it’s been a surprise, albeit a pleasant one, to see their real improvement through 11 games of 2026.

From my perspective – and I will defer to Ricky here, whose week-by-week reviews are the highest standard of writing about North Melbourne anywhere on the internet – the improvement has been driven by organic improvement and by a simplified structure out-of-possession (in short: moving away from a zonal structure to something closer to back-shoulder one-on-one defending). North look significantly more resilient when they don’t have the ball. While it’s true that they remain poor at preventing the opposition from moving the ball, they are (very) slightly better than league average when it comes to preventing opposition scores from turnover.

Ricky has identified the main statistical sources of improvement. I think the statistic which should provide North supporters, who should finally believe there is an escape from the hell of the last five years, with the most confidence is that four of the club’s 10 highest-rated players (across the last 20 games) are 21 or younger. While it’s true that the likes of Tristan Xerri, Luke Parker, and Jack Darling are carrying a big load, Finn O’Sullivan, George Wardlaw, Cooper Trembath (despite a quiet month), and Harry Sheezel are showing that the kids are alright. It’s not like Luke Davie-Uniacke is nearing the end, either.

North is by no means fully out of the woods. Flashes of the old, bad North are much rarer but still present. They’re probably a win behind where they ought to be given the softness of their opening run of fixtures. But these are entirely different problems to the 2021-2025 Omnicrisis era, where the footy team and footy club were very bad at everything. If North can produce the type of footy they’ve already shown this season, including against sides like Sydney, over the next month, then a wildcard berth is by no means out of the equation.

My grade: B

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Port Adelaide

Win-loss: 3-8

Ladder position: 15th

Next four games: West Coast (A), Sydney (H), Collingwood (A), Adelaide (H)

Patrick McCabe, barrister and good friend of the newsletter

Port Adelaide has always loved to anoint its favourite sons as coach. The only exception over the near century separating Sampson Hosking and Mark Williams was Mark’s legendary dad Fos. Fos, now regarded as perhaps the most Port Adelaide person of them all, infamously moved from West Adelaide in 1950 to become Port’s player-coach.

Port’s next outsider experiment was, of course, Ken Hinkley in 2013. When that experiment began to falter, it was no wonder the faithful began to salivate over the prospect of Josh Carr replacing him. There was something nostalgic and familiar about it – another favourite returned son, another premiership player. Not only that but a player whose hard and physical approach encapsulated what fans delight in calling the “Port Adelaide way”, and someone so thoroughly Port Adelaide he (allegedly) actually initiated the iconic Ramsgate fight with Mark Ricciuto. How could it go wrong?

Well, unfortunately, so far it has. After truly terrible performances in the first month of the season against North and West Coast, and a feeble win against even-more-atrocious Essendon, the wind was out of Port’s sails before the anchor had even been raised. The breeze seemed briefly to stiffen with a tantalisingly gallant loss against Hawthorn, an invigorating, romping win over Geelong, and a just-forgivable loss to the Crows over consecutive rounds. But as Port head into the mid-season bye, it is hard to hold on to hope following consecutive and convincing defeats to the Bulldogs, Gold Coast, and worst of all, Carlton.

Causes for optimism are thinning as rapidly as Ken Hinkley’s hair over the latter years of his tenure. There have been significant injuries – to captain Connor Rozee, Sam Powell-Pepper and Miles Bergman (who, even when he was playing, did not seem to be doing so on a full tank). But, as significant as these absences are, they seem like excuses papering over what is increasingly hard to deny – Port’s list is not what it once was. Mitch Georgiades has been a dependable if inaccurate presence up forward, but it is hard to resist the conclusion his impressive goalkicking figures (currently sixth on the Coleman Medal count) are mostly a function of the dearth of talent surrounding him. Aliir Aliir has found some of the form that made him a fan favourite a few years back, but he similarly has had few reliable assistants.

Meanwhile, Zak Butters dominates almost every game. But this is cold comfort given he’s almost certainly departing Alberton at season’s end. Jason Horne-Francis continues to be inconsistent, Ollie Wines has slowed up, and after that the pickings quickly start to become meagre. Burgoyne, Drew and Farrell have been solid enough. There have been some enjoyable performances from new youngsters like Ewan Mackinlay, Jack Whitlock, and Josh Lai. But are they going to replace Travis Boak, Dan Houston, Charlie Dixon, and the rest? I hope so. But I don’t see it quite yet.

