AFL Beat 2026 – AFL Rounds 22 & 23 Recap and AFLW Round 1 Recap!

My apologies for missing last week’s Beat! I don’t know what happened. To make up for it, I bring you two weeks’ worth of highlights and news!

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The AFL Ladder

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Round 22 Results

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Round 23 Results

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Round 22 and 23 Highlights and Australian music Placeholder Videos

Round 23

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Round 24 Schedule

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AFL Footy Tipping Contest Results

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AFL Notes and Comments

The Fremantle Dockers officially became the minor premiers (regular season champs) after tough victories over the Melbourne Demons and the Adelaide Crows. I watched the end of both games and they really are the favourites to win the whole thing. The way they take over games is beautiful to see.

The finals field is set going into the last regular season week. The only thing left is to figure out the final places and matchups for Wild Card Weekend. Your eliminated teams are, in current ladder order, St. Kilda, GWS, North Melbourne, Gold Coast, Port Adelaide, West Coast, Richmond, and Essendon . Litre, as always, was right about the Saints.

Meanwhile, the Wild Card teams are essentially locked in. Only a Geelong loss to 17th placed Richmond in the last game would allow anyone to crack the Top 6. Your Wild Card teams are Adelaide, Collingwood, Western, and Carlton. Even though some may say the finals field is watered down, those actually will be great matchups. They are all evenly matched.

The Top Six will all get byes into the traditional Elimination Finals and Qualifying Finals. Keep in mind that the Top Four still get the Double Chance, so if they lose, they’re still alive.

For the first time ever, Hawthorn and Collingwood tied TWICE in the same season. The first time the scores were 93 while this time they were 92. That’s actually pretty crazy. Speaking of, SEVEN (7!) of our tippers had perfect weeks! Spam was one of them, so nothing changes at the top, but great job everyone! Don’t forget to put the tips in!

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AFLW Ladder

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AFLW Round 1 Results

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AFLW Round 1 Highlights

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AFLW Round 2 Schedule

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AFLW Round News and Notes

AFLW held one game a week ago and the rest this past weekend, so, in a sense, I did good by combining everything into one update! I’m going to keep telling myself that.

North Melbourne showed why they are the defending champions slash dynasty. They destroyed Geelong in a merciless showing. It is now 28 straight games without a loss.

Sydney v Adelaide was your match of the week as it came down to the final minutes. Brisbane looks pretty strong again this year and may be the team that has the best chance of knocking off the Roos. We will find out if that’s true next week.

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If you are a member of an AFL club or you got a Watch AFL membership, you should be able to watch every AFL and AFLW game, including replays. Game times vary between Australian afternoon and evening, which actually makes it easier for us in North America to watch as the games can be seeing in the evenings on Pacific Time and early mornings on Eastern time.

If you haven’t become a member of a club or signed up for the Watch AFL app, you can still watch the AFL and AFLW games in the USA on either FS1 or FS2 and in Canada on TSN. Showtimes can be found here on the Australian Football Association of North America website. But I do recommend that you join a club. It’s fun and they send you free shit.

See you next week!