Fixture 2026 Fixture Discussion

[VitalDread]

Think our members need to stop engaging with the admins and making them a "thing"
Cause that announcement video was horrible

 

[Doggy]

This point is a symptom of our Small Club Defeatist Attitude. something we desperately need to stamp out. If Teams are good enough, stuff like this simply does not matter.

Is it annoying? Yep, sure is. Does it deserve this much discourse? Not really

Getting 4 of the top 6 favoured teams next year twice does not matter?

Think of Geelong (easy example), getting a massively cushy draw into finals every year. Helps them go pretty far huh

 

[SackofTaters]

Who do we have to blow at the AFL to get a fair crack ? Jesus H Christ.

Travel to Adelaide 3 times in 12 Rounds ??. Give me a f'in spell.

End of Rant. Go Dogs.

 

[Golden_6]

5 of our first 6 games against top 7 sides from 2025. 3 of those away.

Double ups against Hawks (4th), Crows (5th), Fremantle (7th), Swans (10th), Blues (11th) & Demons (14th). The first 4 are all genuine top 4 contenders.

That's just absolutely brutal. Far out. Utterly ridiculous in my opinion.

 

[LondonBulldog]

Got unlucky with no double up freebies.

missing north, eagles, bombers and tigers. I guess Dees and Blues may fall into that category this season but unlikely

Double up against the cellar dwellers makes or breaks your season. Extremely tough draw for a team that finished 9th. Unheard of really. We should have had 2 double ups from the bottom 6!!!

 

[Libbaaaa]

I’m fine with the fixture, we have to beat good sides on a regular basis, no excuses.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Carlton finished 9th a few years back, got what was rated as the easiest draw and still ****ed it up.

We’ve finished 9th twice since then and have been reamed both times.

These 4 teams you’d expect would be favourites to be the top 4 next year:

Brisbane once - away
Geelong once - away
Suns once - away
Hawks twice - neutral & away

Yeah, that's the thing where people miss there's inequalities for the draw.

If we want to push for top 4, we want to be other interstate potential top 4 teams at home (to get the HGA) and be playing the crap teams that we should be beating anyway, interstate away.

We play all of Brisbane, Geelong, GC, Sydney away - the 4 most likely top 4 finishers per betting odds for the non-Melbourne teams.

We avoid GWS (5th favourite but they never carry a strong HGA anyway given their small crowds so we "miss out", then also get 6th favourite Freo away.

We then get Hawks away at the MCG with a true home ground disadvantage, as we rarely play MCG.

It's just crap. We get to play West Coast at home, Richmond at Docklands and not MCG, the two lowest ranked non-Docklands teams. Matches that if you get once, you want to get away, because you're likely to win anyway and you want the home ground advantage against other top 4 fancies, if playing once.

 

[Lindsay_Gilbee]

Would love some transparency on how they do a fixture. Some of the things this fixture has shit out is so weird.

How do Freo (obviously), Collingwood and GWS all get the eagles twice? Three teams that played finals, but we don’t. Same with the cats getting North.

 

[_Cerberus_]

One funny thing about the fixture, is that we play some teams that we haven't doubled up on in a long time, or rarely do. So it's kind of fresh in a way.

Even though it is a hard fixture. But remember teams go up and down every year, so it could end up better than it looks.

Our fixture and the Cats are so alike to this year just gone. Both have hard starts, but a soft run home. Especially the Cats, with their usual belting up of small teams, percentage boosters leading into the finals.

At least it feels like that we have a better balance between the amount of games Home vs Away vs the good teams/top 8 teams. 5 home vs 6 away. 1 Neutral.

Crows, Pies, Lions, Dockers, Giants at home.

Cats, Lions, Crows, Hawks, Suns, Dockers all away.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

The draw isn't particularly friendly with days break either.

We go into the R3 bye on a Friday and come out of it on a Sunday, where the 16 day break is not that more beneficial compared to a 12-14 day break and we'd much rather had more 7 and 8 day breaks throughout the year.

We go into the R16 bye on a Sunday (which is good, I suppose, we might come out of it on a 10-day break, which is not that much more beneficial than a 9 day break), but only on the back of the ultra-rare 10 day break, which follows four consecutive 6 day breaks.

Keep in mind most teams get the benefit of going into their byes with less than 14 day breaks - the AFL wants to share around its Thursday and Friday fixtures among all teams without excessive 5- and 6-day breaks and one way of doing that is to have teams going into byes on a Sat/Sun and coming out of them on a Thu/Fri. We don't get that benefit in R3 and the benefit we get for it in R16 is both on the back of the highly inefficient 6-6-6-6-10 (which is worse for fatigue than you know 6-7-7-7-7), of which we might not play Swans on a Thu/Fri R17 anyway.

Even the "benefit" we get from paying an opening round fixture re rest: 8 teams get a bye in R0, not R3, meaning fatigue accumulates worse for them - is offset a little bit that we're playing in the 4th of the 5 games on Opening Round anyway. Would have been a lot better to start the season on the Thursday or Friday (obviously).