This brings us back to that fundamental, and fundamentally unanswerable, question of football punditry – how much of a difference does a coach make? It would be harsh to judge Carr’s performance when he can only work with what he has got, and has only had 10 games to do so. But so far, our favourite son has not achieved the Williamsesque feats so many fans indulgently allowed themselves to think he might. The attention of many Port fans has already turned to the enticing prospect of Dougie Cochrane and the exciting 2027 crop of father-son and NGA prospects. If, that is, the AFL hasn’t completely ruined that for us too.

Patrick’s grade: C

My thoughts

I’m going to disagree with Patrick here! Port’s start to the season was very bad. And the recent sequence of close losses – especially the heartbreak of the Showdown (not that I think there’s any shame in being beaten by Brayden Cook, the best player in the AFL) – would no doubt sting. But overall, I think the season is well on track to deliver the outcomes most realistic Port fans would have wanted: evidence of Josh Carr’s coaching acumen, growth from young players, and maintaining a good draft hand.

Carr has transformed Port’s defensive profile virtually overnight. Here are some relevant numbers:

There are probably some beneficial fixture and sample size effects here – it’s only 11 games, after all – but the improvement from Ken Hinkley’s final year in charge has been stark. (Perhaps it’s evidence in favour of the argument that Ken really was in charge in 2025.) Without having closely reviewed the tape, my impressions are that Carr has significantly improved his side’s ability to slow the opposition in transition, funnel them wide, and maintain disciplined defensive spacing. If Port was at all a relevant side this season, it would be one of the bigger stories in footy. It’s been genuinely impressive, and, in my opinion, enough to give Port supporters confidence that Carr knows what he’s doing.

Crucially, that improvement hasn’t translated into too many inconvenient wins. Sometimes we need to acknowledge realities that the AFL would prefer didn’t exist. Outside of an implausible jump up the ladder that persuaded Butters that his long-term future lay at Alberton, it’s not really in Port Adelaide’s interests to win many games this season. They’re headed to the draft. If (realistically, when) Butters leaves, Port will have several picks in addition to its natural first-rounder. Dougie Cochrane looks like such an enticing prospect that he will be a top-two draft pick without playing many, if any, games in his draft year. The AFL’s recent changes to the bidding rules will make him more expensive. Had Port won the four games they’d lost by less than a goal this season, matching a bid on Cochrane would have looked much more complicated.

The players that Port has selected with its few meaningful recent draft picks are showing good flashes. Joe Berry looks much more at home at AFL level in his second year. His late goal almost won the Showdown. Jack Whitlock is the real revelation, however: the spring-heeled tall forward looks like a set-and-forget forward for the next decade. That’s a great outcome from Pick 33. Now that he’s regained match fitness, Jason Horne-Francis looks like he’s about to go to the next level.

I understand that, on some fundamental level, it sounds silly to say given the point of footy is to win, but I truly believe that, in almost every respect except the win-loss record, it’s been an encouraging season for Port Adelaide. The problem is that the guy who’s done the most to make that happen on the field almost certainly won’t be there next year. The clock will reset.

My grade: B

I’ll be back this time next week with thoughts on how GWS and Richmond are going so far.

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Social preview photo courtesy of the Marvel Stadium website.

West Coast’s 2026 Sir Doug Nicholls Round guernsey (the club was renamed Waalitj Marawar for the duration of the round), designed by Ngadju Mirning artist Andrew Beck, tells the story of Mandooboornup, a place central to the Waalitj Dreaming story. In the story, a mother eagle carried two boys who’d been stealing eggs from the Mandooboornup peak and dropped them into the ocean, where they turned into islands. The front of the guernsey features a large circle representing the club, surrounded by figures that honour the first three Indigenous players to represent the club: Wally Matera, Phil Narkle, and Chris Lewis. Flowing from that central circle are dots, shields and boomerangs, symbolising the warlike nature of Australian rules football.

At the centre of the design sits a golden eagle – the Waalitj – an important and respected symbol across many Aboriginal nations, including Noongar Country. “The eagle is really significant within Aboriginal culture,” Beck told the West Coast club website. “We talk to our young people about what the eagle does when it’s being annoyed or frustrated. Instead of reacting, it rises above. It goes to an altitude where nothing can bother it anymore, so it’s really important symbolism as well.”

