03/03/2026
WELCOME TO THE 2026 AUSTRALIAN RULES FOOTBALL SEASON!
Let’s start with our annual season-ending LADDER FORECAST!
First, here’s a review of how we did in forecasting the 2025 season. We’ll show you how this generally works by using the lazy forecast of “Same-old, same-old” in forecasting what 2025 should have looked like. So Adelaide, which finished first after ending in 15th place in 2024, would give the lazy prediction a score of 14 so far… with seventeen more to go, although no other team will be THAT far off. But this will produce the “standard” score for last year’s contest – and if someone scores worse than that standard, their forecasting services will NOT be needed, TYVM! (In case we need to say it… the LOWER YOUR SCORE, the BETTER!!)
2024 order → 2025 ladder = places different
SYDNEY → ADELAIDE = 14 (Adelaide moved up 14 places, from 15th to 1st)
PORT AD → GEELONG = 1 (3rd TO 2nd)
GEELONG → BRISBANE = 2 (5th to 3rd)
GWS → COLLINGWOOD = 5 (9th to 4th) → SO FAR, 14+1+2+5 = 22.
BRISBANE → GWS = 1 (4th to 5th)
WESTERN → FREMANTLE= 4 (10th to 6th)
HAWTHORN → GOLD COAST = 6 (13th to 7th)
CARLTON → HAWTHORN = 1 (7th to 8th) → SO FAR, 22+1+4+6+1 = 34.
COLLINGWOOD → WESTERN = 3 (6th to 9th)
FREMANTLE → SYDNEY = 9 (1st to 10th)
ESSENDON → CARLTON = 3 (8th to 11th)
ST KILDA → ST KILDA = 0 (12th to 12th!)
GOLD COAST → PORT AD = 11 (2nd to 13th)
MELBOURNE → MELBOURNE = 0 (14th to 14th)
ADELAIDE → ESSENDON = 4 (11th to 15th)
WEST COAST → NORTH MEL = 1 (17th to 16th)
NORTH MEL → RICHMOND = 1 (18th to 17th)
RICHMOND → WEST COAST = 2 (16th to 18th) → BOTTOM HALF = 34.
So, the “LAZY Forecast” would have produced a score of 68.
For the record, looking at a major website tracking entries this past season, that score of 68 actually comes out around the middle of the pack among prediction checking.
Now, here was our 2025 FOLLOWING FOOTBALL FORECAST (you can go back and check it yourself if you don’t believe us – we just did and it’s still there, just like we posted it.
FF’s FORECAST for 2025:
1. Collingwood = they actually finished 4th, so we were off by 3.
2. GWS Giants = actually 5th → off by 3 = total of 6 so far.
3. Brisbane = actually did place 3rd, so a zero score!
4. Hawthorn = actually 8th → off by 4 = total of 10 so far.
5. Fremantle = actually 6th → off by 1 = total of 11 so far.
6. Adelaide = actually 1st → off by 5 = total of 16 so far. (Remember, it seemed clear to most that Adelaide was going to be MUCH better in 2025, though 1st was unlikely in most of our eyes!)
7. Port Adelaide = actually 13th → off by 6 = total of 22 so far.
8. Sydney = actually 1st → off by 7 = total of 29 so far.
So, after the top eight, we’re doing BETTER than the standard model did at this point, AND we’ve already hit the three biggest movers (Syd + the two Adelaide teams). Moving on!
9. Gold Coast = actually 7th → off by 2 = total of 31.
10. Geelong = actually 2nd (whoops!) → off by 8 = total of 39.
11. Carlton = actually 11th! → zero score = still at 39.
12. Western BD = actually 9th → off by 3 = 42.
13. North Melbourne = actually 16th → off by 3 = 45.
14. West Coast = actually 18th → off by 4 = 49.
15. Essendon = actually 15th, so another zero score!
16. Melbourne = actually 14th → off by just 2 = 51.
17. St Kilda = actually 12th → off by 5 = 56.
18. Richmond = actually 17th → off by one.
OUR TOTAL SCORE WAS 57, which is SIGNIFICANTLY lower than the standard, although the best published score we saw was 35, which I think was posted by an ADELAIDE Crows fan. He or she had the Crows first (for a zero score) and the Power down in 12th place (for a one-point difference), which shot about twenty points off of whatever else the rest of the list produced.
