{"id":273539,"date":"2025-11-09T16:08:24","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T16:08:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/273539\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T16:08:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T16:08:24","slug":"afl-to-go-ahead-with-divisive-new-finals-system-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/273539\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL to go ahead with divisive new finals system"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The AFL will introduce a divisive wildcard round from next year, giving teams ranked ninth and 10th an opportunity to win the premiership.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">All clubs have been told the league will implement what is essentially an extra week of finals, starting in 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The AFL will confirm the move in coming days when they will also release the fixture for next season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Taking the system from the NBA, the wildcard round would pit the team that finishes seventh on the ladder in the home-and-away season against 10th.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Premiership cup.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/0f1f1becc4be985e704c367d9d37b746.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The 2025 AFL premiership cup on show on the Gold Coast. (AAP PHOTOS)<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The other wildcard game would be eighth against ninth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Both games will take place on the weekend that is currently set aside for the pre-finals bye.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The winners would be seeded seventh and eighth in the finals, with the rest of the four-week series remaining as it has since 2000.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">If the wildcard round was in place this year, seventh-placed Gold Coast would have hosted Sydney (10th), and Hawthorn (eighth) would have played the Western Bulldogs (ninth).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The AFL will introduce a divisive wildcard round from next year, giving teams ranked ninth and 10th an&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,158855,85,158856,158857],"class_list":{"0":"post-273539","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-divisive-wildcard-round","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-wildcard-game","16":"tag-wildcard-round"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}