Adelaide’s (Kuwarna’s) guernsey tells a story of a different kind. Designed by Wayne Milera, the guernsey is about the Crows half-back, his footy journey, and his ancestry. On the top-right of the guernsey is a small circle, interlaced with dots and figures, representing his mother’s Gunditjmara and Wotjobaluk heritage. The circle on the bottom-left represents the Nharangga of the Yorke Peninsula – his father’s side. Small white dots around the large central circle represent Milera’s ancestors, including his nan, who are no longer with him in body but still are in spirit. The U-shaped figures in the bottom-right of the guernsey represent the Ingle Farm Football Club (shout-out to the northeastern suburbs of Adelaide; God’s country), where Milera played until he was 16, and Central Districts, where he completed his footy apprenticeship.

On the top of the guernsey, sandwiched slightly awkwardly between the large AFL and Toyota logos, are two sets of animal tracks – an emu chasing a crow. This is a nod to a Wotjobaluk Dreaming story, which tells of a fierce, giant emu spirit named Tchingal chasing Waa the Crow across the land. Their violent struggle physically shaped the geography. It’s fitting. After all, Milera is a Crow who is often chased. The four sets of handprints right in the centre of the guernsey represent Milera’s family: his wife Nina, their two boys Carter and Stanley, and him.

Melbourne’s (Narrm’s) guernsey celebrates the club’s connection to Nyirripi, a small town 440 kilometres northwest of Alice Springs. Sitting on the land of the Warlpiri People, it’s a community whose heart beats red and blue. The local club is the Nyirripi Demons. This year’s guernsey was designed by Vanetta Nampijinpa Hudson, a Nyirripi artist whose works tell the stories passed down by her father and his father before him for millennia. She paints stories of Warlukurlangu Jukurrpa (Fire Dreaming), which relate directly to her land, its features, and the life that dances and teems on its surface. The video on Melbourne’s website, which features Kysaiah and Latrelle Pickett, Shane McAdam, and Ricky Mentha Jr., depicts children laughing, kicking the footy, and admiring the heroes who’ve come from the big smoke. But the spiritual richness cannot hide the material poverty.

The 18 guernseys reveal the astonishing breadth of Australian Indigenous culture – its age, its span, its reach. They encode not one story, but thousands. The AFL Players’ Association Indigenous Map, which traces the origins of every Indigenous AFL and AFLW player, evokes a similar feeling. Every corner of this vast red, brown, and green land is represented. Ngarrandjerri. Whadjuk. Kamilaroi. Larrakia. The map reveals an important truth. There is not one Indigenous culture. Instead, there are dozens – hundreds – which have independently found an avenue of creative and physical expression in this game we all share.

Indigenous Australians were playing various forms of kicking games on this continent before white settlement. Whether those games, often banded together under the collective name Marn Grook, was a direct influence on the sport today known as Australian rules, is not the subject of this essay. What is not in dispute is that the AFL has been hugely ennobled by the contributions of Indigenous players, coaches, fans, and administrators. Sir Doug Nicholls Round acknowledges those contributions and celebrates a deep connection to the game.

The AFL and its clubs have gotten very good at honouring Indigenous culture. The guernseys, the smoking ceremonies, the Welcome to Country, the matches played on sacred ground – the way the league observes Sir Doug Nicholls Round has grown richer and more considered with each passing year. The unfortunate irony is that, over the same time span, the league has become less good at ensuring there are actually Indigenous players on the field.

According to the AFL, there are 62 Indigenous players on clubs’ lists in 2026. (I actually couldn’t reach that total myself, I could only get to 59 or 60 – but I’ll trust the league to get such an important number right.) Regardless of the exact number, the trend is clear. There were 87 Indigenous players in 2020. Since then, the number of Indigenous players in the AFL has declined year-on-year.

Just a single Indigenous player featured in Dreamtime at the ‘G, the showpiece game of Sir Doug Nicholls Round. Yes, that was an unfortunate coincidence created by Richmond’s extensive injury list. It still felt symbolic. Observance and representation are different things, and the gap between them has been widening for half a decade. The ceremony has expanded at the same time as the numbers have contracted.

