Through Opening Round and the first six rounds of the 2026 AFL season, five players have registered a perfect KICK 100.
Bailey Smith has two of them.
Marcus Bontempelli, Tristan Xerri and Isaac Heeney share the other three. That’s the whole list — four players, five games, seven weeks of football. In a season where the leaderboard has been unusually top-heavy from the first weekend, Smith is the only player to hit the ceiling twice before Anzac weekend.
He also leads the 2026 leaderboard by a margin. His season-average KICK is 87 — one and a half clear of Max Gawn at 86, three clear of Nick Daicos at 84.
This article is the first of what will become a weekly pattern on this site: the best KICK Rating of every round, every game, every rating — with the match of the round, the season tally to date, and where the numbers disagree with the footy-media consensus. We launched mid-season, which means the opening weekends all happened before we could cover them live. So this piece is the backfill. From Round 7 onwards we’ll publish a version of this every Tuesday during the season.
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.
Opening Round — 5 to 8 March 2026
Five games, no perfect 100s, no player averaged more than 95. What Opening Round had was a five-point opener at the Gabba and a Sydney team that put 132 on Carlton at the SCG.
- 95
Ed Richards 30 disposals · 2 goals · 4 tackles · 7 clearances · 8 marks
- 87
Christian Petracca 34 disposals · 3 goals · 6 clearances
- 86
Josh Daicos 36 disposals · 13 marks · 3 clearances
- 83
Errol Gulden 27 disposals · 11 tackles · 5 clearances
- 81
Lachie Neale 39 disposals · 8 clearances · 8 marks
Round 1 — 12 to 15 March 2026
Bontempelli broke the 100 ceiling on 15 March. 33 disposals, 3 goals, 3 tackles, 6 clearances, 6 marks — a KICK Game Score of 101.7 against GWS, capped at the display ceiling of 100. The Bulldogs won by 81.
- 100
Marcus Bontempelli 33 disposals · 3 goals · 6 clearances
- 91
Aaron Naughton 15 disposals · 6 goals · 11 marks
- 88
Max Holmes 32 disposals · 8 tackles · 5 clearances
- 88
Luke Jackson 27 disposals · 8 tackles · 10 clearances
- 86
Max Hall 26 disposals · 4 goals · 6 clearances
Round 2 — 19 to 22 March 2026
One of the statistical outliers of the year: Tristan Xerri’s raw KICK of 115.3. That’s the highest single-game KICK anyone has produced in 2026. He had 25 disposals, 9 tackles, 7 clearances, 4 marks — and lost to West Coast by 17.
- 100
Tristan Xerri 25 disposals · 9 tackles · 7 clearances
- 96
Zak Butters 36 disposals · 6 tackles · 7 clearances
- 94
Jack Steele 31 disposals · 9 tackles · 9 clearances
- 92
Max Gawn 23 disposals · 7 clearances · 11 marks
- 87
Harry Sheezel 40 disposals · 8 clearances
Round 3 — 26 to 29 March 2026
Bailey Smith’s first perfect 100 of the season. 40 disposals, 10 tackles, 6 clearances against Adelaide at Kardinia Park. Geelong won by 8. It was Smith’s second full senior game in Geelong colours — he’d arrived from the Bulldogs in the off-season — and the first time the KICK Rating capped him at 100.
- 100
Bailey Smith 40 disposals · 10 tackles · 6 clearances
- 98
Nick Daicos 36 disposals · 2 goals · 5 tackles · 6 clearances
- 97
Kysaiah Pickett 33 disposals · 1 goal · 4 tackles · 7 marks
- 95
Caleb Serong 32 disposals · 2 goals · 6 tackles · 9 clearances
- 95
Max Gawn 23 disposals · 6 clearances
Round 4 — 2 to 6 April 2026
Two one-point margins in the same round: Hawthorn edged Geelong 92–91, Adelaide edged Fremantle by two. West Coast lost 35–163 to Sydney at the SCG — the biggest blowout of the year so far, by 128 points.
