I conclude the 2026 men's season with hate in my heart, but don't know who it's directed at. Can't complain about a surprisingly good season fizzing out at the end, not upset about Carlton taking advantage of their free hit, will not take the low road and blame the umpires for our inability to score, and even if I respect the Wildcard Round as much as the Provisional IRA, we've only got ourselves to blame for responding the door being left wide open in the last quarter by repeatedly bumping into the wall.
This was an unfortunate time to kick our lowest score since the full-misery era of Round 4, 2025, but to do it after being four goals to nil up in the first quarter, is an unprecedented pisstake. So is being the first team to finish 7th and be bumped off by 10th in a fake final. There's a stain that will be unremovable no matter how many times it happens in the future. Add it to the list of stupid incidents we've been involved in during 2026, and I'll see you for the some retrospective bitterness next year when the corresponding fixture involves 7th beating the piss out of a side who fell into the finals by default. In fact, if there's another time in the next decade where the bottom wildcard (*spit*) team is also the hottest in the competition, I'll eat a goalpost.
It was rotten luck to wind up playing a side doing the ultimate Lazarus with a triple bypass comeback, but even after a flat finish to the home and away season, and the decimation of our list to the point of multiple Hail Mary selections, I wanted to believe. It was unlikely that a team on the run of a lifetime would politely piss off just because they'd finished in the double figures part of the ladder, but maybe Carlton just hadn't suffered the reality check of Harlem Globetrotters-era Melbourne's pulverising dynamism? We'll never know, because they still haven't. The brute-force attacking methods that got us this far went into witness protection, and there would be no cover version of 1998 after all.
On the long list of things that upset me about this result, a close second was our failure to protect the integrity of the top eight system. After Footscray took the long road to September on Friday night, we had the chance to ensure the alleged second week of finals would feature the exact same games that would've been played under the old system - rendering the extra games useless for everything other than bulk, game show-style grabbing of cash by the AFL, and years of shizen teams falsely thinking they could also "do a Carlton".
Fortunately, I've been anti-wildcard from the start so can't be accused of sour grapes (and once more, just to avoid having to say it on repeat - Carlton shouldn't have been there, but were deserved winners), but spare me the cavalcade of media stooges giving it some "cop that whingers" because 170,000 people turned up to the MCG over two nights, as if this bulldust fixture couldn't have easily ended up as GWS vs Gold Coast with tumbleweeds blowing through the stands. The unconvincing "I told you so" tour peaked with Andrew Dillon being wheeled out at half time to put on his "everything's ok" fake smile and carry on with the sort of misplaced administrative self-confidence as that bloke from FIFA.
Regardless of the result, spectacle fanatics had already declared victory on the Wildcard after Friday's thrilling finish, but when the CEO did his victory lap we still had the chance to return some dignity to the first week of finals. A hot start had already been blown, and obviously nervous Carlton players were given every chance to get comfortable with the occasion, but still held a one point lead and could've conceivably belted away with a famous victory. Thus followed 2.7 for the rest of the game, and a slow, sad descent into elimination.
After a year of free-wheeling mayhem, this was like late-stage Goodwin Melbourne playing courtesy of the inaugural Time Travel Wildcard. Back then - and pretty much any time outside a couple of weeks at the start of this year - you'd have got extreme odds against us playing our next final against the same team that dicked us in 2023. The worst thing about that game is just how close the winning goal came to hitting the post in super blooper fashion. The second worst is how many chances we missed to put the game away, but what has always felt like a night where we were let down by lack of attacking options (apologies to Joel Smith, whose piss test was experiencing a Chernobylish meltdown in a lab at the same time) was a shootout of epic proportions compared to the second half of the rematch.
