Winter is done, spring has sprung. The AFL season has finally found a wave of momentum. Port Adelaide leaned into their emotion, Collingwood and GWS Giants hung on in thrillers, Fremantle sealed their return to the finals. A neatly scheduled four days of football filled with tension ended as Brisbane reaffirmed their premiership credentials.
The home-and-away season has reached a crescendo, and there is still one more game to play. Gold Coast have been building toward this moment – to be the centre of attention in a cut-throat clash – for 15 years. They only need to defeat Essendon to leap over Western Bulldogs and snatch a club-first finals berth. But with the Bombers hit hard by injury and on a 12-match losing streak, the curiosity is not so much around whether the Suns will seize up for a third week in a row, as whether they will win by enough to finish in seventh or eighth spot.
Yet even with a do-or-die midweek match that should have wildcard round crusaders salivating, finals fever has been cooled by the end-of-season pause. The space where finals hype should be blossoming with discussion of injuries or the availability of star players is being filled by the buds of the silly season shooting early. Finals football has been pushed aside by trade talk, exit interviews, delistings, retirements and tepid takes much like this one.
West Coast co-captain Oscar Allen has been pushed toward the exit as the wooden spooners eye a too-good-to-refuse compensation pick. Tom de Koning has bid farewell to his Carlton teammates with a cool “all the best”. Stop the presses, there’s news on the futures of Harley Reid and Jack Silvagni, and Steven May should depart Melbourne. Surely this is what October is for.
The pre-finals bye was introduced ahead of the 2016 season and after a brief period when finals-bound clubs rested players during the run home and especially in the last round. But as much as the AFL might want speculation and player movement to keep it in the spotlight during spring, the weekend without men’s football means it is now eating into its own appeal.
The break is not only leaving fans and the seven confirmed finalists in limbo – as well as the Suns and Bulldogs in this unusual season – it has also been shown to have a huge impact on results during the finals series. This year’s pre-finals bye might help the likes of Brisbane and GWS Giants as they hope to recall injured players for the business end of the season, while it is likely to hinder the top two, Adelaide and Geelong, who would prefer to just keep rolling on.
The Crows return to the finals for the first time since 2017 after winning their last nine matches and finishing on top of the ladder. The Cats did much of their hard work early in the season before cruising past six sides already out of finals contention to finish one victory behind the minor premiers. But the benefit of finishing in the upper reaches of the ladder and earning a double chance has been dulled by the introduction of the pre-finals bye.
Finishing in the top four was once a critical step on the path to the decider. From the 2000 season (when the current finals format was introduced) until 2015, every grand finalist began the finals series playing a qualifying final. The vast majority – 28 of 32 – even won in the first week of finals then made the most of the week off to back up in the preliminary final. But since the introduction of the pre-finals bye in 2016, four teams – including last year’s premiers – have climbed from the lower half of the top eight and into a grand final.
The extended breaks on either side of the qualifying finals are widely seen as pivotal to the script being flipped in recent years. The Crows and Cats will play one game in 27 days if they win next week and progress straight through to a preliminary final. For the Magpies it would be at least a day longer.
For those following the game, momentum has been slowed by the pre-finals bye, and it has come to a grinding halt for the teams that qualified highest. A pre-grand final bye that could help avoid the scenario where a star player misses the decider due to a concussion, as Adelaide’s Chelsea Randall suffered in the AFLW in 2022, has its merits. But the break between the home-and-away season ending and the finals series starting should be sent off to pasture.
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