Preseason analysis, season preview, who will play finals, tips for premiership and top 10

Welcome to predicted ladder season, where everyone is always wrong, including us.

It’s just a matter of how wrong you’ll be. And by following a few rules when sculpting your ladder, so you can get as close to correct as possible.

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First, a quick recap, because you need to know why this is worth reading (other than to make fun of us in August).

Nobody is ever going to tip the entire top eight in order – and especially not now it’s a top 10 – but we’ve done pretty well following the rules we’ll explain below.

According to the excellent Squiggle website, ours was the fourth-best among all ‘expert’ ladders (let’s go with ‘media’ ladders) in 2025.

We had nine teams within one spot of their actual finishing position, and got six of the top eight right including Gold Coast. But our predicted minor premier Hawthorn slipping to 8th in the final round cost us and like everyone else, we didn’t foresee Adelaide finishing on top.

If you click that link and look at our 2025 ladder and think it was terrible, you’re simply underestimating how impossible ladder predicting is. Ours was closer than 99.99% of all possible cominbations. We’ll take that.

Rule 1: On average, there will be three changes to the top eight (teams dropping out/climbing in), and at a minimum two.

The main way we reckon most people get their predicted ladder wrong is by being overly conservative. It’s too easy to look at last year’s top eight and rearrange it a little based on how the finals went, maybe moving up a team or two based on the trade period.

But there are always more changes than you think. We’ll have to change this rule going forward, but every year at least two teams drop out of the top eight.

Last year Adelaide, Collingwood, Fremantle, and Gold Coast came in for Sydney, Port Adelaide, the Bulldogs and Carlton, bringing the average to exactly three changes per season.

Picking who is going to climb in or fall out is the hard part, but unsurprisingly, the teams that finished 9th and 10th are more likely to move upwards.

Over the last three seasons, five of the six teams that finished 9th or 10th the year before played finals – the Pies and Dockers in 2025, the Bulldogs in 2024, and the Blues and Saints in 2023.

That bodes well for the Bulldogs and Swans in 2026, especially with the expansion from a top eight to a top 10 through the ‘wildcard’ round.

We’ll have to reconsider how this rule works this time next year.

Rule 2: On average, one team that missed the top eight the year before will climb into the top four.

This is perhaps our favourite rule, because it shows just how much can change between seasons.

Every year for over a decade, a team has gone from missing the finals completely to being a premiership contender, and last year we had two of them – Adelaide (15th to 1st) and Collingwood (9th to 4th).

The Magpies were one of the most likely teams to make the leap, as an annual top-four contender who had one particularly bad season but then reverted to their expected level of performance – joining Geelong (2024), Port Adelaide (2023) and… well, Collingwood (2022).

Adelaide was more like Melbourne (2021), with a highly-rated young list finally delivering on its promise.

However those Demons were one of the rare teams to jump from outside the eight to win the flag – in the top eight era only four sides did it, along with Richmond (2017), Geelong (2007) and Adelaide (1997).

For 2026, Sydney and Port Adelaide best fit the bill as the perennial contenders who can climb back up to where they ‘belong’.

Rule 3: The teams that finish 5th-8th are much more likely to drop out than the teams that finish 1st-4th.

An obvious rule, but still an important one.

While last year the top two teams from the previous ladder (Sydney and Port Adelaide) dropped out, so did the teams who had finished 6th and 8th the year before – the two most common positions to drop out.

In total, of the 88 drop-out teams in the top eight era, 62 of them had finished between 5th and 8th.

That would put GWS, Fremantle, Gold Coast and Hawthorn most at risk.

To be clear, we’re talking about home and away ladder positions; the post-finals ladder is not a real thing and can’t hurt you.

The more modern trend involves at least one Grand Finalist missing finals a year later, with Sydney (2024) joining premiers Collingwood (2023), Geelong (2022) and Richmond (2020) in this ignominious feat.

Perhaps that speaks to how long the AFL season now is, and how tiring it is to play until the last weekend – certainly a lot of those teams we just mentioned suffered bad runs with injuries one year later.

But it’s also a sign of how much has to go right to make the Grand Final, and how much your luck can turn in 12 months (and health is a big part of that).

It would be extremely surprising if either Brisbane or Geelong missed the finals… but then again, it was extremely surprising when the other Grand Finalists did, too.

SO WHO ARE YOU PICKING TO PLAY FINALS?

Well, the good news is more than half of the league makes it in 2026. So it’s a lot harder to get it wrong!

The only other time that has occurred was 1994, the first season using the top eight but a year before Fremantle became the 16th club. (Technically it happened in 1916 and 1917 too, but that was due to World War I related withdrawals.)

We are being relatively cowardly with our changes this year, only just squeezing one member of last year’s top eight to outside the top 10. And even that was a last-minute change thanks to their pre-season injuries.

There was just such a big gap between the best and the worst last year – we have GWS, Collingwood and Fremantle declining, but that’s off a base of 16 wins.

Compare that to St Kilda, the most popular bottom eight pick to leap up the ladder due to their recruiting spree… the Saints won nine games (and were kinda lucky to even win nine). Seven wins is a big gap to close!

This time last year we were happy to tip Gold Coast to make the eight – but that was off an 11-win season (and we believed in their list more than we do the Saints’). Even Adelaide made sense climbing into the eight from 15th, because they’d been so close the year before and had the top-end talent.

But history tells us that someone is going to play finals from last year’s bottom eight – either Carlton, St Kilda, Port Adelaide, Melbourne, Essendon, North Melbourne, Richmond or West Coast.

They’re helped immensely by the expansion to a top 10. It allowed us to sneak one of them in.

1. Brisbane Lions

2. Geelong

These are the best two teams in footy and we have been given no reason to believe otherwise.

Brisbane’s list is frankly absurd. Chris Fagan is well within his rights to defend their advantages and if anything, he’s just matching the volume of the complaints.

But it is inarguably ridiculous they got a dual Norm Smith medallist for picks 34, 35, 38 and 40, and then two years later got his also-really-good brother for picks 40, 42, 43 and 46.

Will and Levi Ashcroft are two of the main reasons the rules around matching bids for players at the top of drafts are being tightened, but the Lions got in before it became unrealistic for a perennial premiership contender to keep drafting players in the top five without a severe cost. And they’re going to keep benefiting from that.

Throw in their sudden desirability as a free agency destination and we can understand why the entire footy world is pretty frustrated with the premiers.

Of course, everyone forgets the Lions initially rebuilt the old-fashioned way – by being bad for ages, and drafting top-end talent – and they’re now winning flags because they’re using all that talent really damn well. They deserve scorn and credit.

