{"id":873572,"date":"2026-08-30T07:12:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T07:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/873572\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T07:12:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T07:12:22","slug":"the-afls-wildcard-finals-delivered-everything-the-afl-wanted-but-is-the-experiment-good-for-the-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/873572\/","title":{"rendered":"The AFL\u2019s wildcard finals delivered everything the AFL wanted, but is the experiment good for the game?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Michael<\/p>\n

August 30, 2026 \u2014 2:40pm<\/p>\n

Save<\/p>\n

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n

Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n

AAA<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The numbers will tell you wildcard weekend was a roaring success. For the AFL that is all that matters.<\/p>\n

The league\u2019s case for the wildcard round is a business one. And the AFL was eager on Sunday to immediately press its business case, trumpeting the games as a phenomenal success. As a sporting case, where integrity, fairness and finding the best teams remain important \u2013 flimsy imperatives in a competition with a fixture where compromise is the rule, not the exception \u2013 the justification remains doubtful.<\/p>\n

\"BulldogsBulldogs players celebrate after Tim Membrey missed an after-siren kick that would have put Collingwood into an elimination final.AFL Photos<\/p>\n

As a case of theatre, the wildcard was box-office drama and the most compelling argument the AFL could have hoped for.<\/p>\n

The AFL said the two matches were the most watched games of the season, boasting that 7.4 million people turned in at some point to the matches.<\/p>\n

On Friday night more than 81,000 people were at the MCG; on Saturday night 91,000 squeezed in.<\/p>\n

In recent years, there would have been no men\u2019s footy on this weekend at all. Instead, 172,000 people went along and an average of about 1.3 million each night watched on TV. This is actually a flimsier argument than it sounds. The AFL created the bye weekend a few years ago, and now it uses the wildcard as an answer to fixing the problem of having that bye weekend. Groucho Marx might be consulting.<\/p>\n

The business case says the raw numbers, the money generated, the people attracted to watch the game make wildcard an overwhelming success. Clearly the biggest wildcard round they\u2019ve ever had!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

By comparison, the NRL this week had viewing numbers about half the AFL\u2019s. Cute.<\/p>\n

So the reasoning is the eyeballs are on the AFL and not drifting to other things, and those huge crowds engendered excitement when otherwise for football watchers (of male footy, there is still the AFLW) there would have been the riveting high drama of \u2026 a legends\u2019 match.<\/p>\n

But this year they had Collingwood one night and Carlton the next. Of course they got crowds and TV numbers like that. Not only that, they had resurgent Melbourne swelling the MCC.<\/p>\n

If next year\u2019s wildcard round is North Melbourne v Gold Coast and GWS v Port Adelaide, and the numbers are barely a fraction of this year\u2019s, will the AFL say \u201cwell that didn\u2019t work, look at the crowds\u201d?<\/p>\n

\"BluesBlues fans could be forgiven for struggling to believe what they\u2019re seeing.AFL Photos<\/p>\n

The football and integrity case for wildcard round remains tenuous. Rewarding a team that finishes 10th in a competition of 18 with a chance to play finals is illogical. <\/p>\n

Melbourne, who finished the regular season 10 points \u2013 two and a half wins \u2013 ahead of Carlton had to play a side that was rewarded for two thirds of a great season.<\/p>\n

The football on Friday night was tense and tight and a cracking game that finished after the siren. But it also had the feel of eighth playing ninth.<\/p>\n

The argument to counter the idea of a lack of integrity inherent in rewarding mediocre teams is that wildcard is another AFL retrofit to fix other fixturing problems.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Harry<\/a><\/p>\n

Maybe it is fair to give a chance to two sides that might have finished outside the old final eight only by virtue of the compromised fixture. Maybe that compromised fixture punished them more than the teams above them with short breaks, cross-country travel (clearly not Collingwood\u2019s reason for finishing ninth), the number of terrible versus terrific teams they played \u2026 or coaches they had to sack mid-year.<\/p>\n

Aside from the strong business case, and the doubtful integrity argument, wildcard round will continue because it delivered high drama. The football was thrilling, tight throughout both games, intense, pressured and great theatre. One bloke hit the post four times, the best small forward in the game missed shot after shot he would usually kick, the two best players in the competition went head-to-head and both played well.<\/p>\n

Carlton and Collingwood are box-office, so drama follows them. But when one plays in a game decided after the siren and the other is riding a wave and in-season turnaround unseen in football, then that drama is captivating.<\/p>\n

The wildcard round meant Carlton\u2019s ride was not forced to end this year in Shakespearean (wispy half-back, good on his left, played at the Globe) drama, achingly short of finals.<\/p>\n

The greatest gift the wildcard gave us was keeping alive the best storyline of the year. No one \u2013 save for Melbourne who, were enjoying an extraordinary turnaround under a new coach of their own (and OK also a lot of people who hate the very idea of Carlton) \u2013 wanted to see the Josh Fraser transformation stop here. Now the Blues play Geelong, a team they have beaten the past three times.<\/p>\n

Carlton\u2019s story has delivered the AFL the narrative to go with the economics.<\/p>\n

Friday night was a close, tough game where it felt like Bulldogs should be five goals clear for most of the night, but Craig McRae\u2019s Collingwood have a gift for competing and staying in touch. It ended in a missed shot at goal after the siren. This actually shouldn\u2019t have been a surprise, it was the fourth Collingwood game this year decided by a kick on or after the siren.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Hear<\/a><\/p>\n

Football likes to present itself as romantic (there is no other reason to have the father-son rule), but business pragmatism is always more compelling. Without getting into the weeds, romance delivered Tasmania a team, but business delivered Tasmania a roofed-stadium-or-bust ultimatum that was not demanded of either Gold Coast or GWS in the states the AFL\u2019s marketeers coveted. Romance only goes so far.<\/p>\n

This wildcard round of quasi-finals, or round 25 if you\u2019re Ed Richards<\/a>, has given the AFL the most perfect weekend it could have hoped for. It doesn\u2019t necessarily make it the right thing for football, but it makes it the concept that is here to say.<\/p>\n

Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Save<\/p>\n

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n

Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n

\"MichaelMichael Gleeson<\/a> is an award-winning senior sports writer specialising in AFL and athletics.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"August 30, 2026 \u2014 2:40pm Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":873573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-873572","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\/873572","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=873572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}