Rohan Connolly: can Fremantle and the Swans bust AFL’s finals myth | The Canberra Times

It’s the halfway point of the AFL season, the bye rounds have commenced, and so have the reviews of the action so far.

Such is the premium these days put on “talking points” and isolated incidents from individual games that sometimes it feels like the bigger picture gets a little lost. But have a quick glance at the AFL ladder right now and one thing is apparent. Change is afoot.

Plenty might still unfold over the next few months, but at the moment, we have two teams with a “mini-break” on the rest of the competition, one of whom didn’t play finals at all last year, the other of whom went out in week one of September.

Fremantle and Sydney have clearly been the success stories of 2026 thus far, the Dockers now with 11 straight wins under their belts, the Swans 10-2 and one-and-a-half wins clear of Hawthorn in third spot, while Fremantle has a three-game buffer to fourth-placed Geelong.

Can the Dockers and Swans maintain their momentum? One thing for certain is that there will remain varying degrees of scepticism around both right up till the premiership is decided.

Why? Well, in Fremantle’s case, partly because of a lack of previous finals experience relative to other likely finalists like the Swans, Geelong, Hawthorn or Brisbane, should the Lions pull out of their current slump.

The Dockers across their list have a “finals played” average of just two. The equivalent figure for the Cats and Lions is eight, Sydney’s is five, and Hawthorn’s four.

That is a considerable difference, and valid enough reasoning, perhaps. The Sydney doubts are a longer bow, however, primarily about the Swans’ previous grand final failures, the club having lost four in a row on the big day under previous coach John Longmire since their last flag in 2012, and indeed completely thrashed in three of those four grand final defeats.

The Swans and Fremantle are flying, but can they go high enough to win a premiership? Pictures AAP

How relevant is that, though, to this year? There’s only five players on the entire Sydney list who played in either of the first two of those losses in 2014 and 2016. The Swans of 2022 were still a very raw combination, ceding hot favourite Geelong an incredible amount of experience.

The bigger issue, however, is whether those traditional concerns matter as much as they once did. And how much cause for hope that might offer the likes of Fremantle and Sydney in 2026 regardless of how seasoned they might be or how much scarring they may carry from previous battles.

Look at the way both Richmond in 2017 and Melbourne in 2021 steamrolled their way through whole finals campaigns towards drought-breaking flags despite a paucity of previous finals experience.

Even the best teams of today’s AFL aren’t as dominant, nor as reliable as previously. Increasingly, winning an AFL premiership is about getting your timing right, even the best each year prone to their lulls. One reason also, perhaps, that it’s premature to be writing the struggling Lions off just yet.

That Brisbane combination which beat Sydney in 2024 when it mattered had won just 14-and-a-half of 23 games and finished fifth after the home and away rounds, having to win three of four finals on the road, and one of them after coming from 44 points in arrears late in the third term. Last year, the Lions won only 16.5 games then lost their first final before cranking into gear.

It’s a far cry from the dominance of, say, Hawthorn in 2013, the only other time Fremantle reached a grand final.

That year, the first of the Hawks’ premiership “three-peat”, Alastair Clarkson’s team racked up 19 wins in 22 games. Geelong in 2011 racked up 19 wins, and on grand final day beat a Collingwood team which had itself won 20. Win tallies of at least 17-18 were the norm until a decade ago, not the exception.

It’s having some idea of what a team’s ceiling is which is as important as anything presuming it’s set to peak in September.

Fremantle is at the top of the AFL ladder. Picture AAP

And Fremantle and Sydney would be reassured on that score, both now having made short work of Brisbane, the Dockers beating Hawthorn and having led Geelong away by six goals before losing narrowly, while the Swans have beaten five top 10 teams and both losses have been by under five goals.

Of course, compounding the “only got to get it right for a while” thinking is the advent this year of effectively a top 10 with the wildcard finals. If Brisbane were to stagger into tenth having won fewer than half its games but had players available and hitting form again come September, who would be prepared to say the Lions couldn’t do it even from there?

Far too low a bar on finals qualification, if you ask me. But comfort for the likes of Fremantle and Sydney, too, even if their current stellar form doesn’t hold and they get the wobbles later in the season.

There’s a lot to play out in the second half of 2026. But I really do wonder if “September seasoning” means what it used to. Experience still matters. But in a competition increasingly defined by parity, player availability and timing, it may never have mattered less.

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Rohan Connolly: can Fremantle and the Swans bust AFL’s finals myth | The Canberra Times

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