WE SAY ALL OF THAT SO YOU UNDERSTAND WE’RE GOOD AT THIS.
We’ve studied the tendencies of each team and each position and each trend and many other little things over the course of the last decade and a half we’ve been in this business, and studied the previous 115 years of Aussie Rules back to the 1897 start of the Victorian Football League, which would eventually spread beyond the state of Victoria’s borders from Perth to Brisbane and become the Australian Football League.
Let’s share our thoughts on this season that starts on THURSDAY NIGHT, Australian time (Carlton at Sydney, in the SCG):
OUR TOP FOUR: We feel good about these four teams making finals easily, so we’ve made them our choices for the TOP FOUR: BRISBANE, FREMANTLE, GOLD COAST, and SYDNEY. But who goes where?
Brisbane (we believe) will earn its second historic THREE-PEAT this season – normally, I write about how injuries can derail any charging train, but they’ve already SUFFERED through those in the last two years, and they win the cup anyway! What they DON’T do is win the MINOR premiership – they’re happy to settle for making finals, ideally top four, and kick butt from there. So, in the home-and-away season? We’ll put them in SECOND place.
Fremantle has too many travel issues to command the top spot for a WA team, but they really don’t have any weaknesses otherwise. That probably knocks a couple games off their win column, so we’re going with the Dockers in third.
The Gold Coast is the popular pick for the dark horse minor premier this season. They’ve certainly proven the ability to WIN, and they’ve undoubtedly improved themselves with Christian Petracca on board (we’d be sliding him forward much of the time) – and it would be strictly a BONUS if Jamarra Ugle-Hagan continues to put his best foot forward (in a community very different from Melbourne) and returns to the amazing forward he’s been – and a very DIFFERENT goal-scorer than Ben King is. They very well COULD win it all, but they’re still so young! Being fourth may be all that we can ask of them during the season proper, although if they win the first one, they’re in a prelim final next, one win from the GF.
And we’ve drawn ourselves in a corner, because we’ve left ourselves SYDNEY to come all the way back from tenth place and return to minor premier! Here’s how we see it: We feel fairly confident about the final four part, so no matter what order they fall in, we’ll score well.
FIFTH and SIXTH are more important this season than ever, because only the TOP SIX get the guaranteed shot into what we’ve always thought of as the proper finals. (The teams in positions seven through ten will now play in a play-in game just to GET to that Elimination Final against those fifth and sixth-place teams. It’ll take place in what used to be a bye week for EVERYONE and now is only so for the top six.)
And don’t ask us how much we hate it, because we do.
Two or three years ago, we did an in-depth analysis on the very best ratios and numbers to use in order to make the FAIREST post-season structure you could make. Here’s what we came up with from studying ALL the leagues we have access to, which is a gargantuan portion across the planet –
• Around 40% of your competition should make the post-season at SOME level. Less, and it becomes inaccessible for your bottom-feeders to EVER reach, which is highly disturbing for the morale and foresight of those teams. At forty, EVERY team thinks there’s a WAY to make finals/playoffs/post-season. If it’s too much MORE, it’s no longer much of a REWARD to make the post-season, and the disappointment target moves UPWARD, not down.
• There should be DIFFERENT LEVELS OF REWARD within that forty percent so there are things worth fighting for down the line. Giving the top four the double chance; home-field advantage for the higher seeds throughout had been a huge success.