They and the Cats are defining this era of footy by pushing hard on the accelerator. Speed of ball movement is the name of the modern game, helped by changes like the stand rule.

Whether it’s Dayne Zorko pulling the trigger as soon as he gets ball-in-hand and nailing downfield targets, or Bailey Smith and Max Holmes bursting out of stoppages, the 2025 grand finalists are the standard that must be matched.

If either of these sides is going to decline, it would be the Cats, though without a plague of injuries even that feels unlikely.

They’re old, but not dangerously old – their overall list is both younger and less experienced than Brisbane’s, although they have many more uncapped players skewing that metric.

Patrick Dangerfield is probably going into his final season, and his Grand Final was poor, but he was best on ground in the prelim and the Cats have proven they can manage his body. Tom Stewart and Jeremy Cameron will both be 33 come April but should have a few years left.

This isn’t like past off-seasons when Joel Selwood or Tom Hawkins departed. They really felt the absence of the former, but have revitalised their midfield better than anyone expected through Smith and Holmes. (This is probably still the most vulnerable part of their list if injuries strike, since new addition James Worpel is much more in the Tom Atkins category -important but not a line- and game-breaker.)

The Cats were the best team of the 2025 season until Grand Final day, when they lost to an even more talented group… who they had thrashed three weeks earlier. Don’t let recency bias cloud your judgement here.

We don’t buy into the idea of a big Grand Final loss haunting them because they have so much experience at the pointy end of the year, and also because that game was in the balance until third quarter red time.

It blew out because one team knew they were about to win a flag and because the other team knew they weren’t; it was not a traditional Richmond-over-GWS, or even Brisbane-over-Sydney, type of defeat (and Sydney would’ve been fine in 2025 if they hadn’t copped a million injuries).

They have a very tough fixture – anyone complaining that they end the season with three easy games is not worth listening to – and their defence was wobbly against the best last year.

Those injuries we mentioned earlier have already begun to strike the forward line. Tyson Stengle’s personal leave makes his future uncertain, while Gryan Miers (thumb) is in doubt for the opener along with Jeremy Cameron (quad); Shannon Neale is good but not ready to be a No.1 option should the Coleman medallist miss serious time.

But a tough fixture just makes up for the yearly edge of not having to travel much (because they’re Victorian) and having a true home ground advantage (despite being Victorian). The Cats’ floor is high unless it falls out from underneath them.

Last year’s top-heavy ladder shouldn’t fool you into thinking there were a bunch of A-grade flag contenders. There were two, and they met in the Grand Final. That doesn’t mean they can’t be beaten – but until there’s on-field evidence to the contrary we expect them both to be there again.

3. Gold Coast Suns

We thought it was the Suns’ time to finally play finals in 2025, and while they did their best to throw it away late in the season, that epic elimination final win over Fremantle was the type of night that builds a footy club.

Keep in mind they would’ve finished fourth, and faced Adelaide in a qualifying final, had they simply beaten Port Adelaide in the last round.

So now the expectation isn’t just that they should play finals in 2026, but cement a spot high up the table, as their impressive young list continues to develop – with help from one of the more ridiculous off-seasons we can recall.

Seriously, imagine saying Gold Coast would add Christian Petracca and Jamarra Ugle-Hagan just 24 months ago… AND take two of the top five players in the ensuing draft.

Obviously, the reason the Suns could land them is because their values have declined since that point, but it still sounds absurd.

Yes, the academies are important for Queensland footy more broadly, but the reason the two Queensland clubs defend them so fiercely is because they’re working. The Lions and Suns would have to try pretty hard to be bad any time this decade.

If anything the Petracca trade is probably being undersold. No, he’s still not a great kick, but he was being measured against his own very high standards last year – he still polled 16 Brownlow votes and on the Player Ratings, was as good a mid-forward as Izak Rankine and Kozzie Pickett.

The fact the Suns were able to cough up three first round picks and not really feel it on draft night is pretty absurd – but that’s the skewed market they play in. They have not had to value picks the same way as everyone else, and while that has created trades which would be overpays in a vacuum (such as Daniel Rioli for picks 6 and 23), it also led to the Petracca deal being possible.

The fact Petracca might be the third-best player in that midfield, and may not even BE a full-time midfielder… come on, 17 other clubs, how did you let this happen?!

The natural progression of time itself is the Suns’ biggest advantage. Noah Anderson and Matt Rowell have grown into proper A-graders since exiting their early 20s; now it’s time for Mac Andrew and Bailey Humphrey to take the leap.

That 2023 draft class, the first time their academy’s strength really truly a draft talking point, is now entering its third season – the time you’d expect at least one of Jed Walter, Ethan Read, Jake Rogers or Will Graham to start truly shining.

In particular, they need to figure out what Walter can be, because he wasn’t being picked late last year and now Ugle-Hagan might be in front of him too. Should the ex-Bulldog perform well in year one, it would make sense to consider trading Walter before he loses the sheen of potential. He lived in Perth as a kid and grew up an Eagles fan, you know…

Overall, talent isn’t an issue but context could be. The Suns’ 2025 fixture was easier than West Coast’s, North Melbourne’s or Essendon’s – they went 7-1 against the bottom five, only dropping that weird early-season game at Marvel against Richmond.

In contrast we have their 2026 fixture as the second-hardest, with double-ups against four 2025 finalists plus likely improvers St Kilda. They could easily drop a win or two from last year’s total purely from this added degree of difficulty.

For whatever reason, we have this gut feeling they will be the latest team that gets off to a flier then drops off midseason – but still makes the top four because of the headstart, much like the 2025 Magpies (14-2 to 15-7) and 2024 Swans (13-1 to 14-6).

If Damien Hardwick’s men can beat Geelong at home in Opening Round, they have a massive chance of being 6-0, then facing West Coast, Richmond, Melbourne, Sydney and Essendon.

Throw in the two midseason Darwin games they always win, and the Suns should absolutely be 9-2 or better at the bye.

They’ll presumably have their usual winter dip but with a strong home ground advantage, talent galore and a proven coach, it would really surprise us if the Suns took a step backwards from last year’s seventh-place finish.

At the high end? Well, this is the first time Gold Coast has gone into an AFL season with a genuine chance of winning the flag.

It could happen at any point from here through the rest of the decade.

4. Western Bulldogs

We’re ready to be hurt again.

Quick, when was the last time a Marvel Stadium tenant made the top four?

