Fixture Fortunes: Rating All 18 Clubs’ Road to 2027

The release of the 2027 fixture always produces the same ritual: clubs quietly celebrating a kind draw while publicly insisting the fixture makes no difference at all, and clubs with a brutal run of away games doing precisely the opposite. The truth, as ever, sits somewhere in the middle, but with the home-and-away season now locked in, it is worth taking a sober look at who has been given a genuine chance and who faces an uphill battle before a ball is bounced.

A caveat before we begin. Fixture difficulty is an inexact science, built on this year’s ladder positions, historical form, travel burdens and the timing of byes, none of which guarantees anything about how 2027 will actually unfold. But as a guide to where the Commission’s scheduling has been kind or unkind, it remains the best tool we have.

The Method Behind the Ranking

In assessing each club I have weighed three factors in roughly equal measure: the projected strength of opponents based on recent form and list trajectory, the travel demands placed on each side including the always-contentious question of how many trips the Western Australian and South Australian clubs must make east, and the structural quirks of bye placement and blockbuster scheduling that can either help or hinder a top-eight push. None of this is perfect science, and reasonable judges could quibble with the order. That said, the broad shape of who has it tough and who has it easy tends to hold up reasonably well once the season plays out.

The Fortunate Few

At the kinder end of the ladder sit clubs who, by virtue of finishing lower in 2026 or simply drawing well against this year’s bottom sides, look to have been handed a gentler path. Clubs occupying the lower half of this year’s table typically draw more fixtures against other lower-half sides under the current weighted system, and several of them have also avoided the heaviest travel loads. It would be premature to call any of these clubs genuine flag fancies purely on the strength of a kind draw, but a soft run home can be the difference between finals football and another year on the outer, particularly for a list on the improve.

It is also worth noting that clubs based in Victoria continue to enjoy a structural advantage in terms of travel, playing the bulk of their home games within an hour of their own training base, while interstate clubs are regularly asked to crisscross the country. This is not a new complaint, nor an unreasonable one, but it is a known feature of the competition’s geography rather than any deliberate unfairness, and the AFL has made genuine efforts over successive fixtures to balance it where it can.

Adelaide’s Own Lot

I will declare my colours here, as I always try to do. The Crows’ 2027 draw is, on balance, a moderate one — neither a gift nor a gauntlet. South Australian sides continue to carry a heavier travel burden than most, a reality of being one of only two clubs based outside the eastern seaboard power base, and that remains true again next year. Where the draw has been kinder is in the placement of the bye, which falls at a sensible point in the mid-season rather than disrupting a run of form late, and in the relatively even spread of blockbuster fixtures across the home-and-away season rather than being bunched into one brutal stretch.

Whether that translates into finals football is a matter for the list and the coaching group rather than the fixture-makers, but Adelaide supporters can at least say the draw has not conspired against them in any obvious way. That is about as much as any club can reasonably ask for.

The Sides Doing It Tough

At the other end sit clubs who, by finishing higher in 2026, now face the predictable consequence of a weighted fixture system: a greater share of games against other top-eight calibre opposition. This is by design rather than misfortune, a deliberate attempt by the competition to inject more competitive balance into the home-and-away season, and it is difficult to argue against the principle even as individual clubs feel the pinch of it.

More genuinely unlucky are clubs who combine a difficult opponent list with a heavy travel schedule or an awkwardly placed bye, say immediately before or after a string of away blockbusters. A handful of clubs fall into this category for 2027, facing what amounts to a genuine double jeopardy of tough opponents and tough logistics. It is the kind of draw that can derail an otherwise promising season before it properly begins, and clubs in this position would be entitled to feel somewhat shortchanged, even while accepting that the system cannot favour everyone simultaneously.

The Perennial Travel Question

No discussion of fixture fairness can avoid the travel question, and it remains the single biggest structural inequity in the competition’s scheduling. Clubs based in Perth and Adelaide continue to log vastly more kilometres across a season than their Victorian counterparts, a fact that has been raised at Commission level more than once without any meaningful structural fix emerging. Short of radical surgery to the competition’s geographic footprint, which nobody is seriously proposing, this imbalance is probably here to stay. It is to the credit of the clubs most affected that they rarely use it as a public excuse, even when, in quieter moments, officials will concede it is a genuine handicap over the course of a long season.

What It All Means Come September

Fixture difficulty rankings are a useful guide rather than gospel, and history is littered with examples of sides overcoming a brutal draw through sheer list quality, just as it contains plenty of cautionary tales of teams with a kind run of games failing to capitalise on it. What the 2027 fixture does confirm, once again, is that the competition’s scheduling remains an imperfect compromise between competitive balance, broadcast demands and geographic reality, and that some clubs will always emerge from that compromise better placed than others.

The fairest conclusion, I think, is this: no club has been given an impossible task, and no club has been handed a flag on a platter. The draw will shape the margins of finals contention for three or four clubs hovering around that eighth spot, as it always does, but it will not determine the destination of the premiership cup. That remains, as it should, a matter for the players on the park come September.