There's nothing like a disappointing end to the season to provoke emotional snap judgements (I've already seen people trying to sack Gawn as captain and trade Pickett, which is all a bit extreme), so no doubt words to the effect of "lost at the selection table" are being thrown around somewhere. I wouldn't have picked Viney or Lindsay, but what more were we going to get from any combination of the other surviving players with senior experience in Salem (208 games), Heath, L. Pickett, Johnson, Cross, Kentfield, and Cooke (54 games combined)? The last few weeks showed they had NFI what to do with Salem, and you're guessing at the potential impact the rest might have had. Melksham kicked 0.3 and looked exactly like somebody playing on their 35th birthday, but if you think Kentfield would've done any better the way we were delivering it then you're just being provocative for the sake of it.
In the absence of two key forwards - and a lot of outsiders talked about Jefferson this week as if they knew who he was - I'd have argued for Heath allowing the option for Gawn to go forward, but we could've won this with the selected team. Sadly, once the low fuel light started blinking furiously in the third quarter it was all over unless our lot pulled off superhuman efforts, or Carlton self-destructed in Voss-era fashion.
Now that you know what happens, how appropriate was the reversal of Petty's massive close range mark in the opening minutes? It was the sort of grab that's made him a seriously dangerous forward, and he couldn't have presented for it any better, only for the kick to go the other way because Sharp toppled an opponent in the aftermath. Even if the plummet might have been a touch theatrical, what's the point of risking giving away a free it at the start of a knockout game in front of a 75% (+?) hostile crowd? Petty tried hard to recreate this magic for the remainder of the night but didn't go close again without two key defenders up his ginger.
If the circumstances were reversed, you can be sure I'd be finding an excuse to bring it up at every opportunity. Based on previous experience, Carltonians will forget about it by the time they're lurking outside Princes Park, trying to sack Josh Fraser after Round 7, 2027.
My anti-Wildcard boycott held in the face of moral wobbles at the start and end of the week. This meant risking the potential disappointing result multiplying by the frustration from His Dwayneness talking nonsense, and ending with me drinking something from under the sink. Luckily (?) I was so wound up during the first half, and scared/low key outraged in the second that the Archbishop of Shitebury's constant use of the term 'fairytale' and crowbarred Bob Dylan references washed over me like I was under heavy sedation. They're both famous for saying things that are cryptic and baffling, but the most apt Dylan lyric for this occasion is "Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth".
The good news for Sharp is that his indiscretion accidentally became a cunning plan to kick the first goal instead. He went on to do bugger all else, and it may have been the last time Pickett hit a target by foot all night, but I appreciated it in the moment - even if his hasty play-on nearly ended in tragedy. Any goals accepted, but as it didn't start a chain of events that ended in winning, I'd rather have got Petty going and (hopefully) sowed seeds of doubt amongst the defenders who went on to torment us from every angle.
For 20 minutes, all was right with the world. It looked like the 7th vs 10th matchup you'd expect on paper, with the lower team overmatched and struggling to play their natural game. In reality, all the pressure is on the 'better' team here, who take on all the risk of looking stupid for the prize of doing what they'd have done next week anyway. Just with another week for players to fatigue, get injured or suspended. I hate the format, but it didn't cause us to botch this game from four goals up.Langford remained in the game, and other than one marking contest in defence that I'm not going to get upset over based on everything else he did right, but the third goalkicker went the same way as the first. Laurie converted well, then barely did anything else. This was a lot like last week, where a lot players who've performed well above expectations this year simultaneously hit their limit. But for now, we were the ones taking advantage of opportunities - and when Gawn got the fourth I was still terrified but had licence to wonder if we might just do this calmly and without excessive noise. Won't make that mistake again. Obviously not this season.
Their first goal seemed more minor annoyance than a game-changing intervention. There was a hint of what was to come, with the obvious comparison being how they were sticking tackles, before running past our variety of two arms out ineffectively/one arm out ineffectively/no bloody arms out at all efforts. I'm not going to sully a great season by naming individuals (even if the video footage would be the defence to a defamation action) but we've got highly rated players who didn't remotely fancy throwing themselves into the fray. If it was a video game and you just needed to crank the 'tackling' stat, it would help that we picked Viney, but the issues weren't happening in his happy place of close-quarter combat, it was Carlton players bolting through gaps unchallenged. People probably don't want to get in the way of running players in case they get three weeks a'la Steven May 2025, but if your goal is to avoid the other side chipping the ball around and getting uncontested possessions, even inferred pressure would help. As it did early, before unexpectedly going extinct in the blink of an eye a'la dinosaurs.