If you said 2010, you’ve either got too much time on your hands or have heard this factoid before. Remarkably we’ve now played 15 full seasons without any of the five sides living under the lid – Carlton, Essendon, North Melbourne, St Kilda or the Bulldogs – earning the double chance.

Sure, three of those teams have made preliminary finals in that period, and obviously one won a flag from seventh. But the lack of home and away performance speaks to a genuine issue that isn’t spoken about enough.

It is clearly a disadvantage to have Docklands as your home ground.

We suspect an element of this is interstate teams being more used to playing there, as compared to the MCG, so the Victorian Marvel sides have a weaker home ground advantage; but we haven’t done a deep dive into the numbers on that.

There’s also a bit of correlation not being causation – the smaller Victorian teams play more at Marvel, and they’re already worse off than the bigger Victorian clubs (whether it’s financially, or with attracting rival talent, or whatever).

But it seems pretty clear you’re better off having the MCG as your home ground… and given the Marvel teams keep trying to host more home games at the MCG, they know that.

We bring all of this up to explain how much we really do believe in the Bulldogs. We are picking them to break this streak despite the Marvel problem, and despite a couple of early injury worries (notably Bailey Dale and Sam Darcy) and a tricky early fixture (Lions away, Giants, Crows away).

But you’re probably just thinking we’re wrong because their defence isn’t good enough.

Luke Beveridge’s side was inarguably much worse against high-quality opposition in 2025, but they were never bad against the best teams – their biggest loss was by 22 points.

Their percentage flattered them but they were still a good team. Remember, they won 14 games with Marcus Bontempelli and Sam Darcy missing big portions of the season.

You don’t win 14 games accidentally… and historically, you don’t win 14 games and miss the finals! Last year was a weird aberration in that regard.

We don’t have to look too far back to remember a time when the Bulldogs were elite defensively… because they were No.1 in 2024. We’re not expecting them to be that team again, but they just have to be a little bit better while continuing to be an elite scoring side; they were No.2 for points scored in 2024, and No.1 in 2025.

Is there an obvious recruiting-related reason they’d have a better defence? Not a massive one, though Connor Budarick should help fix the issues they’ve had restraining smaller opposition forwards for some time – arguably since Taylor Duryea’s effort to stop Charlie Cameron in the 2021 semi.

But we mostly just expect them to improve based on natural variance and, as Beveridge has said this pre-season, by focusing more on it.

“We had a lot of momentum going into that (elimination) final against Hawthorn (in 2024) and for one reason or another that sort of fell apart in that game,” Luke Beveridge told the Herald Sun last month.

“Last year, we had the same number of wins (14) and were a better team, but didn’t play finals.

“We believe we can get there this year. We can be that team. There is a conviction in that.”

We completely agree the Bulldogs were better in 2025 than 2024, despite what the ladder says.

They only need to stay at that level to play finals in 2026, and the upside here is enormous.

5. Sydney Swans

It’s not quite as simple as saying ‘the Swans will be top-four contenders again because they won’t have as many injuries’.

After they got healthy around the mid-season bye, the 2025 Swans were certainly a better team, including an upset of eventual premiers Brisbane at the Gabba.

But it‘s worth noting five of their seven post-bye wins were over non-finalists, and on percentage they rose from a pedestrian team to a good-but-not-great one. They were still comfortably the 10th-best team in the league, as the final ladder reflected.

Pre-bye Swans: 5 wins, 8 losses, 90.1%

Post-bye Swans: 7 wins, 3 losses, 106.7%

They would need to improve again to return to the level we’re predicting. But we think that’s well and truly on the cards.

Just like Geelong and Collingwood over the past few years, Sydney is well poised to recover from a grand final hangover and fight for the top four, but we couldn’t quite squeeze them in because we just need to see it (in real games, not the pre-season) to be sure they’re near their 2024 best.

A full pre-season will make a massive difference, especially for the likes of Callum Mills, Errol Gulden and Tom Papley (though Mills and Papley had summer issues) – can all be genuine A-graders when healthy.

And then there’s the whole ‘having an elite key forward again’ thing.

Yes, at times with Buddy Franklin the Swans got too reliant on him and targeted him too often – just like Carlton targeted Charlie Curnow too often.

But after a few years of pretending Hayden McLean, Joel Amartey and Logan McDonald were a premiership-level forward line the Swans have a genuine star option. And it’s not just about what Curnow can do – it’s the flow-on effects of the other Swans getting lesser defenders.

There’s still some hope for McDonald given his youth and draft pedigree but it would be surprising if he or Amartey ever became A-graders, despite their flashes of brilliance. Now with Curnow alongside them, they don’t have to get there for the Swans to succeed (and if one of them proves us wrong and develops, they’re golden).

Adding Curnow certainly comes with risk; any trade using multiple first-round picks for a 29-year-old with multiple big injuries in his past is. Will Hayward was a pretty handy player to give up, too.

We could point out that the Swans have rarely hit on their first-round picks anyway (though the odds are they would’ve eventually done so), but more importantly if they’re as good as they’re planning to be, those will be picks in the teens.

If the Swans are going to struggle in 2026 it’ll be partially because of those draft struggles, though. Much like Collingwood hitting big on Nick Daicos and rarely finding best-23 players elsewhere, Sydney nailed Chad Warner and Errol Gulden as picks in the 30s… but has done little else well on draft night this decade.

We could also point out that, while they needed a No.1 forward option like Curnow, what they really needed was a No.1 defensive option. That simply wasn’t available on the market. Jai Serong might be a quality player picked up cheaply but he’s more likely to be solid than spectacular; they unfortunately haven’t replaced Paddy McCartin since his medically-forced retirement.

Still, the 2024 Swans proved they could be the best team in the competition for a period purely on the strength of their midfield – the back six and forward six just need to be good enough to be carried along for the ride.

That’s the ceiling of this team; another strong top-four finish and another shot on Grand Final day. The floor is around the wildcard spots.

6. Hawthorn

We’ve been high on the Hawks for a while – we tipped them for the flag this time last year, and still tipped them to make the Grand Final from eighth before the finals began.

But Will Day’s injury was enough to see them slide out of our projected top four. He is a vital piece for them, turning their midfield from good to arguably elite along with the excellent Jai Newcombe.

(We also lost a little bit of faith in the Hawks when Seven’s Mitch Cleary reported in early February “AI has become Sam Mitchell’s new obsession”. We hope he enjoys the plagiarism-fuelled, environment-destroying, hallucination-filled ‘insights’ which are being regurgitated back at him.)

Admittedly without Day for much of last year they were still excellent – arguably one of the four best teams.

