\n Check out how many games of experience your club has lost heading into the 2026 campaign\n <\/p>\n
Dylan Shiel and Todd Goldstein are seen during Essendon’s official team photo day on February 3, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
ESSENDON is one of three clubs to have shed more than 1000 games of AFL experience from its list, while Gold Coast has also undergone a mini-reset after its first finals win.<\/p>\n
The Bombers will go into 2026 as one of the competition’s youngest lists after seeing 1034 games worth of experience depart.<\/p>\n
Todd Goldstein (345), Dylan Shiel (234) and Jayden Laverde (145) were among 10 Bombers to leave the club or retire at the end of 2025.<\/p>\n
Only the Suns (1110) saw more experience leave, despite claiming a historic first finals win this year.<\/p>\n
Gold Coast hit the Telstra AFL Draft hard with six picks, including Academy players Zeke Uwland (pick No.2), Dylan Patterson (No.5), Jai Murray (No.17), Beau Addinsall (No.18) and Koby Coulson (No.46).<\/p>\n
But the Suns had to make room on their list and saw the likes of David Swallow (249 games), Alex Sexton (186), Ben Ainsworth (158), Sean Lemmens (149) and Brayden Fiorini (123) among their exits.<\/p>\n
David Swallow is chaired from the field after Gold Coast’s semi-final against Brisbane on September 13, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
But they did bring in 279 games of experience with the arrival of superstar Christian Petracca (212) and forward Jamarra Ugle-Hagan (67) during the Continental Tyres AFL Trade Period.<\/p>\n
The other club to see more than 1000 games experience leave was Port Adelaide.<\/p>\n
The Power, who will be guided by first-year coach Josh Carr in 2026, saw five 100-game players leave, including club great Travis Boak (387 games).<\/p>\n
Travis Boak after Port Adelaide’s win over Gold Coast in round 24, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
Ryan Burton (162), Rory Atkins (141), Jeremy Finlayson (128) and Willie Rioli (109) also departed.<\/p>\n
Unsurprisingly given the lack of experience on their lists, Richmond and North Melbourne lost the fewest number of games in their off-season departures.<\/p>\n
Greater Western Sydney continues to have a consistent list after just five departures, including Callan Ward (327), while the Giants added Clayton Oliver (205) and Laverde.<\/p>\n
\u00a0
\nGames of experience lost<\/p>\n
Gold Coast
\n1110<\/p>\n
Essendon
\n1034<\/p>\n
Port Adelaide
\n1017<\/p>\n
West Coast
\n908<\/p>\n
Collingwood
\n901<\/p>\n
Carlton
\n848<\/p>\n
Melbourne
\n826<\/p>\n
Western Bulldogs
\n797<\/p>\n
Fremantle
\n789<\/p>\n
Hawthorn
\n755<\/p>\n
St Kilda
\n702<\/p>\n
Brisbane
\n685<\/p>\n
Adelaide
\n670<\/p>\n
Sydney
\n645<\/p>\n
Geelong
\n557<\/p>\n
Greater Western Sydney
\n492<\/p>\n
Richmond
\n379<\/p>\n
North Melbourne
\n312<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Check out how many games of experience your club has lost heading into the 2026 campaign Dylan Shiel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-323370","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-sports","14":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323370","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=323370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}