I'm not levelling downhill skiing accusations, because it's not the first time we've had this problem. It's just that most weeks we'd cover the odd optional defensive effort by either charging down the other end via a turnover seconds later, or by just generally kicking what qualifies for us as bulk goals. I don't know how long the famous Speed bus theoretically had between dropping below 50mph and exploding, but in the footy equivalent, last week armed the bomb, this was the big bang that should've finished off Sandra Bullock, Keanu Reeves, and a bunch of hapless commuters.
There were multiple chances to cancel Carlton's first goal and go into quarter time with foot at least somewhere in the vicinity of throat, but there was waste on a level even government departments would be embarrassed by. To say it wasn't Pickett's night would be a massive understatement, even if you can be sure somebody's put him in their best players just because he was amongst our top possession getters. No point if most of them fail to arrive, and several were the sort of running snaps I'd have to consult the highlight reel to confirm he'd definitely have kicked a couple of years ago. He had several chances here, and none even went close. Not that he was alone in missing opportunities, after hitting the post several times last week, anybody who believes in luck will think we exhausted that budget against Freo. I'd say consider that Carlton also did that several times in this game and still went on to win. Like shit umpiring, if you're good enough, you'll overcome the disappointment.
If you didn't see the game I don't know what insight you're expecting to get from reading this review, but in that unlikely event, abandon all hope ye who watch beyond here. The season either peaked against Freo or Port, depending on how generous you are in measuring quality of opposition vs rampant wins over slopposition. Its last gasp came during this quarter, everything that follows involves toil, struggle, and the disappointment of a good season fading to black.
In modern footy, with stats out of the wazoo, tactics for everything, and training programs that probably tell players what time to have a slash, the quarter time address has never been less relevant. Especially when only the most self-confident of coaches dares to give their team a blast because they know it'll be replayed on TV a hundred times. So, I flat-out refuse to believe it was anything Josh Fraser said to his players that turned the game after the break, but tactically they fixed us from then. To our credit, with Lever partially replaced by a third gamer, we battled to keep the score low enough to make the game pinchable until the last few minutes, but the will to live was silently escaping from our players, and there was nothing left in the tank when one big push was required at the end.
The biggest "I see where this is going" storyline of the second quarter was players being run down in tackles while thinking they had all the time in the world to merrily wander through the midfield. I have no idea why - other than the Black Death injury toll - how Lindsay's game last week made anyone think "Here's a good option for a final", but I can confirm he was definitely NOT better for the run. Has got plenty of time to find his niche - and may all young players have the sort of improvement in their third season as Tholstrup this year - but there's work to do in the off-season there. Not that he was the only one getting mown down in tackles during the quarter, but was miles off the pace for the rest of the game. Big pre-season to come and other tired footy cliches etc...
Our happy time was now clearly over, with a relaxed opposition now able to execute 20 metre kicks without either missing the target or dropping the ball when it arrived, and it was clear this wasn't going to be a high scoring classic. Which didn't have to be a bad thing for us, I don't buy the idea that we had to score 100 or near enough to win, there was a sludgy 60-55 win in us, except for the bit about not getting to 60. After that glorious start, we were behind before half time, until your friend and mine, and future State Opposition Leader Tom McSizzle pulled one back just before the break.
After seeing every goal he's kicked since the first two, I managed to miss the last one while attending to a child who'd injured themselves in slapstick, Three Stooges fashion. All I could do was judge by the sound of the crowd that it went through. Thank god for that, and the game was still very much there to be won, but we were now very much on the run. But in the space of five minutes, Petty and Fritsch got early third quarter goals, the margin was back out to eight points, and maybe all would be ok with the world. And............... then we didn't kick another one for the game. Just the seven more behinds, as our entire forward strategy become "kick it long as quickly as possible, and never mind that two of their defenders are marking EVERY BLOODY THING".
