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Each week of the 2026 AFL season, ESPN.com.au’s Jake Michaels looks at six talking points.
This week’s Six Points feature the dreadful Dons, the desperate need for rolling fixtures, an Isaac Heeney declaration, and perhaps the best, yet still underrated, recruit of the year.
1. This Essendon side is historically bad … and only getting worse
The Bombers are bad. Real bad! But as dreadful as this club has been over the past year or so, few are comparing it to the worst teams we’ve seen in recent memory. Well, perhaps we should be.
A quick recap. Essendon has now been beaten in 17 games in succession, a losing streak which dates to Round 11 last year. Since then, the club has a score differential of -713 and has won just 18 of 68 quarters played. Grim.
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Since 2000, this is the seventh instance of a side losing at least 17 games on the bounce. The others were the Giants and Suns within their first three years in the competition, the Kangaroos in 2023, the Dockers in 2001, and the Bombers in 2016, when they were missing half of their players due to the supplements saga ban.
But how about teams that have gone a full 12 months without winning a single game? There’s just two of them in the last 26 years: the Suns across 2019 and 2020, mainly due to the delayed start of the COVID-impacted 2020 season, and the dire Dockers from 2000 to 2001. If the Bombers don’t win a game before May 23rd this year, they will join them in this unwanted club.
FACT: Essendon is -53 in clearances across the first four games of the year. That’s the third-worst differential through the first four games of a season by any team in history.
So how likely is it they join them? It’s time to take a look at Essendon’s upcoming fixture.
This week, at Gather Round, it’s a date with the in-form Demons. Then it’s the Suns (away), the Magpies on Anzac Day at the MCG, the Lions (away), and the Dockers back at the MCG. I can’t see them getting close in any of them, let alone finding a win.
The good news for the Bombers is that on May 22, one day short of completing a full year without a win, they play the lowly Tigers in the annual Dreamtime at the ‘G clash — also known as the game which last yielded a Dons win. Don’t be surprised if they avoid the full year without a single win literally by a few hours!
The Bombers have lost 17 games in a row. Daniel Pockett/Getty Images
2. It’s time the AFL introduces a (better) rolling fixture
Let me set the rather depressing scene. You’ve been slaving away at work all Thursday, aching for knock off to arrive. Finally, it’s home time, where you can crack a beer, flop onto the couch, kick the feet up, and settle in for some footy. You flip the game on, but are met with a rather rude surprise as you’re subjected to viewing the rotating cast of football’s cellar dwellers.
This isn’t just a Thursday issue. The same can be said for Friday evening, too. In fact, across the first 13 rounds of the 2026 season, at least one of Carlton, Essendon, and Richmond featured, or will feature, in either the Thursday or Friday timeslot a simply ridiculous NINE times. Unless you’re a diehard fan of one of these clubs (and even then…) who in their right mind would want this?
Another beautiful Easter afternoon, another few hours twiddling thumbs waiting for a late arvo start at the MCG then a night game at a thunderdome. No AFL fixture in my lifetime has stunk it up as badly as this year’s. Been an absolute shocker. #afldeessuns #afldogsdons pic.twitter.com/dUp4eWZJMa
— Rohan Connolly (@rohan_connolly) April 5, 2026
Clubs need to earn the primetime slots, not be handed an abundance of them undeservedly based on some former powerhouse, glory status that’s long since faded. Perhaps it’s time the league introduces a rolling fixture for more than just the final part of the season. We can know the games in advance, but leave a degree of flexibility to shuffle timeslots around.
Now listen, I’m not saying flip a Sunday afternoon game to Thursday night a week out — after all, fans need to arrange travel, tickets must be sold, and clubs have to be able to fit changes into their often rigid schedules — but making minor tweaks to the fixture six to eight weeks out seems more than reasonable. Surely it’s the least the AFL can do for fans after this year’s horrendous early fixturing.