It was only fitting they became the first eighth-place team to beat a minor premier in the finals; and it was only fitting that happened in 2025 when the gap between first and eighth was as small as it has ever been.

You shouldn’t be thinking about the Hawks like an eighth-placed side trying to climb back up the ladder. They were a flag contender last year (if not on the level of Brisbane or Geelong) and should be around that mark this year too.

If there’s any regression here, it’s likely to come from Jack Gunston, who was an absolutely incredible story kicking 73 goals in 23 games.

It was completely unexpected for a 33-year-old, who had kicked more than 32 goals in a season once since 2016, to do that. And that just makes it a little hard to believe it’s repeatable.

Maybe it is… but players don’t usually go from good to elite (and stay there) this late in their career. And without him at that level, their tall forward stocks aren’t a strength; Mabior Chol is a solid No.2 option but not a true No.1, so they’d need Calsher Dear to take the leap or Mitch Lewis to stay healthy.

The AI thing aside we do really rate Sam Mitchell’s coaching and that’s a big reason why, when we looked at last year’s top eight and considered who could drop out, we never considered the Hawks.

Ironically, given they’ve beaten both sides in the last two finals series, the Hawks are built as almost the polar opposite of the Giants or Bulldogs. They aren’t packed with top-10 picks or obvious A-graders, but they’re incredibly deep and play their system perfectly.

It’s why Mitchell’s men have been able to overcome the consistent unavailability of Day – just look at last year’s semi-final where the Hawks’ midfield was excellent despite the South Australian not playing at home.

Day has still never played in a final, yet the Hawks have won three of them in two years, equal with Geelong and behind only Brisbane.

So just imagine what they’d be with him. Or just imagine what they’d be with another A-grade midfielder, perhaps one who was recently captain of one of their historic rivals.

The 2024 trade period accelerated their timeline though there is no rush to win a flag imminently before the list ages out of the premiership window – Gunston is the oldest player on the list by over three years. They’re going to be contending for a while.

But this is a team that operated in the last trade period like they’re a gun away from clear contention, missing out on Zach Merrett, and that’s the class we would put them in too.

7. Adelaide Crows

We’re typically believers in the theory that after a big rise up the ladder, teams usually bounce back down a little bit. There have been a few teams who rebuffed that idea (Brisbane 2019-20, Collingwood 2022-23) but just last year we saw Sydney decline after going from 8th to dominant minor premiers.

The theory is that a lot has to go right if you’re climbing from, say 15th to 1st. Sure, you probably got a lot better, but you might’ve been helped by a clean run with injuries, and a handy bit of luck with both close games and expected score.

Oh, hi Adelaide.

The Crows have arguably had a worse run with injuries in 2026 already as compared to 2025, with breakout intercept defender Mark Keane and young gun Dan Curtin to both miss months.

You can’t overstate the importance of that – the Swans last year had a brutal run with injuries which began in the pre-season, and while they got things together post-bye, the season was too far gone.

Keane helped Adelaide’s defence turn from a major liability to a premiership-level asset; Curtin went from a man without a position to a man who can play almost any position, and remains the list’s great hope for a much-needed second A-grade midfielder behind Jordan Dawson (Izak Rankine would be there, but he’s also needed up forward).

Don’t underestimate high performance guru Darren Burgess’ exit either – he helped power Melbourne’s 2021 flag and has been credited as playing a big role in the Crows’ rise.

So purely on fitness alone, the Crows may have already taken a step back from 2025. They could also regress in regards to luck.

Last year the Crows went 5-3 in games decided by two goals or less but, more importantly, won an AFL-high five games that they ‘lost’ on expected score.

Some of those were close ones that only just swung the other way, but others like the first Showdown of the year (when Port dominated Q4 but scores 2.6 from the 17-minute mark onwards) and the Brisbane game (when the Lions had a bazillion inside 50s in the last quarter but couldn’t kick a goal) were more fortunate.

In a very tight top eight, all of those advantages added up, and while the Crows limply exited the finals in straight sets we think that was more about the Izak Rankine saga and its impacts (both his absence and the mental toll) along with the finalists all being pretty even.

They will need to pick up the pieces quickly because their first month is brutal – Collingwood away, Bulldogs at home, Geelong away and Fremantle at home. Just going 2-2 through that would be a pass mark and there’s absolutely a world where the Crows start 0-4 and are playing from behind all season.

There was something very real in Adelaide’s 2025 season. They can contend for the flag in 2026 and, even more importantly, beyond that. They’re young and talented – and in a period where Port Adelaide appears to be rebuilding (without being willing to say the word) should be the clear favourite to lure homesick South Australians.

But a little dip would be completely understandable.

8. Fremantle

The Dockers absolutely should be better than the eighth-best team in 2026, and if any side is going to win the flag and make us look really stupid with this ladder, it’s them. Their list is damn good.

But on the field, they are not.

Winning 16 games last year was a mirage. And while they were unlucky to have five other teams finish above them on the ladder, with a record that’s usually good enough for the top four, they were lucky to reach that record in the first place.

While a 5-3 record in close games doesn’t sound exceptional, it’s about the way they won those games, especially late in the season when many were expecting them to fall apart as we saw in 2024.

The Dockers’ crazy comebacks in 2025

Round 16: Trailed St Kilda by 14 points early in Q4, won by 12

Round 18: Trailed Hawthorn by 13 points at 3QT, won by 13

Round 19: Trailed Collingwood by 22 points early in Q4, won by 1

Round 21: Trailed Carlton by 14 points deep in Q3, won by 27

Round 22: Trailed Port Adelaide by 14 points early in Q4, won by 6

This is not sustainable. If they had failed one of these comebacks, Freo would’ve finished 8th; if they had failed two of them, they would’ve missed the eight entirely.

They tried to repeat the trick in their elimination final, coming back from 22 points down and getting ahead of Gold Coast… but they still lost. That’s the risk when you’re living on the edge, as Collingwood discovered in 2022 when they lost two close finals.

Of course, Collingwood also made us look silly in 2023 by winning the flag, and Fremantle could absolutely do that in 2026. But they would have to improve to even remain a 16-win team – because they were not of a 16-win quality in 2025.

We think a mid-table finish is their floor because of their tremendous group of talent and a full year of Hayden Young, who is easily the best player the footy world doesn’t talk that much about, could spark the improvement they require – especially since a different type of elite midfielder than Caleb Serong or Andrew Brayshaw.

We just need to see it before believing in them again. They haven’t won a final since 2022, which is kind of absurd – though you can almost count the Bulldogs game from Round 24 last year as a final.