Many people believe this is a problem. The AFL believes it is – at least in the prosaic sense that it’s a bad look for an already crisis-stricken administration. But this is by no means a unanimous view. Opposition to the claim that declining Indigenous representation is a problem comes in two main forms. The first is that Indigenous culture and contributions to footy aren’t worth celebrating. That view exists and is probably more widespread than many people believe. But it’s one I fundamentally disagree with. The second form of scepticism is more consistent with the principles of footy libertarianism I articulated in a piece from a couple of months ago – namely, that clubs and coaches should be allowed to build their lists and approach the game however they like, and that attempts to do that ought to be resisted. A footy libertarian might respond to the fact of declining Indigenous player numbers with questions such as: what’s the “right” number? Will the AFL impose a quota clubs must comply with? Where does it end? There’s a difference between the concern the AFL has expressed about Indigenous player numbers (which one doesn’t tend to hear much about outside of Sir Doug Nicholls Round) and full interventionist tyranny, but if the league believes there’s a problem, and seeks to address it, then most proposed remedies will impact clubs.

The AFL is doing something – or is at least talking a reasonably good game about doing something. In a media conference launching this year’s Sir Doug Nicholls Round, CEO Andrew Dillon announced that the league would launch a First Nations Impact Fund, an initiative which “aims to grow First Nations representation across the industry, creating culturally safe environments and calling out racism ‘wherever it exists’.” That sounds encouraging, although given that the fund is believed to be worth about $300,000 – less than the median player’s salary – we should temper our optimism about what it can achieve. The AFL has also convened a sub-committee of AFL and club figures, which met for the first time on the eve of Sir Doug Nicholls Round to discuss ways to boost the number of Indigenous players. No sooner had the committee been publicised, it was criticised by several Indigenous AFL greats, including Shaun Burgoyne, Michael Walters, and Michael O’Loughlin, for not being sufficiently consultative or representative. The omission of national AFL talent diversity manager Paul Vandenbergh, the most senior Indigenous staffer at AFL head office, from the panel, came in for particular criticism. There’s a real dispute here: the AFL and Indigenous advocates like Hill might well define “success” differently. The current AFL administration is, first and foremost, looking to arrest the decline of Indigenous player numbers. Indigenous players might see it differently: they could be just as interested in important questions of cultural safety, career longevity, and how the league will support Indigenous players after they leave the system.

The AFL is also reportedly considering giving clubs an extra list spot specifically for First Nations players. It’s worth exploring the potential implications of this. When I asked “Alex”, an AFL list boss, what list management rules he’d remove, he quickly identified the rookie list. “A lot of clubs use it as a list management tool,” Alex told me. “It’s within the rules, but I just think you can extend your primary list, make it a full list, and remove the admin, remove the stress of players getting delisted and re-listed.” Clubs have converged on a use of the rookie list that’s quite different from its original purpose of player development. It’s a small example that illustrates a broader point: clubs are increasingly clever at maximising utility. Given this, what are the likely outcomes of a bespoke Indigenous rookie list spot?

The first is the one the AFL would most like: clubs use it as a chance to recruit a player they know is talented but would otherwise have required more patience than is typically afforded. Isaiah Dudley comes to mind here as a potential proof of concept: a player with all the technical tools who has thrived in an AFL environment. That’s a quick and effective way to go from 62 Indigenous AFL-listed players to 80. The second outcome, which one suspects the AFL would tolerate but probably not love, is that clubs treat the spot as a box-ticking exercise by adding an Indigenous rookie player that’s unlikely to ever make it, and investing minimally in their development. That would probably count as vaguely malicious compliance: recognising that the value of getting the league off their backs is greater than the cost of the list spot. Certainly not an ideal way to increase Indigenous representation in the AFL, but one way for the line to go up.

The worst-case scenario is that the Indigenous rookie spot isn’t actually additive at all, and instead results in fewer Indigenous players being taken in the National Draft. I suspect that’s more likely than the AFL would like to admit: creating a list spot that can only be used for Indigenous players will effectively increase the opportunity cost of adding Indigenous players to a senior list. If the choice was previously between using a third-round pick on an Indigenous player and a non-Indigenous player, more clubs, knowing the buffer exists, will pick the non-Indigenous player. In this view, an extra list spot without accompanying obligations – minimum development hours, cultural safety reporting, etc. – becomes window dressing at best, and cynical compliance at worst. Clubs are rational and self-interested, and smart people employed by them spend lots of time thinking about how to engineer marginal gains.

