AFL 2026, Round 2 Talking Points

The AFL’s rule changes have already had some highs with epic shootouts, but a sudden injury plague marks a concerning low the entire league must deal with.

From the Dons disaster getting even deeper, to the impressive young talls helping West Coast’s rebuild, the big issues from Round 2 are analysed in Foxfooty.com.au’sTalking Points!

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‘THEY WILL KEEP SNAPPING’: AFL’S BIG CHANGE BACKFIRING ON BODIES

Perhaps the AFL also needs to enshrine the law of unintended consequences as one of the laws of the game.

Many experts raised concerns about the look of footy in 2026 after the first two rounds, with a combination of rules directly intended to speed up the game actually sending it into hyperdrive at times.

The State of Origin game in Perth was proclaimed the fastest footy most of the game’s biggest names had ever played in – but that was mostly written off as being the best against the best, and something that wouldn’t happen once the rest of the competition got involved.

That hasn’t been the case, though, and the pace reached a new peak on Thursday night as Hawthorn and Sydney combined for an 11-goal first quarter. It was played at a blistering speed which made defending almost impossible – the Hawks recording eight scores from their first eight forward entries.

But Saturday’s scenes sparked another concern, as to whether the bodies of AFL players can even withstand the huge number of sprint efforts now required by the modern game.

According to Seven, sprint efforts are up by 5.1% (255.7 per team per game last year, to 268.8 this year) with high speed metres up by 3.7% (38.3km per team per game last year, to 39.7km this year), which may not sound like a lot but adds up when players are already at their limit by the end of games.

While it’s not a perfect metric, Foxfooty.com.au examined the injury reports after Round 2 last year and found 20 players were listed with a hamstring injury (either as a test, or officially sidelined).

Coming into Round 1 this year, 17 players were listed with a hamstring injury, but the number will almost certainly be higher coming out of the round with many more struck down across the weekend.

That included early-season Brownlow Medal fancy Christian Petracca who’ll miss 4-6 weeks, plus Richmond veterans Tom Lynch and Toby Nankervis, while Connor Rozee’s exact blow is uncertain as of publication but he fears it’s a serious hamstring tendon injury.

Hamstring injuries in 2026

State of Origin: Sam Taylor, Mitch Georgiades and Callum Ah Chee

Pre-Round 2 (notables): Isaac Heeney, Adam Saad, Adam Cerra, Jaeger O’Meara, Brent Daniels, Toby Bedford, Liam Henry

During Round 2: Christian Petracca, Tom Lynch, Anthony Caminiti, Toby Nankervis, Callum Ah Chee, Connor Rozee, Griffin Logue

“It’s a huge watch for the league,” Hawthorn and Port Adelaide great Shaun Burgoyne said on Fox Footy.

“It’s only early, the first couple of rounds of the year, but we don’t want to have too many of our stars missing through soft tissue injuries.”

Former Power coach Ken Hinkley was even stronger, declaring on Fox Footy: “Let’s make the game faster and harder and quicker and see what happens.

“I tell you what will happen. They will keep snapping because we don’t look after them enough with rotations and all the things that people talk about that are an issue.”

Crows legend Mark Ricciuto added: “Just a hammy epidemic isn’t it in the AFL?

“We haven’t seen anything like it for a while.”

Veteran sports medico Peter Brukner told Code Sports the first quarter of the Hawthorn-Sydney game was the fastest he had watched in 50 years of experience.

“I was just exhausted just watching it. It is completely different to five years ago. The intensity has gone up and the pressure on players has gone up,” Brukner said.

“We do a lot of prevention work these days and maybe without that it would be even worse but there is an increase in knowledge and prevention work and an increase in speed and intensity and they cancel each other out.

“The load during games has increased in quantity and quality and the load has to increase in training to prepare for that. There is a science to it with GPS and clubs measuring hamstring strength and if players fall off in hamstring strength it’s a danger sign so club medicos will back off a bit. Fatigue is a big factor in it as well. So all those elements add up to a risk for hamstrings.

“You will see players who are rested for games or managed and there will be fitness people who monitor individuals and back off players from training.

“There is a lot of art and a bit of science that goes into it and we are getting better but ultimately we are putting an enormous load on bodies that are not built for it.”

Injuries are an unavoidable part of the game, and both teams and players will eventually adjust, tweaking training methods and continuing to use data to manage bodies carefully.

