Each week of the 2026 AFL season, ESPN.com.au's Jake Michaels looks at six big talking points.
This week's Six Points feature the reason why Kozzy Pickett shouldn't have won the Neale Daniher Trophy, the 'peaking too early' myth, the difference between a disposal and a possession, and some crazy stats from a round of thrillers.
1. Kozzy Pickett should not have won the Neale Daniher Trophy
Ahead of Monday's King's Birthday clash, the AFL announced it would be making some changes to the Neale Daniher Trophy. The league, in consultation with the Daniher family, claimed it had "enhanced the process for awarding the Neale Daniher Trophy to ensure it more explicitly recognises the values the footy icon embodied throughout his life."
The trophy is now awarded to the player who best demonstrates the six values Daniher lived each day: bravery, resilience, unity, care, conviction, and selflessness. The other major change implemented is that the voting honour now falls on the two gameday coaches, not a panel of media members and ex-players, as it had been in the past.
This year's Neale Daniher Trophy was won by Melbourne star Kysaiah Pickett for his 28-disposal, three-goal, and 600-metres gained performance on Monday afternoon at the MCG. Was Pickett the best player on the ground? No doubt. Will he bank the three Brownlow Medal votes? Almost certainly. But did he demonstrate all six of those aforementioned values throughout the game? I'm not so sure about that.
I'd argue Pickett didn't show anywhere near enough unity or care when he stuck his boot up in the air and tripped Brayden Maynard, leaving the Collingwood defender with a second shoulder dislocation of the game. Pickett was found guilty by the MRO and fined for the incident, but let's be honest, an act like this should be met with a suspension.
What's the point of having the criteria if we're simply going to hand the trophy over to the best player on the day? Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the recipient being the game's best player, but aligning these values to Daniher and his legacy, then awarding the accolade to someone who doesn't exhibit them all is a bit on the nose. It also makes those recent changes appear utterly pointless.
Perhaps the award needs to be taken away from the coaches, who no doubt have enough on their minds and plates, especially in a tight game that ended with a thrilling finish.
2. It's all rubbish, the Dockers aren't peaking too early
Having now won a club record 12 consecutive games to sit atop the AFL ladder, there has been a tendency for many to ask one question about Fremantle: are they peaking too soon? To that question I would reply with something like this: would you seriously prefer the Dockers to not be unbeaten in the last three months? Is 11-1, 10-2, or even 9-3 somehow better than 12-0? Obviously not.
Hitting top gear too early is a sporting myth. Sure, injuries can occur at any point and derail a season, but nobody can ever control that. Banking wins in the front half of the year is critical for any team's season-long prospects, offering the opportunity to potentially rest players carrying injury niggles or even make a few tactical experiments later in the campaign. And, crucially for a team from Western Australia, it may even give some players a chance to skip a gruelling road trip in the lead up to finals. Being four wins clear of third place certainly affords them all of these options.
The Dockers have been the team of 2026. They've won games when they've been tested, won games by blowout (sorry Roos fans), won games at home, and won games on the road. This club has barely put a foot wrong. It's not to say Fremantle's destined to win the premiership, or even that they simply must be flag favourites, but this idea that winning 12 in a row somehow isn't a good thing just never makes any sense to me.
3. A disposal and a possession are NOT the same thing!
This very much feels like a footy public service announcement and something I truly hope every commentator in the country reads and absorbs. A disposal and a possession are not the same thing. They are not interchangeable. Please stop getting them confused!
Let's clarify the difference. A possession is, you guess it, when a player possesses the ball. This could be through a handball receive, a mark, a loose ball get, a hard ball get, even a free kick. Possessions are broken down into either contested possessions or uncontested possessions. On the other hand, a disposal is when a player legally gets rid of the ball, either by kick or handball.
Just as a mark is not a disposal, a kick is not a possession. It's also quite common for a player's possession and disposal tallies to differ by the end of a game. For example, if you were to take an uncontested mark, play on and get caught holding the ball. You'd be attributed with an uncontested possession for the mark, but no disposal -- you never disposed of the ball.
Please stop using the two interchangeably. And please stop saying things like "player X had 25 disposals, and 15 of them were contested". You can't have a contested disposal.
4. The best (and worst) teams in one-point thrillers
Last Thursday evening's one-point epic between the Crows and Cats marked the third time this season Adelaide had won a game by a solitary point and the second time Geelong had lost a game this season by that margin. Of course, when I noticed this, it got me wondering what the records were for each, as well as which teams have won and lost the most games by a single point in club history.
The most one-point wins in a season is four. Fitzroy achieved the feat in 1952, with one-point wins over Carlton (twice!), Hawthorn, and Collingwood. The record for most one-point losses in a season belongs to Geelong, falling three times by that margin in 1941. Both record are in play in 2026...
5. Something quirky I noticed
We have not one but two very odd locations for games in Round 14. On Saturday afternoon, North Melbourne host West Coast at Optus Stadium, if you can believe it. Of course, this is because the Kangaroos sold two games to be played in Western Australia. The question is was the cash worth last week's 124-point loss to the Dockers?
Then, on Sunday afternoon, Richmond and Brisbane will square off at Ninja Stadium in Hobart, of all places. Strange, indeed.
6. My favourite stat of the week
You probably don't have any fingernails left after Round 13, 2026! Eight games, six of them decided by eight points or fewer. It certainly was the round of the thriller.
Here's the stat: that was the first round in football history to feature five games decided by six points or fewer. Something else I found quirky about the margins from this round was that if you added them all up (aside from the Dockers-Roos game) the number was still not half of that mammoth 124-point margin!