The Narrative Changers: The AFL Teams We Were Wrong About  

Heading into this year, it felt like we kind of knew who the good teams would be and who the bad teams would be. For the most part, we were right.  

Everyone expected Sydney to bounce back and they have, sitting pretty on top of the ladder. By the same token, Richmond was expected to be terrible. 

Mission accomplished in that regard.  

Even teams like the Saints, who most were lukewarm on despite a big season, have been worthy of that tepidness as they currently sit 9^th and at 5-5. 

But what are the teams that we were just wrong about? Who changed the narrative on their season?  

Let’s look into it. 

Melbourne 

Before the season, everyone accepted that Melbourne was heading into a longish-term rebuild. They jettisoned two of their best players in Petracca and Oliver, let the structurally important but fading Steven May go, and sacked their coach. 

That’s all of the hallmarks of a start again job, isn’t it? 

Apparently not.  

Steven King hasn’t just renovated Melbourne’s game style under Goodwin, he’s gone full Scotty Cam on it and torn it down. 

Melbourne spreads hyper aggressively from stoppage and cheats forward at every opportunity when they win the ball with elite athletes like Caleb Windsor, Harvey Langford, and even Tom Sparrow beating their opponents to the edge and rolling on from there. 

On the back of that game style, and stellar seasons from the three stay behind pillars from the Goodwin era in Pickett, Lever, and of course Gawn, the Dees are genuine top-4 chances as they sit 7-3 and behind Gold Coast just on percentage. 

This isn’t a rebuild, this is a top-4 type of team that you wouldn’t want to see in the first week of the finals. 

Gold Coast 

Heading into the year, Gold Coast had it all.  

They had the proven premiership coach in year 2, they added the super-duper star in Christian Petracca to an already stacked list, and they could expect improvement from their younger players like Bodhi Uwland and Leo Lombard. 

They should have been a tier-1 contender alongside the really good teams like Brisbane, Sydney, and Hawthorn, but they just aren’t. They’ve been replaced by the equally stacked but simply better Fremantle in that top tier of contenders.  

It’s honestly hard to put your finger on why. Their results are good as they’re currently sitting pretty in the top-4, it just feels like there’s something missing.  

They’re a bit of a Gangs of New York, where you think this has all the elements of true greatness but there’s something missing. Gold Coast’s lack of really speedy pressure forwards is their version of Cameron Diaz’s accent from that film, in that it’s the hole that makes all the other ones gape wider. 

GWS 

While the Suns were seen as a premiership insurgent heading into the year, GWS were the stalwarts. They had stars dotted all over the park, a specific game style, and had been in the finals in all three of Adam Kingsley’s years at the helm. 

But, after a loss to West Coast that plunged them to 4-6 with a percentage better than only West Coast, Carlton, Richmond, and Essendon, it seems that GWS is closer to having to start again with a new core than they are to finals stalwart status. 

While they have had significant injuries this year, the Giants have still fielded the sixth most experienced teams in the AFL this season but have just been unable to generate the kind of run out of the back half that their entire system is built on. 

With guys like Greene, Hogan, Whitfield, and Coniglio all over 30 and broadly struggling to have the kind of impact that we’ve come to expect of them, as well as continuing injuries to oft-injured guys like Taylor, Kelly, and the just back Brent Daniels, we might be getting closer to start again time for the Giants than we could have thought at the start of the season. 

The Giants, against the odds, are rapidly entering Joseph Gordon-Levitt after Inception territory, where it’s over before it even really began. 

Collingwood 

One more year! One more year! 

That’s what Collingwood fans, and the Collingwood supporting footy media chanted at the altar of Craig McRae heading into the season.  

It turns out they were like the democratic party chanting “one more term” at Joe Biden. 

They finished top-4 last year and made a prelim, so the thought was that they might be able to patch one more contending season together.  

Not so.  

This team is completely devoid of top end young talent outside of the Daicos brothers and are just staying competitive because Craig McRae is so good at making teams play left-handed. However, at a certain point all the structural brilliance in the world can’t save you from Ed Allan attending 10 centre bounces. 

The Pies are getting dangerously close to needing to start again, which partly why they can afford to have a last season of Kobe style year that’s essentially built around celebrating Scott Pendlebury.  

 
This team thought it had real aspirations heading into this year. They now know they’re kidding themselves.