But in attempting to force a specific style of footy, the AFL has taken several risks.

Faster footy means faster scoring, also widening the gaps between the best and the worst teams. Perhaps a high-scoring but non-competitive 60-point win is more enjoyable to watch than a lower-scoring but non-competitive 40-point win, but that’s all in the eye of the beholder.

More to the point, you cannot force every game to be a goal-for-goal shootout. You’ll get some crackers every weekend but you’ll also get some duds, regardless of the rules. (Plus, given one of the stated aims of the recent rule changes was to shorten games, adding more goals to games won’t help that.)

And in the last few years, the AFL has done its best to take away coaches’ options, with the 6-6-6 rule being the best example. In the past if you were leaking centre bounce scores, you could flood the defence with bodies to slow the opposition down, and the more creative coaches tried unique tactics in response. But now with the enforced starting positions you’re seeing more extreme runs of goals.

The league seems to want a certain style of footy, and the ideal version of that footy is incredible. But with every chance comes an unintended consequence – and injuries may be just the latest negative one.

DONS DISASTER SOMEHOW DEEPENS

Here we are again, discussing Essendon’s defensive woes only two weeks into an AFL season.

Last year, they conceded 272 points in their opening two fixtures of the season. In 2026, they’ve given up another 278, so you’d be forgiven for feeling a deja vu sensation when watching their 63-point and 62-point losses to Hawthorn and Port Adelaide respectively.

“Nothing’s changed, and Essendon are still easy to play against. I think they have huge concerns,” two-time North Melbourne premiership player David King said Fox Footy’s First Crack on Sunday night.

“My fears weren’t alleviated in any way by Brad’s press conference at the end of the match. I just want to take particular note of some of the discussions he had about the way they’re defending, how they’re defending and whose responsibilities they are.”

The comments King referred to from Scott post-game include the following from the Essendon coach: “Probably on the surface, the way results have unfolded the first two weeks of the season … it appears we’ve taken at least a step back with the view to go forward, and we want to build a club and a culture that is based on team-first, and we can’t have selfishness from players who think about themselves.

“And we’ve done a lot of work to make sure we don’t have that. But when things are really hard and you get demoralised, human nature is to think about yourself.”

Essendon’s defensive woes extend well beyond the final scoreboard. Scott’s side were only able to register 41 tackles at Adelaide Oval, despite the Power having significantly more of the ball than them.

In addition, they allowed Port to register the most marks in a match across their club’s history, conceding 165 only nine days after gifting Hawthorn 157 of their own.

It, driven by the admission of selfish players, left King pleading for some sort of tangible change in their starting 23 for next Saturday night’s duel with the Kangaroos.

“You’ve only got one way to go from there, and that’s to omit the players that are playing selfish footy and keeping you on this path — the tram tracks of not making any alterations or visible changes,” King continued.

“They’re just words, they’re always words. They talk about pressure rating… I had a look at them last week, 161 was their seventh-worst game for pressure in five years. I thought: ‘It can’t get any worse than that, going to play Port Adelaide’.

“149 today, their second-worst result on record — just unbelievable numbers. You would think that the one thing they could guarantee today, is an attitude and manic level of effort and desire to throw yourself across a boot if you have to.

“In the end, you end up with another smacking, and I think the Essendon fans are getting a little bit sick of the same stuff.”

King then shows behind the goals footage of Essendon’s defensive structure that emphasised their “structural and communication issues”.

Power star Jason Horne-Francis was the early beneficiary of the Dons’ defensive lapses highlighted in the vision, kicking three goals before quarter time. The 22-year-old finished as one of half a dozen players for Port who kicked two or more goals.

“To apportion the blame somewhere else is what happens when losing takes hold of a footy club … in the end, everyone cops a whack and they chase tail,” King continued.

“We’re at the point, and I keep saying it, where something’s got to give — something has to give. I don’t know if it’s the leaders, I don’t know if it’s at selection. I don’t see any massive statements at selection (coming).

“Someone has to pay a price at Essendon. They’re too easy to play against, and it’s been that way for too long … Right now, Essendon are in the cauldron. And I just don’t know if handling it like this is the way through it, and the way forward.

“All we get to judge are the two hours of a weekend, and it is well short of AFL standard.”

Injuries to the dashing Mason Redman (knee) and Dyson Sharp (ankle) rubbed salt into the wounds of the Bombers, with star defender Jordan Ridley still at least one more week away from a return after a calf injury.