We really like Justin Longmuir but every time the Dockers are criticised about their game style, the response is as if it’s a personal attack; it’s not. It’s factual. They are slower than the best teams, and the game is only getting faster.

It is absolutely fixable but too often during games they go into their shells and become stoppable. (They looked wobbly in that Round 24 win over the Dogs, and then started playing faster, and then started winning. It was the Dockers in a nutshell – we suspect they’d be a very good team playing a more aggressive, turnover-heavy style but that’s the antithesis of a Longmuir side.)

They have to win a final in 2026. More importantly, Longmuir has to win a final in 2026. (Secretly, he might be the biggest beneficiary of the wildcard round.)

Though if we’re right and they finish an especially frustrating eighth, even a wildcard win may not save him.

9. Collingwood

We find it very hard to work out where the Magpies are at, because there are so things you can look at and say ‘…but’.

They lost five of their last seven games, only beating lowly Richmond and a pedestrian Melbourne team (needing to come back from 15 points down in the fourth quarter). …but three of those losses were by a kick, against fellow finalists, in games they absolutely could’ve and maybe should’ve won.

They hosted a prelim and played the eventual premiers pretty close… but of course they won that qualifying final over Adelaide, because it was a ‘Magpies travel interstate under heaps of pressure’ game, and they always win those. And they were much better prepared for the intensity of a final than the returning Crows were.

They’re certainly an old list, and at some point they’re risking tipping over the cliff because they’ve traded away first-round picks to contend right now and haven’t added enough good young talent… but why does that have to be now? The core of a team that sat 14-2 last July is still here, and Nick Daicos paints over quite a few cracks.

There is enough evidence pointing in either direction to support either opinion – that of course the Magpies will be contenders again, because they’ve earned our trust under Craig McRae, or that of course the Magpies are about to fall off a cliff, because the final months of last season exposed they weren’t as good as we all thought.

We ended up putting the Pies down here not because of what they’ve got, but because of what everyone else has got. Every time we compared them to a fellow finalist we thought ‘well yeah they have to get better… they should get better… they probably get better…’ but with the Magpies we didn’t find that too likely.

Brayden Maynard told Foxfooty.com.au’s Will Faulkner earlier this pre-season he has faith in some of the club’s lesser-known young talent, and maybe he’s a brilliant scout, but the Magpies look to us like a team that has drafted poorly for several years and are about to pay the price for that.

Admittedly they have not always had the earliest picks to use, including trading away their first-rounders, but from their drafts this decade Nick Daicos is an A+++ pick, Beau McCreery is an A… and they might not have anyone else above a C.

Maybe this doesn’t matter. Maybe Collingwood does not need to rebuild like normal pro sports teams. After all Geelong and Sydney have defied gravity too, and the Swans haven’t drafted a whole lot better than the Pies have.

It wouldn’t shock us if the Magpies won the flag, and it wouldn’t shock us if they just missed the top 10 (though anything lower than 11th would be really weird).

But the downside risk is larger with this team than most, and that’s what made us put them this low.

As we saw in 2024, the Magpies can easily be derailed by a bad run with injuries. And while as a 34-year-old we appreciate seeing multiple players older than us who are still really good at footy, the likes of Scott Pendlebury and Steele Sidebottom have to fall off at some point.

They have been elite players and fought off father time brilliantly but he always wins in the end, and it’s kinda weird how much midfield time the pair still got in 2025.

Calf issues for Jeremy Howe, their age bracket compatriot, and Darcy Moore that’ll delay their starts to the season are hopefully for their sakes not a trend.

10. St Kilda

By far the most popular pick to jump from the bottom eight to the finals will be St Kilda, heavily influenced by their trade period spend-a-thon.

We have absolutely no problem with the Saints doing that. In fact, we rate it. The smaller Victorian clubs either have to hit on a bunch of high draft picks AND then trade well to succeed (as Melbourne did), or zag when everyone else is zigging.

Spending this much money on free agents at once is zagging, and it’s exactly what free agency is supposed to be. Anyone still complaining about free agency only benefiting the big and successful clubs should look at little old St Kilda, the famously least successful club in VFL/AFL history, and realise they’re being a bit silly.

(And if you’re complaining about the Saints paying players too much, you either misunderstand how pro sports contracts work or your perspective is warped – because they’re about leverage even more than about talent. Sport is a meritocracy to an extent; players can give themselves negotiating power, through excellent years when coming out of contract or positional scarcity, and they’ll get paid what the market says they’re worth. It has never been the case that all players are paid exactly what they deserve and never will be; in particular, Chris Fagan is smart enough to know all this.)

At a glance all the positivity around the Saints makes sense. They finished 12th but felt like they were on an upward trajectory to end the season, winning four of their last five games along with re-signing Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera against expectations. Combined with their trade period additions the buzz is all positive.

There’s a world where Tom De Koning is a superstar ruckman befitting his pay packet, and where Sam Flanders is a really good midfield addition, and Jack Silvagni helps the defence stay strong, and Liam Ryan adds firepower to the attack. But that feels just a bit optimistic, doesn’t it?

None of those players are superstars, and while they’re getting paid what they deserve by definition, that doesn’t mean they aren’t all risks. De Koning COULD be an A-grader especially with the new centre bounce rules seemingly benefiting players like him – or he could continue to show flashes of brilliance amid inconsistency. Likewise Flanders, Silvagni and Ryan are more likely to be pretty good than great.

Even if a couple of them overperform, they’re still being added to a team that wasn’t as good last year as everyone seems to think.

Remember how we mentioned the Saints won four of their last five games? Those four wins were all over teams lower on the ladder and ALL by single digits – Melbourne by 6, North Melbourne by 9, Richmond by 4 and Essendon by 2.

The first of those games was The Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera Game, and by definition the biggest comeback from a 3QT deficit in footy history was pretty fortunate. The other three were just games that a serious team clearly would’ve won by more; remember, that Bombers team was basically a VFL side at that point.

Pull out a bit wider on the Saints’ season and they lost 10 of their last 15 games. The other win in that period, also over Melbourne, was also pretty flukey (they kicked 14.7 and the Dees somehow kicked 7.21… weird one). Pull out even wider, and they lost 13 of their last 19 games.

They were rarely uncompetitive but overall, they were kinda just a very pedestrian Ross Lyon team. Their win total and percentage have declined each year since he took over for a second time.

That’s kinda why they had to go hard in free agency – they haven’t been bad enough to get top-five picks, and have kinda just been treading water until… well, until now, it seems.

