AFL’s bold wildcard weekend will breathe life into stale late-season games — but will be a poisoned chalice

After years of dancing around the idea, the AFL will finally bite the bullet on a wildcard round in 2026. Fans will hate it, but here’s why the league had to bring it in.

The AFL knew it had to dangle a bigger carrot.

As the gulf widened between the top and bottom sides this year, a significant slice of the home and away season became a bit of a snooze fest.

Teams fell off the pace and so did their fans’ interest towards the end at a time when it has never been harder to rise up from the bottom.

So for a league desperately looking to add value to the next broadcast rights deal, the new wildcard weekend does more than tick a few boxes.

The finals series just got two new all-on-the-line knockout games which is certain to fill stadiums on what is currently a weekend off for the men’s competition.

And for Fox Footy and Seven, the extra eyeballs on the extra finals eliminators will be a timely and welcome boost.

The wildcard round will still be unpopular for many, and critics will say all it does is reward mediocrity.

But the reality is from next season, there will be more hope and opportunity, and more life in the season for longer as teams jockey for a top-10 finals spot. And the AFL needed it.

For clubs such as St Kilda and Essendon, and perhaps even North Melbourne, a finals berth just became a more realistic proposition.

Will clubs like St Kilda be given more drive in the back end of the season? Picture: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images.

The trade-off is whether it still means as much, and the league will hope for a couple of cracking contests first-up next year to launch the new format in 2026.

Sydney Swans would have made it into the ten in 2025 with 12 wins for the year.

And with that star midfield group catching fire in the second half of the season, the AFL will want the wildcard weekend participants to dare to dream from next season on.

But while it just got easier to make the finals, it in fact became harder to win the whole thing from seventh and eighth.

The Swans’ late-season charge was too little, too late last year. Picture: Brett Costello.

The Bulldogs rode a magic carpet to the flag winning it from seventh spot in 2016, racking up four-straight finals wins as part of an unforgettable September campaign.

But if that was hard, it might be near impossible winning five-straight under the new system.

Teams will be desperate to finish inside the six and have the week off, rather than fall into seventh and eighth.

Seventh gets the new finals short straw.

So the race for sixth will be a storyline in itself late in the season, adding extra pressure and intrigue.

Teams in ninth and 10th will take a free swing at it.

In any case, league chiefs knew footy needed a shot in the arm following this season and State of Origin will hopefully provide a brilliant spectacle in the early part of the year.

The superstars have largely all said they’re in, so far.

While it has taken years and years of discussion to get here, wildcard weekend will surely add some much-needed consequence and sizzle a time when teams are otherwise at risk of nodding off.

Originally published as AFL’s bold wildcard weekend will breathe life into stale late-season games — but will be a poisoned chalice