• AND the perception of not being the biggest LOSER “improves” (there’s embarrassment) related to the WOODEN SPOON. A better way to keep the bottom teams from wasting the rest of the season is to give about 10-15% of the top teams at the level BELOW the chance to MOVE UP TO THE TOP LEVEL, while your top 10 to 15% move DOWN to that level to replace them.
There’s much more, but that’s what we’re focusing on here. NOW, the AFL has MORE THAN HALF of the teams in the league making finals, you’ve forced the four teams in slots 7-10 to play and WIN FIVE STRAIGHT GAMES to win the title, while the Qualifying Final winner had just three in all. Congratulations! That’s what we have in place now! And it won’t go away, because NO TEAM WILL VOTE to deny themselves more chances to define “success” as they need to for their own sakes.
So, fifth and sixth will be the two teams that should have the most chance to challenge for a top spot, except for the four above them. We see that as the WESTERN BULLDOGS (the team that NEVER makes a top four, even the years that they’ve made the grand final!) in fifth place and COLLINGWOOD in sixth place, because they’ll have to drop off from where they’ve been with their losses over the off-season.
(I recently described our choice of fifth and sixth by saying, “Fifth is the Bulldogs, because Marcus Bontempelli and Sam Darcy; sixth is Collingwood because of Nick and Josh Daicos.)
So, next are the FOUR teams in the final two spots – that is, seven through ten, who will playoff for the two spots in finals. We actually selected the first three spots here before picking EVERYONE ELSE below tenth and picked the tenth place last.
Seventh place is HAWTHORN. They haven’t changed much (Zach Merrett isn’t here), so we’ll put them back where they’re comfortable.
Eighth place is ADELAIDE. They’ve probably learned that being great during the home-and-away season does you no good. The humiliation probably matches our next candidate, but they’ve still got talent that could keep them in the top eight – if that number means anything this year…
Those two teams complete what we would have previously called our Top Eight. Then, because history shows that the team which gets BLOWN OUT of a grand final rarely even makes it back to finals the next season, we decided to place GEELONG in ninth place, and hope that that still qualifies. We discussed the possible need of making them go to 11th, but couldn’t come up with two teams we thought would place ABOVE them.
In an emergency, we decided – if we HAD to drop them to 11th, the next two teams would be the only likely candidates to step forward, not that we see either of them doing it:
Tenth place (the final spot for the play-in games) will be SAINT KILDA, with its player roster improvement. But Ross Lyon will HAVE to improve as an offensive mind (which he COULD DO with these players!) to make any hay beyond this.
And the first team completely out this season, in 11th place, would be PORT ADELAIDE, the only team we can fantasize about stepping up this season out of the ones remaining to choose from. (As we said, we picked 12-18 before resorting to the Saints and Power in 10 and 11.)
Below them are two GOOD teams with MAJOR LOSSES that will prevent them from winning any games of note this season – CARLTON (12th) and GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY (13th). The Blues gave away a couple of superstars, have nothing close to replacing them on hand, and are still asking Michael Voss to IMPROVE on last year? Please. As for GWS, they’ve lost players every off-season and not batted an eyelash. This year, though, they’ve already lost stars for a big chunk of the season before it even begins, and we know how easily they fall apart when that happens.
And the bottom five were the bottom five LAST YEAR, and we highly DOUBT that will change anytime soon.
WEST COAST is still a catastrophe. Here’s hoping that it’s a CONSTRUCTIVE catastrophe this season. They’ll win another wooden spoon in 18th place.
MELBOURNE and ESSENDON were bad last season and will be much WORSE this year. Instead of 14th and 15th, we think they’ll drop down to 16th (Melbourne) and 17th (Essendon) in 2026.
Which leaves RICHMOND and NORTH MELBOURNE to fill in the 14th and 15th spots. And while North hasn’t shown any new signs of life over the off-season, the Tigers HAVE. So we’ll plunk Richmond into the #14 slot in our forecast, and North in at #15.