Does the 2025 trade period count as them putting their foot on the accelerator and going for it? It has to, right? They’ve used the majority of their cap space advantage. They’ve drafted reasonably well despite never picking higher than 8th since 2018 (Max King at No.4).

Other than the bits and pieces they can change around the edges and maybe one bigger move a year, this is the list. Is it a premiership one? We’re not convinced of that and, more pressingly, we’re not convinced they have made the leap to the level of last year’s contenders.

And remember, they tried something like this before. They added mature bodies like Dan Hannebery, Dan Butler, Zak Jones, Brad Crouch and others… it got them one finals win in 2020, and a home elimination final loss in 2023. They peaked at a bit above average, which is the very real risk here, too.

The best-case scenario here is pretty exciting – top six, maybe sneaking into the top four? – but involves a lot of things all going right at the same time. Especially because they’re coming from a lower base than you think.

We have pushed them just inside the top 10 because of the Giants’ issues, and because of history. Someone is going to make the jump and the Saints have tried the hardest to be better in 2026.

But we would be surprised if they reached higher than the wildcard spots. And with Nas’s deal putting them on a two-year timer, they kinda have to.

11. GWS Giants

Someone had to fall out to let the Saints in, and the Giants’ horror pre-season makes them the prime candidate – it feels very 2025 Swans.

They didn’t exactly get a clean run at things last year; the forever-underrated Brent Daniels barely played, Sam Taylor was in and out of the side, and Jesse Hogan only played 16 games.

The trend has continued into 2026 with Taylor to again miss a big chunk of the season, Josh Kelly and Darcy Jones to miss most of the year, Toby Bedford out for the early rounds with a bad hamstring, and Finn Callaghan not getting any game time before the season opener.

Taylor’s absence is especially painful because their preferred game style – accepting their opponent will dominate the inside 50 count, and trusting their defence to absorb the entries – is reliant upon a strong back six. (For context, GWS allowed 55.8 inside 50s a game last year, only better than West Coast’s 57.3. The next-worst finalist was Hawthorn at 51.4.)

But the headliner is Tom Green being gone for the season; it turns the recruitment of Clayton Oliver from a luxury into a necessity (and he too had to overcome an injury, a three-week calf, this pre-season).

The problem there is trusting Oliver to get back to his best. His 2024 campaign was ruined by a limited pre-season and injuries, but there were no such excuses for 2025 when he was the 46th-ranked midfielder in the AFL.

It feels more likely that he’s never again the player he once was, though the Giants are hopeful he’ll enjoy a Jesse Hogan-type revival outside of the footy bubble, which is understandable.

At least the silver lining to Green’s absence is allowing Oliver to play his best role, rather than having the pair overlap at the source.

With their list having been picked apart by the rest of the league over recent off-seasons, the Giants don’t have incredible depth. Now throw in the fact we would expect them to be a bit less lucky on the scoreboard in 2026.

They’ve managed to overperform on expected score for a couple of years now, but they reached new heights in 2025, going 6-0 in games decided by less than two goals which was heavily impacted by goalkicking.

You can partially credit the Giants’ skilled goalkickers for the times they score more than they should have. But they have no control over their opponents’ inaccuracy – and over the last three seasons, no team’s opponents have underperformed on expected score more than GWS’.

Around midseason they had an utterly ridiculous run, beating Geelong by 4 points (and losing by 14 on expected score), beating Richmond by 3 points (losing by 22 on expected score), beating Brisbane by 11 points (losing by 31 on expected score) and beating Gold Coast by 7 points (losing by 21 on expected score).

Dropping one of those games would’ve left the Giants eighth instead of fifth. Losing two would’ve seen them miss the finals.

So it was only fitting that trend reverted to the mean at the worst possible moment for them. In the elimination final against Hawthorn, the Giants won on expected score – but lost because the Hawks kicked almost five goals more than they ‘should have’. (Funnily enough both elimination finals were lost by a team whose luck ran out, because Fremantle tried to pull their late comeback trick again but instead lost it late.)

Don’t take all of this negativity as a suggestion we think the Giants are bad. We don’t. We just think they’re due to regress a little bit, and combined with the injuries, we foresee a step backwards.

Their floor is too high for them to be uncompetitive in 2026, and we wouldn’t be totally shocked if they made the top six.

It certainly helps that their draw looks much easier than their rivals – four of their six double-up opponents missed the finals last year, including Essendon and West Coast, while they don’t play a 2025 top-four team twice either. In fact, we judged their fixture as being easier than the Eagles’ fixture… and the Eagles won one game and the wooden spoon last year.

Their first month is tricky (Hawks home, Dogs away, Saints home, Pies away) but they then play all of last year’s bottom five before the mid-season byes.

The plan is simple. Survive the first half of the season, then get back to their true talent level when most members of the casualty ward are both fit and have shaken off the initial rust. They could be a very scary wildcard round opponent but they have to get there first. Add in some on-field bad luck to their off-field bad luck, and that could be enough to see them missing the top 10.

12. Port Adelaide

As we mentioned earlier, the Power fit the bill as a top-four rebound team – after all, they made the top four in four of this decade’s first five years.

The core of that perennial contender is mostly in tact, and they’ve managed to hold onto an enviable young group of Connor Rozee, Zak Butters, Jason Horne-Francis, Miles Bergman and Mitch Georgiades.

There was plenty of talk about Sydney’s decline being caused by injuries, but their 2024 preliminary final opponents copped the injury bug pretty bad as well. Just two players, Willem Drew and Mitch Georgiades, played every game, while they were heavily impacted at either end of the ground.

Todd Marshall didn’t play, and top recruit Jack Lukosius barely featured, while down back Brandon Zerk-Thatcher and Esava Ratugolea (in career-best form) each played about half a season; that in turn forced Aliir Aliir to play hurt.

None of these players are superstars, but few lists (if any) have the depth to replace so many injured talls, and the Power were forced to use a club-record 40 players including all three mid-season draftees.

Even a normal run with injuries should mean the Power are closer to the team that won an average of 15 games across the 2021-24 home and away seasons.

Our biggest question may not be a fair one – but behind the scenes do they really, truly want to win in 2026?

Obviously, players and coaches are trying to win every week, but in terms of a broader list strategy it could be argued a difficult 2026 season could set them up perfectly for the next two off-seasons.

Dougie Cochrane, the potential No.1 pick in this year’s draft, is tied to the club through their Next Generation Academy along with 2027 top-five pick contender Zemes Pilot, while father-son prospects Louis Salopek and Tevita Rodan could also be first-rounders.

