Injury elephant in the room; fix for brutal 10-year coin flip — Five thoughts on AFL’s finals shake up

An AFL wildcard round is here.

After plenty of talk around the potential of introducing a US Sports-style wildcard round, which, is effectively a finals qualifier, it’ll be officially introduced in 2026.

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It’s arguably the biggest change to the AFL in the modern era.

Outside of the obvious commercial benefits and fans being entertained and engaged for longer, below are five quickfire thoughts and initial takeaways on the new concept …

AFL is turning into US Sports

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, by the way.

But it can’t be denied that the AFL is emulating US Sports more than ever before … and slowly morphing into it.

Think live music and entertainment during games.

Free agency and more flexibility with trades than ever before, like pick swaps, with a mid-season exchange window only a matter of time.

Or themed rounds like Opening Round and Gather Round.

Yep, you can hear the traditionalists groaning from here …

Bringing in a wildcard round is probably the biggest copycat move yet, with the NFL the first sports league to implement it during the AFL-NFL merger in 1970.

You could argue the US has perfected the way to sell sports and provide maximum entertainment to fans with regards to dressing up the theatre of everything around the sport itself.

Clearly, a lot of the younger generation are more dialled into US Sports and international sports at large than ever before. Unlike the traditional, ‘footy in the winter, cricket in the summer’.

So this is as much about catering for those audiences and future of the game as anything else.

Top four (or six) advantage is back

This is the biggest win for the integrity of the game and finals series.

The wildcard round will be played over the pre-finals bye. Which, is a win it itself and solves the pre-finals bye lull. Who’s complaining about more footy?

More importantly, the clubs that finish seventh and eighth will no longer get a week off before the traditional September campaign begins. And whichever clubs qualify for seventh and eighth will face fresh opponents.

We know how much the pre-finals bye, first introduced in 2016, has evened the finals race and massively lessened the advantage of making top four.

Last year, Brisbane became the second team in nine seasons to win the flag from outside the top four. It hadn’t happened for nearly two decades before the Western Bulldogs’ 2016 flag run.

And between 2000 and 2015, just five times went out in straight sets. But since 2016, it’s happened nine times. Therefore, home semi-finalists since 2016 have gone 11-9 — slightly better than a coin flip.

What’s more, no teams between 2000 and 2015 made a grand final from outside the top four. In the 10 seasons since, it’s happened four times (Western Bulldogs 2016 and 2021, GWS 2019 and Brisbane 2024).

Therefore, teams that scrape into seven or eighth face a much taller task to go all the way. They’ll now need to win five-straight finals — with potentially five travels — to salute.

While sides that finish fifth and sixth are technically unaffected, top four teams get a week off and the prospect of playing a team that’s had no break and played twice already.

But could we see more injuries? And a worse finals series?

The AFL calendar and physical demands of the game are greater than ever before.

Every club plays 23 home and away games, so there’s now potential for players to play 28 matches in a season.

That would top 11 Lions that played a maximum 27 games in 2024 as part of their premiership run from outside the top four.

You can’t help but wonder if this workload uptick could result in more injuries. Particularly given players are going their hardest in September, with many nursing niggles at that time of year.

Or if teams under more physical duress makes for a worse finals series overall.

Love or hate the pre-finals bye, one thing it’s ensured is a high quality level of footy, given every side is cherry ripe.

Could we see a couple of teams limp into semi final or prelim final and get absolutely rolled?

We might have more engagement for longer, but the penultimate games could be lessened due to sheer fatigue.

It makes sense with 19+ teams

Forget for a moment that the top eight ever existed.

If you strip things back and think pragmatically, having only eight teams qualify for finals in a 19-team competition — likely to grow further — doesn’t make a lot of sense.

In basically every sports code that involves a post-season, at least half the teams qualify finals.

The idea of rewarding mediocrity, at least as things stand, is a valid one.

At least next season, there will technically be more than half — 10 of 18 teams — play finals.

So the league could’ve eased into a wildcard round and expanded the finals by one team and done an eighth v ninth as the sole wildcard game.

With Tasmania’s planned entry in 2028 to extend the league to 19 teams, a 10-side finals series is closer to half (52 per cent) than an eight-side finals series (42 per cent).

Naturally, it’s only a matter of time before we get to 20 teams, so a wildcard is really just lining up with the AFL’s expansion.

While 2025 was a unicorn year, with 14 wins needed to make finals, it also illustrates that there were more finals caliber sides than ever before.

Surely Western Bulldogs, who won 14 games and had the third-best percentage of 137, and Sydney qualifying for wildcard wouldn’t be classified as mediocrity?

The Dogs already got within an inch of September, while Sydney was the last team to beat Brisbane before the 2025 finals.

But it shouldn’t count as a ‘finals win’

Let’s call it for what it is — a 10-team extended finals series — not a finals play-in game.

For if it were a wildcard round, that surely shouldn’t be included under finals records or count as a finals win.

It’s clearly an enhanced stage to a regular game, but would victory really feel the same as a finals win? You sense it’d have an asterisk attached anytime someone says ‘X club’s last finals win was’.

Imagine if Gold Coast had won its first final in a wildcard game.

Or, the elephant in the room, if Essendon snapped its drought without a finals win during wildcard weekend.

Hard to imagine anyone going full Patrick Beverley mode (if you know you know).

This is getting bogged down in pretty minor details. But clubs’ runs without finals wins, or individual coaching records in September, should matter. And it should be hard to win finals.

For example, Adelaide’s Matthew Nicks and Fremantle’s Justin Longmuir are yet to win in September and that’s part of their legacies to date.

Finals and wildcard should be two separate things. If not, just call it an extended finals series.