Does the AFL need to make a major fixture change? James Wiltshire/AFL Photos via Getty Images
3. Isaac Heeney simply CANNOT win Mark of the Year
I love watching Isaac Heeney play football. In fact, ahead of this season I named the Swans star as the third-best player in the AFL and, if you recall, I was jumping up and down declaring it an utter farce his spectacular mark against the Giants in a qualifying final two years ago was ineligible to win Mark of the Year. Craziness, I know.
However, this mark, the one we were all talking about over the weekend, simply cannot win the award.
HEENEY HAAAAANGS!! 🤯
Sydney’s superstar takes a MASSIVE hanger on Harley Reid for a Mark of the Year contender! 🌠
📺 Watch #AFLEaglesSwans on Ch.504 or stream on Kayo: https://t.co/pPEOd7LX2g
✍️ BLOG https://t.co/63inNepYjr
🔢 MATCH CENTRE https://t.co/Pm7e0DyNoR pic.twitter.com/KvPBgcfM3d
— Fox Footy (@FOXFOOTY) April 4, 2026
Why, you ask? Well, it wasn’t a mark. Sure, the umpire blew his whistle to pay a mark, but do you really believe Heeney controlled this ball all the way to the ground? Go and watch it back. He’s losing grip on the Sherrin as gravity brings him back to the ground and instantly loses it the moment he makes contact with the turf.
Watching players fly high for marks is a spectacular part of the game, and nobody would ever want to see it taken away, but the umpiring around what is and isn’t a mark simply needs to be much better. This one isn’t Gary Ablett Sr. over Gary Pert levels of laughable officiating, but it’s not that far off.
4. Could Jack Steele be the bargain pick-up of the year?
Nobody, myself very much included, was really talking about Jack Steele this offseason.
The former St Kilda captain was moved on from the club as the Saints stuck all of its eggs in the Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera and free agency baskets. But as the saying goes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and Steele is proving his old club may have made a major mistake in trading him for a paltry 2027 third-round draft pick.
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Steele was best on ground in Melbourne’s shock win over previously ladder-leading Gold Coast on Easter Sunday, tallying a game-high 26 disposals, game-high 18 contested possessions, game-high 11 clearances, and laying eight tackles. We know the defensive work is where he provides most value — he leads the competition in tackles through the opening month of the season — but his contested, clearance game is helping feed and unlock the speedsters on the outside.
FACT: Steele is the only player in the AFL to rank top 10 this season in clearances, contested possessions, and tackles.
Champion Data has also been impressed with Steele’s start to the year. Over there, he ranks 13th in the competition on their patented 100x scale, while his 17.4 rating points per game is good enough for 10th in the league.
Jack Steele has enjoyed the start to life at the Demons. Quinn Rooney/Getty Images
5. Something quirky I noticed
Watching the Crows-Dockers thriller on Friday evening, a thought popped into my head: Geez, Adelaide play in a lot of tight games! This was just a hunch, with no statistical backing. Of course, I asked Champion Data to run the numbers.
For this exercise, we considered single-digit margin games (and draws) to be ‘close games’ and looked back to the beginning of 2020.
MOST ‘CLOSE GAMES’ SINCE 2020
TEAM’CLOSE GAMES’WINSDRAWSLOSSESCOLLINGWOOD4629314SYDNEY3917121MELBOURNE3614121ADELAIDE3511123ESSENDON3417215GWS3321111ST KILDA3317016PORT ADELAIDE3121010CARLTON3018111RICHMOND3010416GEELONG2913115BRISBANE2714211NORTH MELBOURNE279216HAWTHORN2610214FREMANTLE2513210GOLD COAST2410113WESTERN BULLDOGS2311012WEST COAST207013
Turns out, it’s actually Collingwood that has played in the most ‘close games’. And by some margin. The Crows do rank fourth, though. And, interestingly, they have the worst W-L-D record in such games, winning just 31.4% of these games in that time.
6. My favourite stat of the week
Look away Carlton fans … again!
The Blues have now won the first half, but lost the second half in four consecutive games. The only other team to do this to start a season since 1999 was … Carlton … last year…
