The AFL has channelled NSYNC’s Bye Bye Bye to start the season, but instead of a Justin Timberlake banger, the league is facing a brutal fixture flop.
We are three weekends into the new season and two of them have had teams on a bye — in Opening Round and Round 2, sparking heated discussion about the disjointed start to 2026.
After the third year of Opening Round, AFL CEO Andrew Dillon says he remains committed to kicking off the season in NSW and Queensland, determined to grow the game in the northern states.
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But the knock-on effect of only five games being held Opening Round means that early season byes are spread across Rounds 2, 3 and 4 and the footy year doesn’t kick off with as much fanfare as usual in Melbourne.
Round 1 had a full slate of nine games, which we don’t see again until after Easter when all 18 teams head to Adelaide for Gather Round in Round 5. And in an extra quirk this year, there were no games in Perth and Adelaide until Round 2.
Carlton, Brisbane, Geelong and Collingwood got a week off after playing two games, while Gold Coast and the Western Bulldogs now have a bye after starting the year with three impressive wins.
It’s not an even playing field either. Hawthorn has an 18-day break between a Round 2 victory over the Sydney Swans and an Easter Monday clash with Geelong.
The Hawks get another bye in Round 14, getting two weeks off before the Melbourne Demons’ first bye in Round 16 in June.
“It certainly is weird. But the Hawks aren’t complaining about an 18-day break leading into Easter Monday – they are absolutely ecstatic about it,” Herald Sun reporter Jon Ralph said on Fox Footy.
“It’ll give some time to ease some sore bodies there – notably Nick Watson (corked glute).
“They get to lick their wounds, they get to train in the next couple of weeks and then they lead in against Geelong.”
Demons great legend Garry Lyon was critical last week of the long lay-off for some of the big Melbourne clubs so early in the season.
“When you want to kick a season off and have momentum and you decide to play in Opening Round, which is always going to polarise, at the very least you’ve got to get on a roll,” Lyon said on AFL 360.
“The Hawks have 18 days off until Easter Monday, so no momentum for them … that’s nearly three weeks of footy you’re not going to see the Hawthorn footy club play. What is that about?
“And Carlton, who are of great interest and infatuation and stirred the emotions of everyone, they’re going to have 17 days off.
“This is the first of eight byes throughout the course of the season, this isn’t a three-week situation.
“Three of those four teams this weekend are preliminary finalists (from last year) — the teams you want to generate the feeling, the emotion and spirit and drag the people out to games.
“It doesn’t sit right.”
Adelaide Crows forward Josh Jenkins said on SEN: “Our sport is too big to fail, but the people running the show are testing that theory out big time.”
“They’ve got it wrong,” Essendon great Matthew Lloyd said on Nine’s Sunday Footy Show.
“The spin-offs and ramifications are worse, I think. They say it’s huge for the Giants and these clubs, what it does for them (Opening Round).
“When we should be as excited about our teams as any stage of the year, we’re just not.
“Carlton, Collingwood and Geelong not playing this weekend.
“I just feel we could stagger our byes better than not having 8-10 weeks of our 23-week season with a lot of teams not playing.”
Lloyd added the “flattest part of the year is mid-season” with five bye weeks in a row across Round 12 to Round 16.
Mid-season split round byes have always been around, but traditionally these have been across three weeks — this year there are eight rounds across the season with multiple teams on a bye.
The shortened rounds highlight dead patches in the fixture and on Sunday, the two games were Port Adelaide vs Essendon and West Coast vs North Melbourne, which admittedly was a close contest as the Eagles claimed their first win in more than 300 days.
The Sunday fixture doesn’t make for pretty reading in the coming weeks — there’s a lot of West Coast, Essendon, Port Adelaide and games that look like mismatches on paper.
The constant byes sap the AFL season of momentum given when all 18 teams play and supporters and commentators get to compare the full spectrum of performance over a jam-packed weekend.
Also, it sounds trivial but for fans who play SuperCoach and AFL Fantasy, the byes are an absolute nightmare and create an atmosphere of disillusionment among the sport’s most diehard supporters who watch every game.
It appears Opening Round is here to stay, but fans will be hoping the AFL ditches the truncated soft launch and starts next season with a fully fledged Round 1, saying cheerio to the early byes.