We've been screwed around on this before. In 2024 we played Brisbane the last game before the bye after a million 6 day breaks while Brisbane started the season the week before, went into every bye on a 12 day break and had a million 8 day breaks and two byes before we'd even had one. That game was a write-off, our players were exhausted compared to Brisbane.

 

[ExRoyboy]

Yeah, that's the thing where people miss there's inequalities for the draw.

If we want to push for top 4, we want to be other interstate potential top 4 teams at home (to get the HGA) and be playing the crap teams that we should be beating anyway, interstate away.

We play all of Brisbane, Geelong, GC, Sydney away - the 4 most likely top 4 finishers per betting odds for the non-Melbourne teams.

We avoid GWS (5th favourite but they never carry a strong HGA anyway given their small crowds so we "miss out", then also get 6th favourite Freo away.

We then get Hawks away at the MCG with a true home ground disadvantage, as we rarely play MCG.

It's just crap. We get to play West Coast at home, Richmond at Docklands and not MCG, the two lowest ranked non-Docklands teams. Matches that if you get once, you want to get away, because you're likely to win anyway and you want the home ground advantage against other top 4 fancies, if playing once.

Totally agree with this. In fact when the fixture is released that’s what I look for, who do we play once but have to play them away. Last season Gold Coast got the dream draw from that perspective. They hardly played any top teams away, got them all at home or in Darwin and their away games were against North Melbourne, Richmond, West Coast etc etc…… it makes a huge difference where you play the teams you only get to play once, because if you play twice at least you get a fair crack home and away. The exception is gather round and last year we copped Brisbane but then got them again at their home ground, same for Geelong the previous year and now again same for Hawthorn.

We obviously also get screwed every year on the Geelong game which I went back through it and it showed that in the last 15 or 20 years or something we have only played them once in a season as our home game maybe 3 times or something and all of those were not in the last 9 years. Every year since then we either play them twice, or if we play once it’s always at Geelong. That is a huge advantage to Geelong. I don’t know of any other team that gets such a huge advantage over another contending club over such a long time. I suspect the interstate teams could also point to regular seasons where they also only get to play them once but always at Geelong. Fxxk I hate those pricks soooooo much!

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Would love some transparency on how they do a fixture. Some of the things this fixture has shit out is so weird.

How do Freo (obviously), Collingwood and GWS all get the eagles twice? Three teams that played finals, but we don’t. Same with the cats getting North.

The fixture is so compromised with requests, downstream effects from requests, commercial interests and player requirements.

Like I don't think it's deliberate we play in Geelong so often. It's just that mathematically it almost becomes an inevitability with every requirement the AFL has. Perth and Adelaide games in alternate weeks. AFLPA not allowing clubs to have more than one five-day break per season. The byes needing to be where they are. Not wanting too many overlapping Friday games. Not wanting to put North in FTA timeslots. Collingwood contractually needing 5 away MCG games. Us playing in Ballarat (when we do), always against an interstate team but never against Sydney (too big a Melbourne fanbase), or the two Perth teams (they complain about travel) or Brisbane if it can be avoided (Melbourne fanbase, couldn't avoid playing them there once). Ballarat can't be a night game. etc. etc. Wanting GWS and GC to play their home games against the big Melbourne clubs for Sydney and SEQ based supporters to artificially bump up their crowds and make them seem bigger.

So many elements go into the fixture that it takes what's in theory a 11/17 (65%) chance of us hosting any given team home or away for any of our 11 home and away games into far more compromised indirectly. For example, the fact that the eight interstate teams are guaranteed to play each other twice makes it marginally more likely that we play any Victorian team twice when compared to a fair fixture, which makes it marginally more likely we play down in Geelong. Rinse and repeat for every single fixture request/downstream effect.

 

[Charlie Bucket]

Arseholes give us the bye in Rd3.

 

[Charlie Bucket]

Speaking of arseholes, how’s the Hopoate we’ve copped in the first 5-6 games. Tough run to start the season.

 

[Libbaaaa]

Spare a thought for the Dees, first bye comes in round 16!

 

[Lindsay_Gilbee]

The fixture is so compromised with requests, downstream effects from requests, commercial interests and player requirements.

Like I don't think it's deliberate we play in Geelong so often. It's just that mathematically it almost becomes an inevitability with every requirement the AFL has. Perth and Adelaide games in alternate weeks. AFLPA not allowing clubs to have more than one five-day break per season. The byes needing to be where they are. Not wanting too many overlapping Friday games. Not wanting to put North in FTA timeslots. Collingwood contractually needing 5 away MCG games. Us playing in Ballarat (when we do), always against an interstate team but never against Sydney (too big a Melbourne fanbase), or the two Perth teams (they complain about travel) or Brisbane if it can be avoided (Melbourne fanbase, couldn't avoid playing them there once). Ballarat can't be a night game. etc. etc. Wanting GWS and GC to play their home games against the big Melbourne clubs for Sydney and SEQ based supporters to artificially bump up their crowds and make them seem bigger.

