For 25 years the pre-finals bye was sacred. A whole weekend where nothing happened, the coaches got a nervous breakdown for free, and fans reacquainted themselves with their families. Noble tradition. Beautiful, pointless, very Australian.
The AFL cancelled it this year, and the first-ever Wildcard Round has now been and gone. Here's how it worked, what actually happened, and what it cost the people who played in it.
How it works
Forget “top eight.” From 2026 it's a top ten.
- Finish 1st to 6th on the ladder and you get a bye, a home final, and a week to ice your hamstrings while everyone else is still playing for their season.
- Finish 7th and you host 10th. Finish 8th and you host 9th. Winner takes the last two spots in the finals eight — sudden death, one game, no second chances, no “we'll get 'em next week.”
- The winners keep their original seed into the main draw: beat the 7th seed and you inherit 7th, beat the 8th seed and you inherit 8th.
It's a straightforward pitch: more meaningful football in the part of the season that used to be a nap, more home finals for clubs who'd otherwise be watching September from the couch, and one more week of broadcast inventory for the network that definitely didn't lobby for this at all. For the formats it replaces, see the AFL finals system explained.
The results
The final round produced an actual three-way photo finish for 5th, 6th and 7th — Geelong, Adelaide and Melbourne all finished on 60 points, with percentage the only thing separating them. Melbourne came off second-best and got shoved out of the top six and straight into a sudden-death final. Some seasons end with a whimper. This one ended with a spreadsheet.
Both Wildcard games were played at the MCG in front of 81,036 fans, and both went against the market:
- Western Bulldogs 14.12 (96) def Collingwood 14.9 (93) — the Magpies were favourites and lost by three when Tim Membrey's shot after the siren drifted right for a behind instead of the goal that would have won it. Arthur Jones kicked four for the Dogs, including the sealer, on a night he later admitted doubled as an audition for a new contract.
- Carlton 10.14 (74) def Melbourne 7.13 (55) — the Blues conceded the first four goals of the match and then didn't lose again, kicking 10 of the last 13 to run away with it. Interim coach Josh Fraser's side has now beaten Geelong three times running, which is either a great omen or the kind of thing you should never say out loud before an elimination final.
Winners advance, seeded exactly where they were before the weekend started: Geelong host Carlton and Adelaide host Western Bulldogs in this week's elimination finals. Losers are out, effective immediately, no email, no exit interview.
The bill comes due
Nobody warned the players that “more meaningful football” also meant more meaningful endings. Collingwood's Steele Sidebottom walked off through a guard of honour after his final game, a two-time premiership player retiring on a three-point loss. Melbourne farewelled Tom McDonald and Jake Melksham the same weekend, both hanging up the boots after well over 250 games apiece.
And then there's Scott Pendlebury. Ruled out of the Wildcard match itself with the hamstring strain that had been brewing all week, he watched his Magpies go down by three points from the sidelines — and by the next morning had reportedly agreed terms with the Gold Coast Suns on a two-year playing deal plus two years on the coaching staff after. The AFL's all-time games record holder, 442 appearances, gone from Collingwood to the newest club in the competition less than 24 hours after his teammates' season ended. If you were looking for proof that sentiment and loyalty don't survive contact with a finals system built to sell more advertising, there it is, in writing, before the guard of honour photos had even finished doing the rounds.
The bit nobody's saying out loud
Every version of this story from head office arrived dressed the same: “more meaningful football,” “more home finals,” “commitment to evolving the competition.” Turns out it was also true — 81,036 people at the MCG on a Friday night for a game that used to not exist is not nothing. But let's not pretend the pre-finals bye was cancelled purely out of love for the fans standing in the cold — a fixture that fills the ground is a fixture that gets sold to a broadcaster, and a finals series that's five weeks long instead of four is a finals series with one more round of ad breaks in it. The game keeps growing, and so, remarkably, does everyone's cut of it. It just also, this year, took Steele Sidebottom's career and Scott Pendlebury's jumper with it on the way through.
Elimination finals: Geelong v Carlton and Adelaide v Western Bulldogs, this week. Four teams down, four to go.
Related: AFL Finals System Explained · AFL Ladder Explained · AFL Grand Final History · AFL Slang & Culture — The Complete Guide
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