Crisis or all is fair in footy? What the data says about AFL equalisation

Source : ABC NEWS

Is footy fair?

Millions of fans turn up or tune in each week hoping their team gets up. This year could be their year, if everything breaks just right. For some — including some loud voices in the media — this bargain of hope and equality has slowly slipped away.

But is there any real basis to that fear?

Over the past four decades the AFL has increasingly attempted to address competitive equality across the league. Over the past decade the league has altered rules relating to drafting, trading and acquiring players, with the draft rules changing again within the last year.

On the field, the league has continued to tinker with rules that highlight the athleticism in the sport while attempting to create an environment where teams with radically different strengths can compete evenly each weekend. While some umpiring decisions confound players, coaches, commentators and fans alike, the decisions usually are equally confusing both ways.

Despite these adjustments some perceive the sport at the precipice of a collapse.

Commercial radio host Mark Duffield claimed at the start of the year that “the AFL is in danger of becoming the most unequalised equalised competition in the history of sport.”

Not to be outdone, Kane Cornes opined that the league was pushing the boundaries of league-wide competitiveness.

“This is almost a crisis level situation where we have poor teams, great teams, and then a couple in the middle, and it’s no good,” he said.

AFL head honcho Andrew Dillon has acknowledged the value of equalisation across the elite men’s league, but in an even keeled way.

“So it’s important for us (the AFL) on field — equalisation is important. But there’s always been a team that comes (last) and there’s a team that finishes on top,” Dillon told the ABC AFL Daily Podcast in March this year.

A glance at the ladder from recent years highlights a few familiar faces at the bottom end, with North Melbourne, West Coast and Richmond adrift from the pack. At the same time Brisbane, Geelong and Sydney seem perpetually in contention for premierships.

Despite this, coaches and players regularly suggest that there is a smaller gap on field between the best and worst sides. So much so, it is often hard for teams to have a “soft” game lest they fall victim to an upset.

So does every team get a fair chance to compete from week to week and over the longer term? Or has the inherent inequities of the competition pushed the AFL closer to breaking point?

Tighter throughout the season

While fans care about the long term, it’s often the short term that takes prominence. Questions about what will happen each week or in the current season tends to take prominence over the future.

The short term question that drives fans to pay attention and have hope for their team is key to both in person attendances and broadcast consumers. Fans want to know if they show up in any given week that their side has a chance to win. Neutrals are similarly compelled — a blowout on paper will likely draw less eyeballs than a prospective instant classic.

Recent years suggest that the onfield picture is probably more competitive than it’s ever been. The share of games finishing with close margins is as high as it has been in the modern era. This is despite an uptick in scoring this year, which is usually tied to bigger margins.

The bottom of the ladder is also as competitive as it has been in at least a decade and a half. Although Essendon has only won a single game this year, they have the best percentage of a presumptive wooden spooner at this stage of the season since 2010. The Bombers have regularly been in close games this year, but have often just fallen short of tasting victory.

Players and coaches regularly reiterate just how tight the league is across the board.

“I was a bit edgy this morning driving in. I was a bit short at home. Probably because it’s a game on paper you’re expected to win and we dropped this one against Essendon last time,” Melbourne coach Steven King told the media after their recent win over Essendon. 

“They were really competitive last week. So, yeah, you’ve got to rock up. No one gives you a four points. You’ve got to go and earn it.”

That evenness extends to the sides who find themselves in the heat of the battle in September.

All eighteen clubs have featured in finals footy within the last decade and each team is cycling through the finals race relatively regularly. With the extension of finals to 10 teams this year there’s a fair chance that North Melbourne keeps this trend alive for another season.

Despite perceived or actual inequalities relating to the draft, free agency, trades and the fixture, the competition has found a way to largely right itself while still operating.

More teams have made the last game of the year over a ten year period since 2000 than at any time since World War II. While there are more teams than in years past, there are a fixed number of spots in the Grand Final. This trend of league-wide equality has given more fans hope, and more sides opportunities at tasting ultimate success.

This rate of teams making finals and winning titles compares favourably with other sporting leagues with play-off systems. While the number of teams and rules for post-season qualification changes, it doesn’t flag immediate concerns around equity and the AFL.

But does this increased equality carry over to those stuck in the basement of the league?

From a basement on a hill

While hope springs eternal, constant years towards the bottom of the ladder can test the resolve of even the most dedicated members. For as easy it is to see your team win on a Friday night it is equally hard to watch them lose week after week in the Sunday twilight slot.

History suggests that there’s usually a pack of teams spending extended time towards the bottom of the ladder. The current AFL is no different.

Coming into the 2026 season North Melbourne had finished each of the last six seasons in the bottom four of the ladder. For the last four of those seasons West Coast had joined them in the bottom grouping, with Richmond hanging on the lower rungs over the last three years. 

While this run of futility by three teams in the league seems unusual and anti-competitive, it’s actually an improvement on historical levels.

For the entire pre-modern history of the league before the new millennium, teams on the bottom mostly just stayed there.

For much of the league’s history there have been an average of about four clubs enduring extended periods in the bottom four over any extended period of time. As recently as 1994, Brisbane, Sydney, Richmond, Fitzroy and St Kilda had monopolised the bottom four between them for half a decade.

But just because a team hits the bottom of the standings doesn’t mean they can’t bounce back.

When a club finishes bottom four, it has a roughly 50 per cent chance of returning to finals in the next four seasons. Around a quarter of the time the bottom four sides make the big leap all the way into the top four. 

These rates have attenuated a little in the last decade, possibly due in part to a more compromised draft, but certainly in large part because there’s been two extra non-finalists every year in the 18-team era.

The general picture of clubs mostly rebounding after a short period at the bottom does tend to hold in recent seasons, and the introduction of a final 10 system this season and a 19th team in 2028 will further shake up these probabilities.

However, most observers will note that not all bottom four sides are equal. Fates tend to fork along two paths when a team hits rock bottom, with either a relatively quick rebound or an extended period of suffering.

Some sides crash hard and remain at the foot of the ladder for years, even after a few false dawns, as the “full rebuild” takes its twists and turns. North Melbourne and the Eagles are the most recent examples, but before them were other famous eras of struggle like the Lions, Demons and Suns in the 2010s, or the Blues, Demons and Tigers in the 2000s.

Recency bias can make fans and pundits over-index on the depths plumbed by current long term cellar dwellers, but the modern AFL is a story of hope even for lowly sides, historically speaking.

With the player draft, financial equalisation, larger talent pools and increased professional standards, that rate has dropped to closer to just over two struggling sides at any one time.

However, the number of teams pinned to the bottom did rise after the introduction of GWS and Gold Coast. Both sides themselves struggled, and may have helped hamper the draft-driven rebound of some others.

That period is a hint at the potential risk with the introduction of the new Tasmanian side. Tasmania will have access to as many as 20 highly rated extra youngsters in the next three draft classes, both as direct picks and as players selected early as 17-year-olds to develop in their VFL team. This may leave only scraps for other needy sides even before the Devils start recruiting established players.

Overall, the AFL is as fair as it ever has been for fans of any side. But that’s not to say that there can’t be further tweaks and changes to the rules that govern the game. Recent draft reforms should further enable teams to rise from the bottom swiftly, while increased player movement may present opportunities for lowly sides to recruit missing talent more easily within the Total Player Payment cap.

One thing’s for sure — footy isn’t at an equalisation crisis point just yet.