It was full 'escaping a burning building' style-panic, and yet it took until the end of the quarter for Carlton to get in front. A four point margin was nothing, and my sick fantasy was for Weitering and Dean to suffer the Lever/May 2023 final treatment, where they did everything possible to keep their side in the game, but were let down because the forwards couldn't hit the side of a barn the size of Uluru. They did the heroic defensive effort bit, and the dazzling array of people I'd never heard of at the other end tried to keep us in it for as long as possible, but our forward structure had gone into liquidation.
I'm pro-agitator, and have no doubt that Jagga Smith will rise above the handicap of having the stupidest first name in history to become a star, but it's heartwarming that Jake Bowey even had the option to respond to "Who are you?" carry-on with a reminder of past premiership glory. Once Carlton inevitably bomb out of the finals, I hope Jake will follow up with an invitation to come over and view the medal.
I can't actually remember when this happened, and would rather drink motor oil than go back and watch to find out, but the exchange said it all about where the game was going. After the early scare, they now had the whip hand and were full of the joy of life. The only saving grace was that the margin remained within 'sudden outburst' range until the last few minutes, but there was to be no Melksham Miracle, no Sizzle Special, and indeed no further goals to our end. Not even the token pointless one when the result was beyond doubt, a'la Bulldogs in the 2021 Grand Final.
Pickett was thrown forward in the dying minutes, in the hope of a repeat dose of him sinking the Blues with 10 seconds left a few years ago. The problem was he was literally never seen again by TV viewers, because the ball got stuck down Carlton's end for the last few minutes. They kept missing chances to put us away, we couldn't get the ball over halfway for love nor money, and the only known method of escape seemed to be 'Hoof it to Max'. Which is usually good, but by now every team from University to Congupna Under 15s know we're going to do it. Most of the time Maximum just imposes himself on shorter people and takes the mark anyway, but we'd had 2.5 quarters of evidence that it wasn't going to work. And didn't again.
There was an attempt at mixing it up by... kicking long to Petty instead, but he was unable to pull off another club record-equalling contested mark bonanza, and we were soon back on Killer Blow Watch. After some bloke hit the post for the fourth time, the exclamation mark came via the traditional 'win a free for Kamikaze diving into the pack' method. You know my views on this, the more the ball stays alive inside 50, the more chance there is of umpires detecting an offence - whether it exists or not.
And... err... that was it. If it had gone centre bounce > goal in under 10 seconds, there may have been time to launch the once-in-a-lifetime miracle comeback. We were on the end of some rotten decisions (and the crisis in boundary umpires not being able to throw the ball in far enough continues), and by the end Gawn looked like he was going to one-up Phil Carman by throwing an umpire over the fence, but had plenty of chances to overcome this handicap and go on to win.
With a few days to calm down, I appreciate the inevitability of it all from halfway through the second quarter, and the fun we had qualifying to play one more game than I expected this year, but if the soul exists it took a 30 minute holiday from my body while watching a team who've scored for fun this year make crossing halfway look like putting a man on the moon.
This would've been bad enough if the margin was five or six goals, but the Blues kept the margin close long enough that you were entitled to crack the shits about not just getting one good chance to make it interesting. Eventually the shutters went down for good. Apologies to McDonald and Melksham for not paying the appropriate respect to their departure from the game, but with a minute left and four goals to kick, I chickened out of enduring the post-match crowd frenzy and furious self-gratification of commentators by turning the TV off. I'm sure they'd understand.
There endeth a good season that we should be proud of, even if it disappeared without a trace in the last two weeks. The highs and lows were extreme, with a lot of good, solid, entertaining football in the middle. Steven King deserves praise for not only holding things together in a time of on-field change and off-field shenanigans which included him getting sued. Now that everyone in the league knows what he's about, I look forward to seeing what tweaks and alterations are on the cards next year.
