It took a month, but finally, the 2026 AFL season has parity, 18 teams all having played four games prior to Thursday evening. The ladder gives us at least some idea what's going on. Or does it?
I took my first meaningful glance at the official AFL ladder on the league's own website a couple of days ago, to be immediately reminded it no longer even looks like it used to. There's a red line drawn under the top six teams. There's a second blue line under the 10th. Umm ... ok?
That's a consequence of the new Wildcard Round which will sort out the eight teams who'll contest the last four weekends of September as per usual. We've had (and I thought had resolved) a debate already about whether the 7 vs. 10 and 8 vs. 9 games constituted finals. AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon seemed emphatic they did. So why the need for two lines?
It's all just visual semantics, I guess, but it's another complication to a competition which has more than its share of them these days. Gather Round is another, of course, with 14 teams playing on neutral turf and four not, two South Australian teams at home to two interstate opponents.
That said, we'll now have at least seven rounds of a full nine games before another five bye rounds. That's nearly two months of being able to compare Team A to Team B, right? Hmm ... only to a point. Because the twists and turns of the fixture make the ladder these days, particularly earlier in the season, as much a reflection of circumstance as a reflection of form.
I've loved North Melbourne's bright start to this season, but you can't also escape the fact the Roos have hardly played the cream of the competition to this point in earning their three wins from four, and did manage to lose to a previously hapless West Coast.
Western Bulldogs, meanwhile, have managed to beat Brisbane and Adelaide in enemy territory, and at home smashed another finalist from last year in Greater Western Sydney before effortlessly dispatching of Essendon.
Their four wins from four might somehow illogically actually be even better than it looks superficially, and as it stands they're already the AFL's only undefeated team.
And what of the two teams who went into Thursday night's clash with seasons supposedly hanging by a thread?
Just one good win over Carlton is enough to have Adelaide very much back on track. Importantly, the Crows rediscovered some firepower, their 17.12 (114) only the second time in the past 10 games they've topped 100 points, small forwards Josh Rachele and Ben Keays combining for seven goals.
They might still be a mediocre 2-3, but the Crows' three defeats have come against three pretty good teams in Western Bulldogs, Geelong and Fremantle, and by a combined tally of just 16 points.
They hauled back a four-goal deficit against the Dogs to actually go a goal up with only a few minutes left. They led the Cats into the last term at GMHBA Stadium. And had it not been for a desperate smother from Fremantle captain Alex Pearce, might have pinched a win on Good Friday, too.
Carlton, meanwhile? For all the continued angst about the Blues, once again, they were able to at least show (without getting over the line) that they're capable of some pretty powerful football, that opening term 7.4 against the Crows as much as Adelaide has conceded in a quarter since Round 20 of 2024.
No doubt it's going to be a bumpy ride for Michael Voss and co. over another week of incessant media grilling. But is it game over in 2026 already for the Blues? Even sitting 16th at 1-4?
Hardly. And why not? Well, let's revisit that blue line under the 10th placed team for a moment. Last year, there was certainly a clear division between two halves of the ladder, a yawning three-game gap between 10th-placed Sydney and 11th Carlton. But the couple of seasons before that?
In 2024, under the wildcard system, Fremantle, which finished 10th, would have been classed a finalist. But even 14th-placed Melbourne wasn't out of the finals picture until losing the final game of the season, the Demons only one-and-a-half games adrift of the Dockers.
And the season before it was even tighter, Adelaide in 2023 finishing 10th but only a game clear of 14th-placed Fremantle.
So, fifth-last on an 18-team ladder still a finals chance going into the last game of the season? That certainly keeps everyone "alive" and interested. But I'm already sensing a lot of the "Team X season finished" headlines this season are going to have be swallowed with even larger lashings of salt than usual.
Great "content", sure. Great guide as to how the premiership race is going to finish? Not so sure. Certainly not definitively now. Maybe not even later. In fact, the cynic in me thinks in some ways this season you might as well hang a "back in 5 months" sign over the ladder and just pick it up again come late August.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.