WHERE EAGLES REBUILD MAY BE OUTPACING TIGERS’

The common wisdom, and the consensus on the east coast, has been that Richmond is ahead of West Coast in the rebuild race despite starting it later.

The Tigers cut deep, quickly, adding eight players inside the top 23 of the past two drafts.

In contrast the Eagles needed four drafts to take eight players in the top 23 – an admittedly hand-picked number, given they’ve selected a few players in the late 20s and early 30s in that period too.

But we all know picking a player early isn’t a guarantee they’ll be good, and filling positions of need can be incredibly difficult even if you’re consistently picking high up the order (just ask North Melbourne).

That’s where West Coast might be ahead of Richmond, along with the likes of North Melbourne and Essendon, thanks to an extremely promising crop of talls that could one day join the All-Australian legacy of recent stars Josh Kennedy, Jack Darling and Jake Waterman.

While Archer Reid, Jobe Shanahan and especially Cooper Duff-Tytler have a long way to go they’ve shown great promise in their brief careers thus far.

It would be generous to suggest Reid has been better than his same-name mate taken in the same draft, Harley, but there have been flashes of brilliance. Meanwhile Shanahan has proven just how deep the 2024 draft was, proving a shining light from all the way down at Pick 30.

There were six big men (195cm or taller) taken before him in that draft, including four by the Tigers themselves – some of whom have been limited by injury making it a less-than-fair comparison. But Shanahan has probably been the best of the bunch.

Then there’s Duff-Tytler, who is already doing things in his second game that players his age shouldn’t do – especially with his size – which is both not surprising (given his billing before going with Pick 4) and still surprising (because he’s not even 19 years old until August).

It all makes for a very promising group in a very important area of the ground, something very few clubs can say at this point of a rebuild.

Nobody is suggesting the Eagles are ready to contend for the top 10, but it’s days like Sunday – with the Optus Stadium crowd rocking and the kids showcasing their talent – that rebuilds are all about.

If these days don’t happen, then the rebuild doesn’t work in the end. It’s just one step, but an important one.

‘BULLYING HIM’: HOW CROW SEIZED SHOCK OPPORTUNITY AGAINST AFL’S BEST

For the majority of Adelaide’s 2025 season, key defender Jordan Butts was unable to lock down a spot in the side’s best 22, largely due to the rapid rise of Irish teammate Mark Keane.

It was hardly through any fault of his own, given Keane’s eventual inclusion in the extended 44-man All-Australian squad. But by the end of last season, Butts found himself genuinely on the outer of Adelaide’s starting side, even attracting loose trade interest from the Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne.

Entering the final year of his current contract at West Lakes, Keane suffered a brutal leg break during match simulation in early February — a setback that will sideline the 26-year-old until at least the club’s mid-season bye.

It handed Butts a surprise reprieve, and he arguably produced the best performance of his 87-game AFL career last Friday night.

The Shepparton product was thrown the daunting task of shutting down 208cm beast Sam Darcy at Adelaide Oval, who kicked four goals from 16 disposals the week before against GWS.

That 13cm height difference proved no barrier for Butts, who not only kept Darcy to just one goal, but also managed to intercept high balls coming into the Crows’ defensive 50.

“He’s almost bullying him,” Fox Footy caller Anthony Hudson said of him on Darcy.

AFL Hall of Fame Legend Jason Dunstall added: “He’s got to be careful, Sam Darcy. He’s getting under the ball too quickly, and just allowing Butts to work him under it.”

The key Crow went into half-time with six intercept marks, equalling the club’s all-time record by an individual.

“He’s had a fantastic night,” Melbourne great Garry Lyon said at half-time.

Butts’ night finished with a career-high 19 disposals, 11 intercept possessions and seven intercept marks — also complemented by his first-ever AFL goal. In fact, it could’ve been two if he had converted a 100-metre penalty from a frustrated Darcy.

“He backed Buttsy in, we love the way he defends. He’s super disciplined, he’s a competitor,” Adelaide head coach Matthew Nicks told journalists post-game.

“He hates being beaten, and they’ve had a couple good match-ups those two … I thought he was huge. He wasn’t the only one, but with 11 intercepts — and should’ve kicked a couple.

“We’re lucky he was behind the ball, especially through the start of the game. He was huge for us in the air.”