Isaac Heeney scored a perfect KICK 100 in Round 12 — and he wasn’t even the only forward to light up the SCG.
32 disposals, 5 goals, 7 tackles, raw KICK Game Score of 116.0 (capped at the display ceiling of 100) in Sydney’s 170-56 demolition of Richmond. It’s his second perfect 100 of the season after Round 5, and the foundation of the highest team score the 2026 competition has produced — Sydney’s 170 edged GWS’s 166 from last week and the Swans’ own 163 from Round 4. Charlie Curnow, in his first season at Sydney, kicked eight goals from 18 disposals in the same match for a KICK of 90. Between them, Heeney and Curnow booted 13 of Sydney’s 25 goals.
A quick refresher: KICK Rating is our open, reproducible player rating — one score out of 100 for every player in every game, computed from the public box score, formula published, code public. A game score of 70 means a quality senior contribution. 85+ puts a player in All-Australian territory. A perfect 100 is the ceiling — once-a-season form. The full methodology is on the site, including where v1 falls short.
Round 12 — 28 to 31 May 2026
A seven-game bye round — Adelaide, Gold Coast, North Melbourne and Port Adelaide all rested — split between two demolitions and two nail-biters. Sydney’s 170-56 dismantling of Richmond at the SCG was the headline (a 114-point margin, second only to the Swans’ own R4 win over West Coast as the season’s biggest), and GWS handed Melbourne a 49-point lesson at Traeger Park in Alice Springs. At the other end, two games finished four points apart: Carlton edged Geelong 88-84 at the MCG on Friday night, and the Western Bulldogs held off Collingwood 97-93 at Docklands in the round’s tightest contest by combined score. Hawthorn opened the round with a 52-point thumping of St Kilda, Fremantle beat Brisbane by 25 at the Gabba, and West Coast accounted for Essendon by 30 at home. The biggest goal hauls both came in the Sydney rout — Charlie Curnow with eight and Isaac Heeney with five — while Jack Gunston kicked five for Hawthorn from just 10 disposals and rated KICK 48, the latest data point in a running theme: low-possession goal hauls don’t move KICK the way high-volume ones do. Curnow’s eight from 18 disposals cleared 85; Gunston’s five from 10 didn’t reach 50.
- 100
Isaac Heeney 32 disposals · 5 goals · 7 tackles · 5 clearances
- 90
Charlie Curnow 18 disposals · 8 goals · 1 tackle · 9 marks
- 85
Jordan de Goey 30 disposals · 1 goal · 3 tackles · 4 clearances
- 82
Finn Callaghan 31 disposals · 2 goals · 2 tackles · 4 clearances
- 80
Max Gawn 22 disposals · 30 hit-outs · 8 marks · 4 clearances
The season tally — 13 weeks in
A bye round barely moved the leaderboard — four of the top names rested or had quiet games. The 100 Club ticked up by one with Heeney’s second of the year, and the season-average top three held station through the break.
The 100 Club (perfect KICK 100 games, 2026 season)
Bars show raw KICK Game Score; every game here exceeded the display ceiling of 100. The dashed line is the ceiling.
- R10
- R12
- R2
- R8
- R5
- R10
- R7
- R6
- R3
- R1
- R11
- R10
- R8
Most top-five appearances across the 13 weeks
Bailey Smith leads on 6. Max Gawn next on 5. Four players tied on 3: Lachie Neale, Marcus Bontempelli, Luke Jackson and Tristan Xerri.
Most 90+ KICK games
Bailey Smith has 5. Max Gawn, Tristan Xerri and Brodie Grundy all on 3.
Top season averages, three games minimum
| # | Player | Team | Season avg | Games |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bailey Smith | Geelong | 12 | |
| 2 | Tristan Xerri | North Melbourne | 8 | |
| 3 | Max Gawn | Melbourne | 12 | |
| 4 | Isaac Heeney | Sydney | 10 | |
| 5 | Nick Daicos | Collingwood | 11 | |
| 6 | Brodie Grundy | Sydney | 11 | |
| 7 | Marcus Bontempelli | Western Bulldogs | 12 |
Bailey Smith holds the season-average lead at 83.3 over 12 games despite a quiet KICK 79 in Geelong’s four-point loss to Carlton — comfortably clear of Tristan Xerri (80.3 over 8) and Max Gawn (80.2 over 12). The mover this round is Isaac Heeney, whose 116 lifts him to fourth at 79.8 over 10 games and gives him two perfect 100s for the season — only Smith and Xerri (three each) have more. Heeney’s case is the quietest of the genuine top-four: a Sydney forward-midfielder averaging 80 with two ceiling games, on a team scoring 160-plus at will. The forward-undervalue thread also got its cleanest illustration of the year this round — Charlie Curnow’s eight goals rated KICK 90 while Jack Gunston’s five rated 48. The rating rewards goals; it rewards a high-volume, high-mark forward day much more than a low-possession one, and an eight-goal game on 18 disposals and 9 marks is plenty of volume.
Where this is going
Another round-up next Tuesday after Round 13. One match of the round, one season tally refresh, same format. If you want the current form at any time, the live leaderboard re-ranks after every build.
As always: formula here, failures published too, code open-source, no paywall. The current shipped version is v1.1; v1.2–1.4 were held after sweeps (results in the methodology page) and the next lever for positional fairness is more likely to be a separate AFLCA-aligned lens than a single composite. The Curnow-90-vs-Gunston-48 split this round is the rating working as intended at the top of the forward range, even as the low-possession five-goal games keep landing in the 40s and 60s. If you think the rating is wrong, tell us or check Positional KICK for the within-position view.
See you after Round 13.