One signature piece a week in-season. KICK Rating trends, tactical shifts, players whose rolling 40 is doing something interesting. Not tipping, not hot takes.
Fremantle finished on top of the ladder and then kicked 5.10 (40) in its qualifying final, its lowest score of 2026. Izak Rankine's 94 was the only game above 90 in finals week one, and nobody rated 100.
Read →The 2026 Wild Card round is the first in 130 seasons of our data. Two games at the MCG, no player cleared a KICK of 90, and Marcus Bontempelli's 87 is the lowest round-high of the season.
Read →The final home-and-away round of 2026 produced six perfect KICK 100s, the most in any round this season. Max Gawn had 59 hit-outs and 28 disposals in a loss, Bailey Smith won the season average with a century in his last game, and Nick Daicos rated 45 and fell from second to third.
Read →Hawthorn and Collingwood drew 92-92 and Western Bulldogs and Carlton drew 82-82. It is the sixth round in our 17,036-match dataset to produce two draws and the first since May 1977 — and Hawthorn and Collingwood have now drawn both 2026 meetings, which no pair had ever done before. Izak Rankine set a career best for the second week running.
Read →710 matches, 29,884 player-games, ten seasons. The same open formula as men's KICK, a normaliser calibrated on AFLW data, and one validation check we failed and published rather than tuned away.
Read →Matt Rowell's 40 disposals, 17 clearances and 16 tackles in a two-point win produced a raw KICK of 136.6 — the biggest single game of 2026 and the highest anyone has rated since 2021. Round 22 also produced five perfect 100s, the most in any round this season.
Read →Tim Taranto and Jai Newcombe both hit a perfect KICK 100 in Round 21 — Taranto's a career best in his 191st game. And Max Gawn's 94 turned the season-average race into a three-way dead heat: Smith 80.3, Daicos 80.1, Gawn 80.1.
Read →Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera had 46 disposals and kicked four goals in Round 20 — a raw 115.6, the best KICK game of his 101-game career and his first perfect 100. Bailey Smith's season lead shrank to a point as Nick Daicos closed.
Read →A week after Round 18's blank, Rowan Marshall posted the season's second-biggest KICK game — raw 116.1 for St Kilda — and the highest score anyone has recorded in a loss all year. Match of the round, season tally, and the 100 Club.
Read →Round 18 produced no perfect KICK 100 — the first blank round since Round 13. Will Ashcroft led with 99 in Brisbane's 90-point rout of Essendon, in a round the ruckmen owned.
Read →Harry Sheezel scored his second perfect KICK 100 in a row in Round 17 — 40 disposals in a North Melbourne loss to Port — joining Tristan Xerri and Nick Daicos as the only players to go back-to-back this season. Bailey Smith reclaimed the season-average lead.
Read →Round 16 produced three perfect KICK 100s — Zak Butters's Showdown masterclass, Harry Sheezel's 43-disposal game, and Nick Daicos's second in a row. With Smith and Gawn on byes, Daicos's back-to-back ceilings lifted him to the top of the season averages.
Read →Luke Jackson and Nick Daicos each scored their first perfect KICK 100 of 2026 in Round 15 — Jackson with a 25-hit-out ruck-mid game against Geelong, Daicos off 41 disposals against Port. The Smith–Gawn season-average race narrowed to a quarter of a point.
Read →Adelaide captain Jordan Dawson scored his first perfect KICK 100 of 2026 — 32 disposals, 3 goals, 8 tackles — in a 57-point win over the Bulldogs. North Melbourne won by a point a week after a 124-point loss, and the Smith–Gawn season-average race narrowed to 0.8.
Read →Logan Morris led Round 13 with a KICK of 91 — seven goals from 17 disposals — the first forward to top a round in 2026. Six of eight games were decided by single digits, and Fremantle handed North Melbourne a 124-point massacre in Bunbury.
Read →Isaac Heeney scored a perfect KICK 100 — 32 disposals and 5 goals — in Sydney's 170-56 demolition of Richmond, the highest team score of the 2026 season. Charlie Curnow kicked 8 in the same game. A four-team bye round produced two four-point thrillers.
Read →Matt Rowell hit the KICK ceiling in Round 11 from 31 disposals, 14 clearances and 7 tackles — his first perfect 100 of 2026 — but Gold Coast still lost to North Melbourne by 6. Ed Richards' 98 was the Bulldogs' difference in the round's 3-point thriller, and the season's marquee names all had quiet weeks.
Read →Round 10 produced three perfect KICK 100s — Brodie Grundy's 119.9 against his old Collingwood teammates (highest raw KICK of the season), Bailey Smith's third of the year, and Harley Reid's first. Plus Bailey Smith now leads every consistency metric on the board.
Read →KICK Rating is a box-score metric. The AFL Coaches Association's Champion-Player votes aren't. We loaded 23 seasons of AFLCA voting (2003–2025) alongside KICK and found 15 active defenders the coaches respect well above where KICK reads them — most by 35+ scaled points. Today we shipped them as the Coaches' eye leaderboard.
Read →Round 9 of the 2026 AFL season produced no perfect KICK 100s — first time since Round 4. Luke Jackson's 96 in the Thursday-night opener led; Tristan Xerri broke a three-of-five run with a 69. Bonta's 94 in a 2-point Bulldogs win, Bailey Smith's 40-disposal game, season tally re-shuffled.
Read →Round 8 of the 2026 AFL season produced two perfect KICK Ratings — Tristan Xerri's third in five games, and Sam Berry's tackle-driven masterclass in the 1-point Showdown. Plus a Pies-Hawks draw, the season averages rearranged.
Read →Tristan Xerri's perfect KICK 100 in a North Melbourne loss headlined Round 7 of the 2026 AFL season. Pendlebury 98 on Anzac Day, Bailey Smith dropped to third, full top-five and season tally.
Read →Gary Ablett was the best player in VFL/AFL history on Peak 40 — but when exactly did the window run? We've surfaced the end-year for every player on the Peak-form leaderboard. Here's the full top 20, plus what was happening in each player's career at the time.
Read →Through Opening Round and the first six rounds of the 2026 AFL season, five players have scored a perfect KICK 100. Bailey Smith has two of them. Here's every week ranked, match-of-the-round, and the season tally to date.
Read →KICK Rating is midfielder-heavy because the awards it agrees with are midfielder-heavy. Positional KICK strips that bias out. Here's how, why, and what the real top defenders, forwards and ruckmen look like.
Read →678,319 player-game performances. One formula. Seventeen box-score fields, open weights, published methodology, re-computable from source. Here's what KICK Rating is, how to read it, and where v1 falls short.
Read →