The proposal to add an Indigenous rookie list spot might be misguided, but it gestures at something real: fewer Indigenous players are being drafted, and more are being delisted. In a sense, this is trivially true. Indigenous player numbers are declining, so clearly more are exiting the system than entering it. But the collapse in the number of Indigenous draftees is still alarming. The sole Indigenous player taken in the 2024 National Draft, Cody Anderson, was selected with Pick 64.

There are several hypotheses for why fewer Indigenous players are being drafted. The first is that nothing has actually changed and the decline is just attributable to bad luck. That’s possible; we’re ultimately dealing with small sample sizes. But I’m not sure it squares with the reality, and the AFL’s response. Most other explanations posit that something structural has happened. Perhaps clubs believe that Indigenous prospects aren’t well-suited to the evolving physical and tactical demands of modern footy (players are getting taller and are expected to run harder for longer). Or perhaps they believe that Indigenous prospects, especially those which haven’t come through elite developmental pathways, are riskier prospects than “good kids” who won scholarships to fancy private schools. Either way, if you believe there’s a structural reason for declining Indigenous player numbers, then you’re implicitly agreeing there is a crack somewhere in the developmental pipeline – we’re just quibbling about where it is.

Saying that the AFL is bad at considering second-order consequences is a little like saying that water is wet. But the problem isn’t really that the AFL’s proposed interventions are inadequate. It’s that the league is hopelessly stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the AFL is one of the few mainstream institutions in Australian public life where young Indigenous men are actively celebrated instead of being passively tolerated (or treated with something between suspicion and hostility). On the footy field, Aboriginality is admirable. Seeing Kysaiah Pickett, or Shai Bolton, or Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera strut their stuff matters a hell of a lot for Indigenous kids in Broome or Nyirripi. It is also, frankly, one of the main ways Australians learn about Indigenous customs. The AFL is a prominent stage for positive depictions of Indigenous culture. It knows this. It understands the immense commercial and political value of this reputation – and the costs of relinquishing it.

But I also suspect that sharper minds at AFL House know that, ultimately, they have few levers at their disposal to meaningfully increase the number of Indigenous players coming into the system at the level required. The most obvious problem is that clubs have adopted a more fine-grained approach to drafting, which often manifests as a greater aversion to downside risk, and therefore – indirectly – in fewer Indigenous players entering the system. I’m going to quote from the piece I wrote about the Indigenous player decline two years ago, because the problems I identified then are still just as apparent today.

Once you start looking for this [risk aversion], you can see its influence everywhere. Funnelling more money to elite underage programs, such as the AFL Academy, at the apparent expense of Indigenous development. Increasingly stringent testing requirements on prospective draftees. The increasing predominance of a small group of prestigious private schools, who burnish their own credentials by offering promising players lucrative scholarships. Clubs, terrified of whiffing on high draft picks, have instead participated in a joint effort to turn drafting and talent identification into a hard science.

But, for several reasons, that effort has worked to the disadvantage of many Indigenous players. According to [Professor John] Evans, his experience in elite sports has revealed a clear pattern: recruiting Indigenous players “is often perceived as more challenging than selecting their non-Indigenous peers.” That reluctance is partly attributable to lingering stereotypes. For example, kids who were raised in tough circumstances are labelled “difficult” when logistical hurdles mean they miss the occasional training session. Nonchalant body language is perceived as not caring. Shyness? Arrogance. The bias, Evans writes, also extends to the metrics clubs use to evaluate prospective players today. Those tests, he argues, prioritise physical traits instead of football skills, and thus often fail to capture the true potential of young Indigenous footballers. If you’ve spent your adolescence kicking the footy on red earth, then it’s easy to see how beep tests might seem a little alien.

That bias doesn’t stay in the recruiting department. It shapes how Indigenous players are discussed and perceived well after they’re drafted. Too often, commentators reach for words like “mercurial” and “X-factor” – words that are meant as praise but presuppose supernatural talent and implicitly discount hard work and football intelligence – in ways we rarely do for white players. It’s a form of exoticisation that, however well-intentioned, keeps Indigenous players at arm’s length from the game’s mainstream. We’ll know something has genuinely shifted when those adjectives are retired in favour of “smart” and “selfless”.

