We haven’t even played Round 1 yet but footy looks different through five official games.
I found the game itself last year to be a bit on the drab side, generally down on scoring outside of the Bulldogs and careening toward a more grinding, front half stoppage centric game.
The league went full Dulles Brothers and astroturfed a revolution from their office. Unlike the American coups in Guatemala, Chile, or the Dominican Republic, it might end up in good news for the rank and file.
Last year, coaches tried to choke the game through stoppages and layered defensive systems but heading into this year, the architects of the revolution put a stop to it by pulling a couple of levers.
The first lever they pulled was in the centre bounce contest. The AFL clumsily drafted rules which they wanted to have the effect of forcing ruckmen to jump, as well as mandating that umpires throw the ball up rather than bouncing it making its trajectory more certain.
That pair of decisions seems to have brought in more set plays to the centre bounce, rather being a series of 1v1s around the ball at centre bounce.
In Opening Round, teams seemed more willing to sacrifice physicality for speed around the ball and block for those running players to get exits out the front of stoppage especially when they knew their ruckman had a run and jump advantage.
Errol Gulden, for instance, is the type of player who wouldn’t have been able to be a centre bounce player last year because he just would have been bullied off the ball too easily, attended 60% of the centre bounces on Thursday night (19 total CBAs). That is a little over 3x above his career average.
For the game Gulden had five clearances and 10 score involvements, but more broadly the Swans kicked 3.2 from the centre bounce and 9.4 from stoppage overall.
Sydney’s 58 stoppage points would have been their second best mark all last season.
It was a similar story for GWS who added Clayton Oliver, lost Tom Green, but sent speedier, more aggressive players like Harry Rowston onto the ball more permanently to help out Finn Callaghan. As a result, they scored 2.4 from centre bounces alone. Six scoring shots from centre bounce would have been their third best mark all season last year.
Suddenly, the need for speed is outweighing the idea of might is right. In a strange way, just having Oliver instead of pairing him with Tom Green might help GWS because they have more space for players that are heavy on the spread. That’ll only be helped when GWS can add Toby Bedford, Josh Kelly, and Brent Daniels to their midfield mix.
The Ewing Theory committee has been sent to Western Sydney to investigate.
The injection of speed and aggressiveness into the middle of the ground is emblematic of a wider shift toward juice across the board, partly enabled by the second lever the league has pulled: a more militantly policed stand rule.
It felt like in every game, teams were squeezing up aggressively in defence to force quicker decisions from the team with the ball, and every time the team with the ball had to decide what to do, they took the nuclear option. Most teams at least peeked into the corridor, especially after marks, and regularly pulled the trigger on risky kicks or aggressive overlap runs.
Sometimes they missed and got scored on quickly. Other times it worked and they scored quickly. Either way, it was as kill or be killed a weekend of football as I can remember. Every team was The Bride from Kill Bill, playing like they had nothing to lose.
But while almost everyone was aggressive, the box office titans in the northern states -Sydney, Gold Coast and GWS – set the standard.
Those three spent their games handballing and short kicking through aggressive presses, always seeming to turn in board and hunt the corridor whenever they had the opportunity.
A lot of times, they did it by handball.
The Swans had 440 metres gained by handball on Thursday night. Last year they averaged about 119.
Even Gold Coast built on a strength from last year. They led the AFL with about 286 metres gained by handball in 2025. They had 544 against the Cats.
If it holds, run and handball might be the new meta, especially after marks as teams are defending with 17 v 18.
You add these levers they pulled with smaller changes like the fifth man on the bench which, you may have heard, benefitted Scott Pendlebury and the last touch of bounds rule and all of a sudden there’s pandemonium in the streets.
The only teams that actively seemed to hold out against the short, sharp, handball heavy revolution that was demanded by the rule changes were the Hawks and Blues. I’m not counting Geelong because they clearly had no interest in winning the game with their team selection.
The Hawks’ resistance came in the form of staying long and generally wide with their back half exits, expecting to dominate at the fall of the ball. However, teams are clamping down on their ground ball dominance (-18 on the weekend) and punishing the turnovers they generate off those long and predictable exits. Suddenly the Hawks couldn’t move the ball all day sitting last on the weekend at taking the ball from the defensive half to a score and copping 75 points off turnover.
Fortunately, Sam Mitchell’s AI companion should catch up to the trend in six months or so.
For Carlton, I’m not sure what there is to say. Sam Docherty has already said it all.
It’s only been five games and seasons often start free-flowing before it gets colder and coaches start to lock games down more.
Because of that, I’m reticent to draw sweeping conclusions. But based on the evidence we have to date, an astroturfed revolution, directed from on high, might be taking shape.
Who does it help that didn’t play this weekend? I’d say Adelaide and Fremantle.
Who should be worried? Adem Yze and his anti-footy.
Viva la revolucion.