The last chance for anti-wildcard forces to get anything out of these finals is for Carlton and Footscray to both lose by 130 points next week, proving (for the zero it's worth) that this fixture is less 'Wildcard' and more Death Sentence. But god I'd love to be the ones risking humiliation in Adelaide next week. Even having a ticket in the lottery was a bonus considering where we were at 12 months ago, but I'm still super glum about not stretching the season out by just one more week.
Unless there's more shock Sydney revelations during the week and we're recalled to fill their spot post-expulsion, that's your (M) lot for 2026. Despite the tepid end, most of it has been enjoyable. As usual, thanks for taking an interest in these unhinged manifestos. God only knows what will happen next season, but I'll go around again just to witness whatever weird, disturbing, and/or unexpectedly good stuff comes of it.
2026 Allen Jakovich Medal votes
5 - Jake Bowey
4 - Koltyn Tholstrup
3 - Harvey Langford
2 - Jack Steele
1 - Max Gawn
Apologies to Jiath and Turner, with an encouragement award to Taylor.
Final standings
And there you have it. We already knew the overall winner, but Gawn's tally is confirmed as the fourth highest in the history of the competition, behind the 70s of Oliver 2022/Petracca 2023, and his own 67 last year. For all the vote inflation mockery directed at the Brownlow, I note that Cameron Bruce won the 2008 edition on just 29. There was late drama in the Seecamp, as Bowey's float to the top of a very ordinary pile this week helped take him past a desperately unlucky Turner to retain the title. And Fitzgerald is your Rising Star winner, joining an eclectic selection of previous champions ranging from premiership players to Jay Kennedy Harris and Marty Hore.
65 - Max Gawn (WINNER: Allen Jakovich Medal for Player of the Year, WINNER: Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
41 - Kysaiah Pickett
31 - Jack Steele
29 - Tom Sparrow
23 - Jake Bowey (WINNER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year)
22 - Daniel Turner
19 - Jacob van Rooyen
17 - Koltyn Tholstrup
16 - Jake Lever, Harrison Petty
15 - Harvey Langford
14 - Kade Chandler
13 - Bayley Fritsch, Ed Langdon
6 - Caleb Windsor
5 - Harry Sharp
4 - Brody Mihocek
2 - Blake Howes, Matthew Jefferson, Jake Melksham
1 - Jai Culley, Joel Fitzgerald (WINNER: Nathan Jones Rising Star Award), Bailey Laurie
Aaron Davey Medal for Goal of the Year
With fewer options to choose from than at any other time this season, the answer is obviously Langford. Quality finish, but your overall winner for quality and context is Sharp vs Fremantle, followed by Cross (remember him?) on King's Birthday. Congratulations Harry, I'm sure this is more exciting than being the emergency in a Grand Final side.
Next week
My remaining interest in the men's season is going for an Oscar McDonald flag.
Next season
It's carnage for M names, as May (technically still on the list this year), McAdam, McDonald and Melksham all go off the list - and who knows if Mihocek is coming back + Campbell, who refused to join in with the theme. But we've already got Cooke, Cross, Fitzgerald and Mapley, two first round picks, and multiple players potentially arriving via trade, so somebody's getting delisted. My predictions are Adams, Henderson and Mentha. Johnson to survive as depth, and Moniz-Wakefield because it's worth giving his knees one more go.
Then it's off to trade week, where I suspect Salem will be pointed in the direction of shit teams who need competent, experienced players. And in a world where Scott Pendlebury can quit Collingwood about 12 hours after their season ends, I hope people would keep calm and carry on if we convinced another club to take the last two years of Viney's contract. Complaints inside a letterbomb to the usual address.
Unless something zany happens, I don't see us either bursting into serious premiership contention, or screaming towards the bottom of the ladder like an out-of-control plane. Good thing mid-table mediocrity is now something to be proud of.
Final thoughts
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