Clubs covet data. And Indigenous players that come through non-standard development pathways – that don’t play Talent League, that don’t play in the Under-18 National Championships, that don’t submit themselves to a battery of physical and psychological testing – generate less data. Players who aren’t on the radar at 16 are often regarded as permanently lost to the system. From the perspective of clubs that pursue their own interests, it’s rational to avoid risk, and sensible to treat the broader problem as not theirs to solve. That’s part of why Melbourne drafting Latrelle Pickett in the first round of last year’s draft, felt so bold. He spent a decent chunk of his draft year in the SANFL Reserves.

Ghosts of present and past loom over all this. Australia is doing a poor job of Closing the Gap. If anything, the gap is widening. The costs of poor physical and economic outcomes are felt far beyond footy. But if the median 16 year-old Indigenous kid is, because of nutritional deficits beyond their control, smaller than their White Australian counterpart (at a time when height and running power are more important at the top level than ever), it’s yet another way the deck is stacked against them. The longer we go without meaningfully closing the gap, the bigger the gap between the environments where many Indigenous kids hone their footy skills and the gilded private schools where so many white kids are drafted from becomes – and the bigger the risks of drafting the former become for AFL clubs. Even the most competent footy admin in history can’t close the gap. It’s just that the AFL, by virtue of its prominence, is one of the places where the gaps have widened.

As the AFL and AFLW Indigenous Player map shows, Indigenous footy talent comes from every corner of Australia. It’s incredibly hard – not to mention expensive – to build a system capable of finding it everywhere. A player being drafted is the culmination of a years-long process. Talent identification is just the beginning. But even that first step filters out so many potential Indigenous AFL players, because so many of them are trying to get by in places like Nyirripi. The Indigenous talent development model often involves identifying future elite prospects when they’re around 15 or 16 and then pulling them into the system, which, for those who’ve grown up in rural and remote areas, means a move to the big smoke and one of those prestigious private schools. That’s a highly resource-intensive process, not to mention one which carries a whiff of an episode of Australian history that’s best forgotten (and which has contributed to lingering intergenerational trauma among Indigenous communities).

There’s another contributor to the decline in Indigenous player numbers I’ve not mentioned: deep cuts to clubs’ “soft caps” because of Covid that have still yet to be restored. I haven’t seen that connection made very often. But a quick glance at the trend in Indigenous player numbers suggests it should be. When budgets tightened, clubs cut what they couldn’t easily justify on football ROI terms. Indigenous Player Liaison Officers – the staff members best placed to make newly-drafted Indigenous players feel culturally safe – were precisely the kind of role that didn’t necessarily generate the short-term value that contributed to wins.

Following the Hawthorn racism saga, where Indigenous players described being pressured to cut ties with family members, the AFL mandated that every club must have an Indigenous Player Liaison Officer present for at least three days a week. According to comments made by Caroline Wilson on the most recent episode of the Real Footy podcast, Richmond’s Indigenous player liaison officer currently attends the club just one day a week. Whether that’s an outlier or representative of a broader pattern of non-compliance, I’m not sure. But perhaps that at least offers a genuine starting point. Increasing Indigenous player numbers in the AFL is partly about recruiting more Indigenous players – but it’s also about retaining the Indigenous players already in the system.

Perhaps the First Nations Impact Fund includes an increase to the funding available to clubs for Indigenous Player Liaison Officers. I hope it does, but I don’t know. I’m not sure the AFL knows. But one thing is certain: the problem won’t be solved by talking or by forcing clubs to act against their interests. If the AFL is serious about increasing Indigenous player numbers, and serious about doing it the right way – by improving the breadth of talent identification, the depth of talent development, and making the AFL a more culturally safe environment – it’ll need to pony up. You can’t do something like this on the cheap. More Indigenous player liaison officers and a dedicated rookie list spot are a start. But the AFL should reconsider how it handles Indigenous talent development.

