{"id":537516,"date":"2026-03-13T09:50:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T09:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/537516\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T09:50:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T09:50:16","slug":"afl-round-one-2026-scores-results-odds-stats-and-start-time-from-the-mcg-in-melbourne-zach-merrett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/537516\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL round one 2026, scores, results, odds, stats and start time from the MCG in Melbourne, Zach Merrett"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What a lively first quarter! There have been no real sparks to speak of, in terms of rivalry bitterness, but both teams have shown their ability to score quickly.<\/p>\n<p>The Hawks look the more dangerous going forward given their plethora of options, while Sam Durham has been outstanding for the red and black; booting two team-lifting goals.<\/p>\n<p>Xavier Duursma played one of the better quarters of his career, while Jack Scrimshaw had one of his worst.<\/p>\n<p>Zach Merrett has been strong with 11 disposals and has dealt with a mixture of cheers and jeers from the crowd.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s already a much better game than last night\u2019s, but that wouldn\u2019t be difficult.<\/p>\n<p>Hawks by seven points at the first change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What a lively first quarter! There have been no real sparks to speak of, in terms of rivalry&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-537516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537516","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=537516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}