One team is in a premiership window carrying the weight of those expectations. The other is two or three years away from being competitive — hopefully.
The Fremantle Dockers arrive at Round One carrying genuine finals expectations after their best season in a decade, while the West Coast Eagles begin what may be the most important development year of their rebuild under Andrew McQualter.
Different timelines, different goals, but there are reasons for both sides to be excited ahead of 2026.
Fremantle Dockers
2025 Recap
Again, the hype for FLAGmantle was real, and again, another season of missed opportunity.
Sixteen home-and-away wins. A return to September. And a one-point elimination final loss to Gold Coast. By most measures, 2025 was Fremantle’s best season in a decade, matching their equal second-highest win tally in club history and ending a three-year finals drought.
Justin Longmuir turned a team that collapsed towards the end of 2024 into a genuine finals contender, but the loss to the Suns was a reminder that this group hasn’t yet finished the job.
It was a step forward. For many fans, it felt like only a half step.
2026 Expectations
Here we go again… is this the year Fremantle’s genuine premiership window opens?
The core of their list, Caleb Serong, Andrew Brayshaw, Luke Jackson, Jordan Clark, Alex Pearce and Hayden Young, just to name a few, is settled, battle-tested and approaching peak AFL age. The defensive unit remains one of the best in the competition. And the emergence of Patrick Voss and Josh Treacy as genuine tall forward threats gives them a balanced attacking structure they’ve lacked for years.
The Dockers also came away from the trade period with useful additions. Mason Cox brings a marking target and forward presence that takes pressure off Treacy and Voss, while defender Judd McVee adds another composed ball-user to a backline that already concedes very little.
We’re predicting a top-four finish. The window is open. It’s time to run through it.
Predicted ladder position: 4th
Key Players to Watch — Fremantle
Caleb Serong, Midfielder
It’s fair to say the three-time Doig Medallist is the heartbeat of this team and one of the best midfielders in the competition. Serong’s ability to win contested ball, impact stoppages and carry the Dockers on his back in tight games is what separates Fremantle from the also-rans on their best days. His challenge in 2026 isn’t so much about improvement, but making sure he can again deliver an All-Australian worthy season to drive Fremantle into a deep finals campaign.
Luke Jackson, Ruck/Midfielder
The new ruck rules for 2026 favour the more athletic ruckmen over the bash-and-crash big men, and there is nobody in the league better placed to exploit them than Jackson. If the pre-season is anything to go by, it looks like he may have taken his already All-Australian 2025 season to new heights. Clubs around the competition might simply not be able to stop him — whether he’s delivering first use to the Fremantle midfielders at centre bounces, emerging from a stoppage with the ball and finding space, or pushing forward to take a hanging mark. He was already a problem. In 2026, he could be the problem.
Hayden Young, Midfielder
He’s back and reportedly moving well in pre-season. There is no player on Fremantle’s list whose fitness matters more. Young is the rare midfielder who combines genuine pace with a boot that can deliver the ball on a dime, and it’s hard to fathom that despite their successful 2025 campign Fremantle played without him for much of the season. A full year of Young running hard and breaking lines is something Brayshaw and Serong, for all their brilliance, can’t replicate. If Young stays on the park, Freo’s ceiling goes up considerably.
Breakout Player: Murphy Reid
This has to be the steal of the 2024 AFL draft. Picked up at 17, one selection after West Coast took Bo Allan at 16, which only makes it worse if you’re an Eagles fan.
Reid won the Rising Star in 2025 and some are already drawing comparisons to Nat Fyfe, which means the ‘breakout’ label might technically be a season late. What made him so exciting is that he only got better as the year progressed, and by all accounts, he’s barely scratched the surface of what he can do.
Now with a full pre-season under his belt and a coaching staff actively exploring how to get more of him into the game, including time through the midfield, Reid is the kind of player who can shift from impressive debutant to breaking out as a genuine superstar in a single year.
West Coast Eagles
2025 Recap
We could sum up the 2025 season quite simply: one win. Worst season in club history. Wooden spoon.
As the old saying goes, if you put makeup on a pig… It’s still a pig. There’s no way to dress up what happened at West Coast in 2025. Andrew McQualter’s first season in charge produced just a single victory, and the club finished last for the first time since their expansion years. The Eagles were outrun, outhustled, outscored — pretty much outfootballed every single week.
As for bright spots? Jobe Shanahan emerged as a potential key forward of the future. Reuben Ginbey looks right at home in the backline and will be better in 2026 for the run he got playing one key role all season. And then there was the mid-season pickup of Tom McCarthy, who already looks to be one of the top two or three players at the club — with only half a season of AFL experience to his name.
2026 Expectations
It can’t get any worse, can it? Have West Coast hit rock bottom?
Safe to say nobody is tipping a finals appearance from the Eagles in 2026, and most experts have them locked in for the wooden spoon again. The realistic goal this season is meaningful improvement: implementing a game plan, winning more contested ball, kicking more goals, giving up fewer, and cutting the turnovers that have killed them week after week.
The headline signing of the off-season was two-time premiership defender Brandon Starcevich from Brisbane, a player who brings exactly the kind of defensive standards and winning experience this young group needs to absorb. Tylar Young arrived from Richmond to add some much-needed depth, and the club also bolstered its ranks through the SSP with ex-AFL trio Finlay Macrae, Deven Robertson and Harry Schoenberg.
All eyes won’t just be on Harley this season either. There’s a new number one pick in town with just as much hype and anticipation — Willem Duursma. Having Reid already established in the team should take some of the spotlight off Duursma and allow him to find his feet and play his natural game.
The pieces are arriving and the list is developing. 2026 is about playing them together and building a culture, which seems to have been lacking for quite some time.
Predicted ladder position: 16th
Key Players to Watch — West Coast Eagles
Harley Reid, Midfielder
No doubt you’ve seen the centrefold shots of Harley on the training track. Reid has returned for his third campaign leaner and primed for a big season, and those who have seen him in action believe this is the year he makes his move into the elite. He committed his future to the club until 2028, which matters culturally as much as contractually. If we see more of the Reid who changed games on his own boot, he could single-handedly move West Coast out from back-to-back wooden spoons.
Jake Waterman, Forward
Line him up at full forward in almost any other club in the competition, and we’re probably talking about his Coleman Medal odds. Waterman has been the lone offensive force in the Eagles’ forward line for too long, and for West Coast to have any chance of outscoring opponents in 2026, two things need to happen: he stays healthy, and the young midfielders finally start delivering the kind of supply that makes use of those hands.
When the ball gets there, he takes it, and he kicks it straight. The problem has never been Waterman.
Elliot Yeo, Midfielder
Not the player he was before injuries took years off his career. But a fit Yeo is still a seriously influential one, and that’s the point. His influence on Harley Reid during Reid’s debut season has perhaps gone underappreciated — the presence of an experienced, hard-nosed midfielder who leads by action rather than instruction is exactly the kind of thing that accelerates young players. A full season of Yeo healthy and setting the standard at the contested end could be the difference between one step forward in this rebuild and two.
Breakout Player: Tom McCarthy
Not a household name yet, but he should be before Round 10.
The mid-season draftee has been the consistent standout of West Coast’s summer, with reports describing Tom as one of only two players who genuinely catches the eye at training, alongside Harley Reid.
In his first season, it was easy to see McCarthy moved differently from most midfielders. He cuts through traffic, avoids tackles, and his running capacity in 2025 was already at AFL level without a full pre-season behind him.
Watch this space as McCarthy officially arrives on the AFL scene.