The Northern Academies provide a clue. They work because they provide those clubs with strong incentives to invest in footy in their own backyard. They get to direct junior development and then draft them at a discount. It’s a hell of a deal. And it’s a demonstration that when the AFL gets the incentives right, clubs respond. The question is whether similar logic can be applied at scale to Indigenous talent development. Here is one tentative answer, offered in the spirit of creative blue-sky thinking rather than a model that’s guaranteed to work. The West Australian clubs have been petitioning the AFL for expanded academies, based on the northern states’ model, to make better use of the abundant talent in the state. The AFL should accede to the request – with caveats. Make them Next Generation Academies, specifically dedicated to the incubation of Indigenous and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse talent. Ensure that the Academies are tied to demonstrable community investment obligations, minimum development hours, and mandatory cultural safety reporting. Find a compromise between the products of those new academies being in the open pool (which would deter the WA clubs from investing) and giving them exclusive access (which would be unfair to other clubs). The WA clubs will bear the brunt of the cost of running the academies, but every club has an interest in seeing them succeed.

Beyond WA, the harder problem is the Northern Territory, where the distances are just as great and the communities even more remote. I suspect something more radical is needed here: a permanent AFL-funded institution. Base it in Darwin and give it a satellite presence in Alice Springs. Appoint coaches and welfare staff who are based in the community year-round, a pathway from community football to a Territory academy that doesn’t require a 15 year-old to leave home, and cultural support that travels with players when they do eventually relocate. The pastoral care piece – the part the soft cap cuts gutted – gets built into the institution’s DNA. Fund it so it operates entirely independently of clubs. The AFL takes responsibility for everything before draft night. Clubs still draft the kids and mould them into AFL players. But at least they’re picking kids that aren’t beginning 20 metres behind the start line. Framed correctly, this isn’t the AFL taking power away from clubs. It’s the AFL finally taking responsibility for the parts of the system no one else has. Something like this will cost real money and an appetite for leadership and ambition I’m not sure the incumbent administration has shown. There’s no guarantee it’ll work. The complex, multilayered challenges of geography, history, and trauma that have shaped Indigenous Australians’ relationships with institutions like the AFL won’t melt away because they can suddenly attend a whizz-bang academy in Darwin. In truth, there’s scant evidence that, outside of the ritual admission that “there is work to do” you hear around Sir Doug Nicholls Round, that the AFL considers declining Indigenous representation to be a big enough problem to intervene in the talent development model. And it’s not at all clear what success would look like. Is it a particular number, or share, of Indigenous players in the AFL? Is it about improving cultural safety and retention of Indigenous players in the league? Improved articulation of development pathways? I’m not qualified to answer these questions, but they’d probably be good ones for the sub-committee of AFL and club figures convened by the league to consider.

But the alternatives that the AFL has so far presented – a $300,000 fund, a sub-committee, and a list spot that smart clubs will find ways to game – don’t adequately honour the contributions that Indigenous Australians make to the game. So much about how Indigenous people in the system are treated – the way players are spoken about, the way Indigenous club staff are often the first to be cut – suggests that they are still regarded as an ornament. They are not. They are a central part of the game’s past, present, and future. On the back of the Waalitj Marawar Indigenous guernsey is a small circle. Inside it are human footprints and stylised versions of the tracks made by the eagle, the kangaroo, and the emu. These three animals are incapable of walking backwards. According to Andrew Beck, the artist who designed the guernsey, the symbolism is deliberate. “The club shouldn’t walk backwards. The nation shouldn’t walk backwards.” Those words are worth heeding.

Straight from the chart

To begin, one final chart which illustrates the dwindling presence of Indigenous players in the game. The total number of AFL-listed players across this sample size ranged from 806 in 2019 to 777 in 2023. NB: these are manual counts, they might be slightly off in places. But the story it tells is fundamentally true.

Despite being very similar on the scoreboard, the opening two games of Round 11 couldn’t really have been more different structurally. The Hawthorn-Kuwarna game was typical of contests between good sides (well, at least in Hawthorn’s case) in Tasmania – high-pressure and high-turnover. The two sides combined for 151 intercept possessions. The Dreamtime at the ‘G game was rather different: just 118 intercept possessions were recorded.

The other especially noteworthy thing was how few possession chains were recorded in the North Melbourne-Gold Coast game. Both sides were accurate, so there were only 18 kick-ins. Remarkably, there were only three more intercept possessions (88 in total) recorded than clearance wins (85). Neither team could stop the other when they had the ball.