- 96
Brodie Grundy 28 disposals · 1 goal · 5 tackles · 9 clearances
- 87
Jack Steele 26 disposals · 8 tackles · 11 clearances
- 86
Marcus Bontempelli 35 disposals · 1 goal · 7 clearances · 8 marks
- 86
Max Gawn 22 disposals · 1 goal · 4 clearances
- 85
Bailey Smith 33 disposals · 5 tackles · 6 clearances
Round 5 — 9 to 12 April 2026
Isaac Heeney’s turn to break the ceiling. 33 disposals, 2 goals, 11 tackles, 10 clearances against Gold Coast at the SCG — a KICK Game Score of 114.7, the second-highest raw figure of the season behind Xerri’s Round 2. Sydney won by 32.
- 100
Isaac Heeney 33 disposals · 2 goals · 11 tackles · 10 clearances
- 99
Bailey Smith 34 disposals · 1 goal · 5 tackles · 7 clearances
- 98
Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera 28 disposals · 2 goals · 9 tackles · 6 clearances
- 93
Archie Roberts 42 disposals · 1 goal · 15 marks
- 91
Max Gawn 22 disposals · 11 clearances
Round 6 — 16 to 19 April 2026
Bailey Smith’s second 100 of the season. 33 disposals, 1 goal, 7 tackles, 11 clearances, 8 marks — a KICK Game Score of 106.0 against the Western Bulldogs, the team that traded him out 12 months ago. Geelong won by 75.
Four matches were decided by six points or fewer: Adelaide d. St Kilda by 1, Melbourne d. Brisbane by 2, Hawthorn d. Port Adelaide by 3, Collingwood d. Carlton by 5.
- 100
Bailey Smith 33 disposals · 7 tackles · 11 clearances · 8 marks
- 96
Nick Daicos 39 disposals · 1 goal · 8 clearances
- 95
Jeremy Cameron 18 disposals · 10 goals · 10 marks
- 94
Zach Merrett 34 disposals · 1 goal · 8 tackles · 9 marks
- 92
Jack Ross 26 disposals · 2 goals · 8 tackles · 8 clearances
The season tally — seven weeks in
A few patterns are already hardening.
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.
- R2
- R5
- R6
- R3
- R1
Most top-five appearances across the seven weeks
Bailey Smith and Max Gawn tied on 4 each. Marcus Bontempelli, Jack Steele and Nick Daicos next with 2.
Most 90+ KICK games
Bailey Smith and Max Gawn tied on 3. Nick Daicos has 2. Every other player has exactly 1.
Top season averages, three games minimum
| # | Player | Team | Season avg | Games |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bailey Smith | Geelong | 6 | |
| 2 | Max Gawn | Melbourne | 6 | |
| 3 | Nick Daicos | Collingwood | 5 | |
| 4 | Tristan Xerri | North Melbourne | 3 | |
| 5 | Zak Butters | Port Adelaide | 6 | |
| 6 | Isaac Heeney | Sydney | 5 | |
| 7 | Harry Sheezel | North Melbourne | 6 |
Two things jump out. First: North Melbourne has two players in the top seven by season average — Xerri and Sheezel — while sitting 15th on the ladder. Individual form is not team form. Second: Bailey Smith is rating as the best player in the AFL right now, and it’s not particularly close. A 1.4-point margin over Gawn at the season-average level is the biggest gap at the top of the KICK Rating leaderboard since we started computing it.
Where this is going
From Round 7, a post like this will land every Tuesday morning during the AFL season — one round, one match of the round, one season tally update. We’ll tag it weekly round-up so it’s filterable. If you want the most up-to-date version at any time, the live leaderboard re-ranks after every build and always reflects the current form.
As always: formula here, failures published too, code open-source, no paywall. If you think the rating is wrong — especially if you think forwards are undervalued, which they measurably are — tell us. KICK v1.4 is the version that addresses positional fairness beyond what Positional KICK does, and every real suggestion gets read.
See you after Round 7.