For nine months, Andrew Dillon has been getting bashed for one idea (well, at least one): Wildcard Round. Fans everywhere lamented the “Americansation” of the game, media turned up their noses, and players and ex-players alike refused to call the matches “finals.”
That is, right up until they played the games last weekend.
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More than 172,000 people poured into the MCG over two nights, with another 7.4 million watching at home. And while Melbourne-Carlton was a decent game, Western Bulldogs vs. Collingwood on Friday evening was inarguably one of the best games we’ve seen play out across the entire 2026 season, at least to date.
Heart-pounding footy played out in the first-ever “Wildcard” clash, with the Bulldogs coming out of the tight-played, 96-93 affair the victors. And, this Sporting Base writer has to admit, the AFL came out the same.
The format was dead simple: No more pre-finals byes. Top six straight through, seventh against tenth, eighth against ninth. Winners fill out the top eight.
And for all the warbling and complaining, once we got the first bounce, it was clear that more finals is a good thing — the energy has already gone up a notch for the AFL, and now we head into the final eight buzzing.
It only stings more for the NRL because the 2026 regular season largely ended a week early. Round 27 is this weekend, and we already know who’s in the top eight and who’s in the top four. There’s some shuffling, but overall it’s a week of dead rubbers right when we’re getting to the pointy end.
Run a Wildcard weekend, and Manly are instead on a plane to Townsville right now. Canterbury are off to Newcastle or Redfern. Four more clubs are selling finals tickets instead of doing exit interviews about next year.
The NRL is about to hit the same number of teams as the AFL too, with this top ten format taking ten from eighteen. The NRL expands to 18 just next year, with the Perth Bears entering stage right. A year later, we get the Papua New Guinea expansion squad, the Chiefs, and then a 20th team by 2030.
Now we get to the man pulling the strings: Peter V’landys. He also said that this idea “wasn’t on the agenda” when grilled last August, and then spent a lot of the year actually taking shots at the AFL for the plan.
I bet you $20 he’s ruing all those backhanders now that we’ve seen what the Wildcard format can actually do on the park. Two bangers, more finals.
V’landys should consider changing his mind — and this Sporting Base writer and everyone else around knows he’s got the form for it. Four teams heading to Vegas. Magic Round in Brisbane. Six agains. Heck, over in horse racing, where he reigns too, he built the Everest, the Big Dance, the Kosciuszko, and the Golden Eagle off this logic. One manufactured, high-pressure night lifts everything.
This base writer reckons he’s already looking at a new equation. Forget all this “heresy” talk. It’s two more sold-out venues, two more nights of do-or-die footy, and an extra week to sell the bumper “finals” sticker.
I get why people hate it, of course, with the “everyone gets to play” vibe not the best thing to be creeping into the game. But the NRL was long a 16-team competition, and when we hit 20 teams, it will be the same share — an even 50% — that contest the postseason. Home and away still matter.
It’s funny. Rugby league (and the AFL, and everyone else) just spent months and months calling the Wildcard round desperation from the Aussie league.
Now it might well be madness for V’landys and the NRL not to follow suit, and quickly, too.
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