Turning our attention now to how successfully sides converted possession chains into scores, Kuwarna and Richmond both feasted on clearance wins (the former simply didn’t win enough of them), Waalitj Marawar capitalised on the turnovers they did force against Collingwood (but only recorded 52 intercept possessions), and Carlton utterly dominated Yartapuulti in close.

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Footnotes

• Some good stats from the ESPN Footy Podcast: across the two games Josh Fraser has coached Carlton, the Blues have been:

  • 1st for uncontested marks (13th this season under Michael Voss)

  • 18th for share of kicks taken long (9th under Voss)

  • 3rd for 45-degree kicks (15th under Voss)

  • 2nd for D50 to F50 transition success rate (13th under Voss)

  • 2nd for inside-50 kick retention percentage (6th under Voss)

• Courtesy of Ben Cameron: North Melbourne’s stirring after-the-siren victory against Gold Coast at Marvel on Saturday was the club’s biggest half-time comeback since Round 18, 2005. That day, they were 40 points down at half-time against Port Adelaide. On Saturday it was a measly 38 points.

• Speaking of that game, it was the ninth this year where both sides have scored 100+ points – the most in a season since 2016. There are still 119 games left to play. (H/T Sirswampthing)

• Unsurprisingly (given it was the highest-scoring third quarter in V/AFL history), GWS’s third term against Brisbane was also the highest-scoring quarter ever recorded against a reigning Premier. The previous best was the 80 points Richmond put up in the last quarter of its Round 2 game against Melbourne. Don’t remember that game? I’m not surprised – it was played in 1942. (H/T Sirswampthing)

• Some utterly bonkers stats about the third quarter of the GWS-Brisbane game, courtesy of friend of the newsletter, Emlyn Breese: The Giants were +53 for post-clearance disposals, +41 for uncontested possessions, +14 for tackles, and +9 for forward-50 tackles.

Courtesy of Fox Footy’s Max Laughton: this is the first time Essendon has been outright bottom of the V/AFL ladder at the conclusion of a round since Rounds 18-22 of 2016. Before then, it was bottom from Rounds 7-16 of 2006. Before that? Round 4, 1992. Before that??? You have to go back to 1933.

Recommended reading

• Cody Atkinson and Sean Lawson on that third quarter by the Giants on Sunday, and what it might mean for them and the Lions.

• Jonathan Horn on James Hird, the ghost at the Essendon banquet.

• Tommy Wolfe on the responsibility of commentators and creators to ensure the footy media ecosystem is safe and inclusive to all.

• In case you missed it: Cody and Jonathan and I have started a podcast. It’s called 110 Percenters. Find it wherever you get your podcasts, or here’s a direct link to our second episode.

• Nick Rynne wraps up another big week in WA footy over at Jumper Punches.

In addition to restarting paid subscriptions, I’ve also created a “Buy Me a Coffee” page so you can give me even more money. Here’s the link.

On the second episode of 110 Percenters, Cody, Jonathan, and I reflect on Neale Daniher’s life and legacy, discuss that third quarter at Engie Stadium on Sunday and what it might mean for the Giants and the Lions, and talk about Essendon’s decision to sack Brad Scott.

In case that isn’t enough, Cody revealed some lore about his footy allegiances, and Jonathan – perhaps unwittingly – dropped an iconic Gen Z meme.

New episodes of 110 Percenters will be published here. I can also officially say that you can find us wherever you get your podcasts, including:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Pocket Casts

• YouTube Podcasts

Our thanks to everyone who tuned in for our first episode.

Listener feedback will be key to making us better, so if you took the time to listen, please also consider taking the time to share your thoughts about what we did well and what we could do better.

Leave a comment on this post, write to us on Twitter (My handle is “onepercentas”, Cody’s is “CapitalCityCody”, and Jonathan’s is “JonathanHorn23”), email us – there’s plenty of ways to get in touch.

Links to Cody and Jonathan’s writing is after the jump. They are two of the best footy writers in the industry and I endorse their work in the strongest terms.

Now that we’re bona fide podcasters, I guess the only way to wrap this up is to say… please like, share, and subscribe!

Links:

• Read Cody’s work here.

• Read Jonathan’s work here.