We’re uncertain exactly what the rules will be for matching bids when those players are up for grabs – it sure would be nice if the AFL made it clear! – but all reports suggest the prices are going up. And while the Power could get a huge haul of draft capital if Zak Butters departs, they’re not going to plan as if he’s leaving.

They need the picks in hand (even if we’re pretty confident he’s going), and by effectively ignoring the 2025 Draft, they’re well on their way to doing that; but a juicy 2026 first-round pick would assist. On our projected ladder they would have picks 7, 23 and 25.

We are not suggesting this will impact anything Josh Carr does in his first year in charge. He wants to coach a winning team. But the implications of future drafts undoubtedly played into their effectively silent 2025 off-season.

And so the only ways they’re going to improve in 2026 are changes to their tactics, which had grown stale, and improved availability. The latter is almost inevitable while the former is less certain, given Carr has been at the club for a while.

They had a bad tendency to be blown out last year which made their percentage worse than you’d assume from their tally of nine wins; but let’s say they’re coming from a base of eight wins. Is it ridiculous to imagine a healthy Power list can win 11 or 12 games?

We don’t think so. And that’s likely to be enough to sneak into the top 10, depending on how everyone else goes.

Realistically though, a few teething issues in Carr’s first year should be expected, and he has toed the line in the pre-season talking about “building something” without actually saying they’re rebuilding. It makes more sense for Port to try and win a flag in a few years’ time than right now.

13. Carlton

It’s puzzling that Carlton and Essendon didn’t trade places in the trade period.

Essendon doesn’t need to win in 2026 – it’d be nice, but they’re clearly still building. Yet they rejected all offers for Zach Merrett and held the 30-year-old to his contract.

Whereas Carlton does need to win in 2026. Not just because of their list built for the now, but because Michael Voss is quite clearly coaching for his job after a 12-month period where most of the musical chairs around him found new bums on top of them.

And yet the Blues didn’t play hardball with the 29-year-old Charlie Curnow – they got a good deal, but they let a key forward in his prime walk out the door… and it’s not like they were a scoring machine even WITH him.

Perhaps that’s part of the reason they were OK letting Curnow go. This Blues group, which was built to win a flag in this 2022-26 window, hasn’t worked and almost feels like a team lost to time.

The game has moved past the physically demanding, contested style Voss has demanded from his side; they were a better ball movement team in 2025, and combined it with continued strong clearance work, but still struggled terribly once they actually got it forward.

It would be unfair to blame Curnow for that – the delivery was poor – but in a sense, the delivery was poor because the ball-carrier was always looking for Curnow. So without him, they will be forced to change.

The likes of Ben Ainsworth and Will Hayward could assist with that, though we’re even more excited about Jagga Smith finally getting a run at senior footy. We can’t remember more hype around a player who has never played an AFL game – thanks to two big pre-seasons and two big pre-season games, sparking a week of talkback calls predicting he’ll win both the Brownlow and Rising Star. (He’ll win the latter, at least.)

Smith, and potential 2026 No.1 pick Cody Walker who’ll join the club as a father-son, are the future of the club in many respects but reflect the awkward reality that the Blues don’t really have a clear timeline.

In an ideal world their existing stars will hold on for a few more years and be powered back up the ladder by the recruits and draftees – but very few things have gone the ideal way for Carlton since… well, since 1995.

It’s still so easy to think of Carlton as the team we think they should be; we have to remind ourselves to think of them as the team they actually are. That’s a team that has gone 11-21 over their last season and a half, only beating West Coast (three times), North Melbourne (twice), Essendon (twice), Port Adelaide, St Kilda, Melbourne… and weirdly, Geelong.

There is enough here for the Blues to play finals – more likely as a wildcard than a genuine top six threat.

But they must walk a tricky tightrope to get there and it’s pretty windy out; one expects Voss to fall into the waiting net. (The net in this metaphor is the millions he has made across his fantastic career, we guess. Always remember when you see performance-based criticism of any player or coach – that’s what the money is for.)

14. Essendon

Since Brad Scott took over (both as coach, and with enormous influence behind the scenes), there have effectively been two Essendons.

There was the Essendon of the second half of last year, when they were utterly destroyed by injuries, giving basically everyone on the list with two working legs a chance at AFL level. They lost 13 consecutive games by an average of 41 points.

But then there was the normal version of Essendon. When not ridiculously cursed, Brad Scott’s Bombers have been… fine.

From Round 1 of 2023 to Round 11 of 2025, they won 28 games, lost 27 games, and drew once. They were a bit worse than that record suggests, with 11 wins by single-digit margins, but they were a dependably mediocre side.

Don’t get us wrong – that’s not a good thing. You want to be either good or bad (so you can be good again more quickly).

But recent history tells us the base expectation for this Essendon list, with a normal level of injuries, should be around eight or nine wins.

If they get a bit lucky, maybe they win 10 or 11 and sneak into a wildcard final. If they’re unlucky, they drop back to six or seven wins.

If there’s any upside here, it’s from the slow injection of youth through Scott’s tenure, and the forced acceleration last year when guys got games but otherwise would not have. Scott knew those two 11-win seasons were a bit of a mirage but perhaps it all comes together quicker than even he expected.

After all, if the AFL is really scripted, Essendon breaking its finals drought by winning the very first wildcard game – so fans of the 17 other clubs can all say in unison ‘nah, that doesn’t count’ – is absolutely what they would write.

But this is a lot of discussion about the win-loss record of a team whose win-loss record doesn’t really matter.

Essendon is not going to win the 2026 premiership, and is not really trying to win the 2026 premiership – well, they’re turning up and hoping to win every game, but you know what we mean. They’re trying to win in 2028 (maybe 2027?) and beyond.

The best thing this football club has done since Scott took over is learn patience. For too long they clung onto the past and sought quick fixes, hoping pure nostalgia would make them successful again.

The bring-back-Sheeds-and-Hirdy types have been sidelined for the most part – though it’s a bit odd how many players from the 2000s are now back in important positions at the club, and speaks to a bit of insularity. But that can still work if the Dons continue to take their time building back towards success.

That probably means another bottom six season. But at the very least, it’s hard to see how the Bombers would be worse than last year.

15. Melbourne

It doesn’t look like it, because we’ve got them in our bottom four, but we’re actually kinda bullish on the Demons this year.

That’s mostly because they were much better in 2025 than you think.

Simon Goodwin did an excellent job turning things around from a 0-5 start, and had a few close games gone his way, he could still be Melbourne’s coach right now – though we suspect a fresh start was on the cards either way.