So many elements go into the fixture that it takes what's in theory a 11/17 (65%) chance of us hosting any given team home or away for any of our 11 home and away games into far more compromised indirectly. For example, the fact that the eight interstate teams are guaranteed to play each other twice makes it marginally more likely that we play any Victorian team twice when compared to a fair fixture, which makes it marginally more likely we play down in Geelong. Rinse and repeat for every single fixture request/downstream effect.

I get that we have to play the cats in Geelong, there’s no way that they shouldn’t come to Melb.

2026 Geelong
2025 Geelong
2024 Geelong
2024 Adelaide
2023 Geelong
2023 Melbourne
2022 Geelong
2022 Melbourne
2021 Geelong

That’s just ridiculous. There’s no way that’s justifiable.

 

[MaxiBont]

That is an absolutely brutal first 9 games. Essendon and the Giants are the only easy ones.

 

[Bulldogs85]

I get that we have to play the cats in Geelong, there’s no way that they shouldn’t come to Melb.

2026 Geelong
2025 Geelong
2024 Geelong
2024 Adelaide
2023 Geelong
2023 Melbourne
2022 Geelong
2022 Melbourne
2021 Geelong

That’s just ridiculous. There’s no way that’s justifiable.

Club should be asking for some answers

 

[Optimistic Dog]

That is sticking up the dogs fans, we have to wait to round 4 for a home game and after 6 rounds we have played one home game.

Where do we petition a vote of no confidence in the AFL. I really like Ameet but the club have dropped the ball in allowing this to happen.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

I get that we have to play the cats in Geelong, there’s no way that they shouldn’t come to Melb.

2026 Geelong
2025 Geelong
2024 Geelong
2024 Adelaide
2023 Geelong
2023 Melbourne
2022 Geelong
2022 Melbourne
2021 Geelong

That’s just ridiculous. There’s no way that’s justifiable.

To be clear, I'm not saying it isn't ridiculous or it isn't justifyable.

Just that it's not as if the AFL ever sits down before a season and thinks when they construct the fixture that "we're going to make the Dogs play in Geelong". Just the AFL compromises itself with its fixture - such as the contractual guarantee that the Collingwood plays at the MCG as the away team 5 times a year, among a million other requests- that outcomes like this become a probability inevitability. I'm not defending it - they still hold a responsibility for the outcomes and they shouldn't be allowed to tie themselves into these downstrem effect fixture outcomes by guaranteeing sub-outcomes, like the Collingwood 5 MCG game one - but just making a point about the process that got them there.

It's like if you randomise the placement of 4 different balls. You're a 25% chance of each place. But if you guarantee a ball in the 1st place and you guarantee a second ball to not be in last place, you have a 40% chance or whatever of being in last place if you're one of the other two balls.

 

[BrisDog]

Dillon has opted against lube in dealing with the dogs this year.

 

[VL3OJ]

... I suspect the interstate teams could also point to regular seasons where they also only get to play them once but always at Geelong. Fxxk I hate those pricks soooooo much!

That's ok - Bailey is fixing the equilibrium, one misstep at a time

 

[ExRoyboy]

The fixture is so compromised with requests, downstream effects from requests, commercial interests and player requirements.

Like I don't think it's deliberate we play in Geelong so often. It's just that mathematically it almost becomes an inevitability with every requirement the AFL has. Perth and Adelaide games in alternate weeks. AFLPA not allowing clubs to have more than one five-day break per season. The byes needing to be where they are. Not wanting too many overlapping Friday games. Not wanting to put North in FTA timeslots. Collingwood contractually needing 5 away MCG games. Us playing in Ballarat (when we do), always against an interstate team but never against Sydney (too big a Melbourne fanbase), or the two Perth teams (they complain about travel) or Brisbane if it can be avoided (Melbourne fanbase, couldn't avoid playing them there once). Ballarat can't be a night game. etc. etc. Wanting GWS and GC to play their home games against the big Melbourne clubs for Sydney and SEQ based supporters to artificially bump up their crowds and make them seem bigger.

So many elements go into the fixture that it takes what's in theory a 11/17 (65%) chance of us hosting any given team home or away for any of our 11 home and away games into far more compromised indirectly. For example, the fact that the eight interstate teams are guaranteed to play each other twice makes it marginally more likely that we play any Victorian team twice when compared to a fair fixture, which makes it marginally more likely we play down in Geelong. Rinse and repeat for every single fixture request/downstream effect.

They seem to get a pretty cushy draw most years and then people wonder why they always make the Finals. It is meant to be a fair competition but it clearly is not.

I appreciate all the different things being managed but it is not a fair draw and the AFL does manipulate it to help certain teams like Gold Coast last season

 

[Libbaaaa]

That is sticking up the dogs fans, we have to wait to round 4 for a home game and after 6 rounds we have played one home game.

Where do we petition a vote of no confidence in the AFL. I really like Ameet but the club have dropped the ball in allowing this to happen.

We do play the Giants in round '1' at home.

 

[glenashley]

It's an awful draw early but looking positively, we own GWS, especially in Melbourne.
Should have Essendon, Freo and Sydney covered at home (SHOULD!).
Hawks and cats will be tough but we now push Geelong at GMHBA and Hawks will be a neutral ground.
Crows will probably wipe us.

Sigh......