Especially because the bad luck persisted even after Goodwin’s sacking. His Demons took a few quality scalps, including thumping Sydney and even beating Brisbane at the Gabba, but went a woeful 2-6 in games decided by less than two goals.

That included five losses by a goal or less – and you know they were bad because they are instantly memorable:

– Two painful thrillers against Collingwood, first King’s Birthday with the May-Gawn incident after the siren, then the Pies’ final-round comeback to clinch a top four spot;

– Back-up ruckman Lachie Keeffe (?!?) kicking the game-winner for GWS at the MCG;

– The Bulldogs game, right after Goodwin was sacked, clinched by Sam Darcy’s courageous Mark of the Year;

– and of course, The Greatest Comeback In VFL/AFL History AKA Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera Kicks Two Goals In 10 Seconds And Where Was Jack Viney Going And How Did He Poll 3 Votes.

Throw in the other St Kilda game, when they somehow kicked 7.21 to their opponents’ 14.7 (and arguably should’ve won) for good measure.

After the 0-5 start we mentioned, the Demons were a genuinely average team – and we mean that as a massive compliment. They went 7-9 but with a percentage of 104% in that period; they were effectively in every game except a pair of six-goal defeats to Hawthorn.

Our beloved Pythagorean wins say they were a 10-win team across the course of the season, and confidently projects them to improve.

They could still do that, winning eight games, and finish 15th as we’re predicting. It was only two years ago that Adelaide finished 15th with eight wins and a draw.

But of course Pythagoras doesn’t know that the Demons lost a couple of million-dollar midfielders in Christian Petracca and Clayton Oliver. Throw in Jack Viney’s early-season absence due to Achilles surgery and they will have a very different midfield in Steven King’s first few months in charge.

Petracca, Oliver and Goodwin marked one era of Melbourne – a gloriously successful one, even if circumstances meant the flag couldn’t be enjoyed at home, and even if the painful finals exits of the ensuing seasons plus off-field dramas left a sour taste in the mouths of all involved.

All three men are gone. 2026 is therefore a sudden, and very intentional, break from the past. This club is willing to take a step backwards to try and guarantee a future leap forward because they know, as one of the smaller Victorian teams, they cannot try and stay up the top forever like Collingwood or Geelong.

The fact the Demons have gone pretty aggressively at the draft for a few years means they’re more well-stocked for young talent than you might think.

If they can just be the team we saw after five rounds last year – effectively league average – they will be a massive, pleasant surprise. But that will likely be too hard.

16. North Melbourne

This time last year, the prevailing narrative about the Kangaroos was that ‘well surely they’ve had long enough and are gonna be better now’. We didn’t see it, and tipped them to finish 16th.

Thanks to a surprisingly frisky Richmond, they nearly got stuck in the bottom two for a sixth consecutive season, before escaping due to a Round 23 win over the Tigers in Tassie.

The question now is how much higher they can climb – and whether it’s high enough to keep Alastair Clarkson off the hot seat.

Here’s the problem. We think they can maybe win eight or nine games at the high end; if everything goes right, they win 10 and they’re in the conversation for the last wildcard spot deep into the season.

But we don’t see the case for the Kangaroos making a genuine leap into finals contention. They could finish 12th and we wouldn’t be completely shocked, and we don’t think they’ll be as bad as your usual 16th-placer, but there’s a real downside risk here because too much still needs to be fixed.

Some have tried to draw comparisons between the Kangaroos and sides like Brisbane (2019) or Hawthorn (2024) who came from nowhere into finals contention. Age and experience-wise, there’s an argument to be made – the Roos’ list is the 14th-oldest and 11th-most experienced.

We don’t see the Lions comparison. In 2018, Chris Fagan’s young side won five games and finished 15th, but was incredibly unlucky to do so – they had a percentage of 89.1% and lost a bunch of close ones.

We saw the glimmer of hope and were one of the few in the media to tip them to play finals (though we didn’t expect them to finish second). Both groups were packed with high draft picks but the Lions were much closer to being an actually good team on the field.

The Hawks comparison makes a bit more sense. In 2023 they were pedestrian (seven wins, 80.2%), similar to the 2025 Kangaroos (five and a half wins, 76.3%), and after a slow start to 2024 became the hottest team in footy and nearly made a prelim.

Those Hawks had a better group of experienced players but their young talent was less proven. They could also defend at an AFL standard, which the Roos often could not in 2025.

We think that’s going to remain their fatal flaw, because maybe they could solve one problem (fixing the tactics or much-improved personnel), but fixing both in one pre-season seems impossible. Charlie Comben needs a lot of help.

Their best-case scenario is effectively becoming the poor man’s Bulldogs – a strong (but not elite) midfield and very good (but not elite) attack that leaks too much going the other way.

The worst-case is being a genuinely bad 16th-placer again. They can’t afford a slow start to the season, opening against Port Adelaide (Marvel), West Coast (OS), Essendon (Marvel) and Carlton (Marvel) – if they are any sort of serious they should be going 3-1 or better.

17. Richmond

18. West Coast Eagles

In our view these teams are the clear bottom two, and are nowhere near as separated as last year’s win totals (5 and 1 respectively) suggest.

On percentage, the only side the Tigers or Eagles were within 10 points of was Essendon, and that’s because Essendon was Zach Merrett And His VFL Friends for half the season.

We have a bit more faith in the Tigers’ rebuild because they’ve done it more aggressively and amassed more top-end young talent – eight top-25 picks in two years, compared to the Eagles’ eight in four years.

Throw in West Coast being too big to fail, and eventually these clubs will return to the pointy end they inhabited through the late 2010s.

For now we think it’s almost a coin flip, just leaning West Coast’s way, for which team actually finishes last.

But this is the natural cycle of footy and, hopefully for their sakes, they’re getting the worst times out of the way before Tamsania corrupts several drafts in a row.

It is not realistic to expect either team to contend in 2026. We can imagine a world where any other team sneaks their way to 10 or 11 wins and plays finals – but not these two.

Max Laughton’s predicted 2026 AFL ladder

1. Brisbane Lions

2. Geelong

3. Gold Coast Suns

4. Western Bulldogs

5. Sydney Swans

6. Hawthorn

7. Adelaide Crows

8. Fremantle

9. Collingwood

10. St Kilda

11. GWS Giants

12. Port Adelaide

13. Carlton

14. Essendon

15. Melbourne

16. North Melbourne

17. Richmond

18. West Coast Eagles

Grand Final: Brisbane def Geelong

Brownlow Medal: Nick Daicos

Coleman Medal: Sam Darcy