Two professional football clubs sit at opposite ends of a spectrum in Perth as the 2026 AFL season unfolds. One has built a window of genuine opportunity and must capitalise now. The other is gambling that youth and patience will eventually yield the kind of depth needed to compete. Neither path is guaranteed to work, but both carry weight.
Fremantle's 2025 season marked their best in a decade, matching their equal second-highest win tally in club history and ending a three-year finals drought. A one-point elimination final loss to Gold Coast stung, but the Dockers proved something important: the foundations are solid enough to reach September. Coach Justin Longmuir transformed a team that collapsed towards the end of 2024 into a genuine finals contender. Now comes the harder part.
The core of their list, Caleb Serong, Andrew Brayshaw, Luke Jackson, Jordan Clark, Alex Pearce and Hayden Young, is settled, battle-tested and approaching peak AFL age. 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. Then there is Luke Jackson. 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.
The missing piece that could unlock everything is fitness. Hayden 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 campaign 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.
Across the city, the Eagles occupy a different universe. 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. It is a stunning reversal for a club that has won premierships in 1994, 2006 and 2018, but West Coast has embarked on something that cannot be rushed: a full squad overhaul driven by youth.
The immediate picture is bleak. The gap between where the Eagles are right now and competence still looks more like a chasm. It took West Coast too long to admit a rebuild was necessary. Now that they have, those young players will play significant football in 2026.
But listen to John Worsfold, the club's greatest player and former coach, and a different tone emerges. When the AFL great says West Coast could be contending for finals by as early as 2027, it's important to hear him out. It's the weight of numbers of emerging talent at West Coast, the youngest and least experienced list in the AFL, that is cause for excitement. And the best part about it is their draft haul from November is set to be the best yet of their rebuild. No.1 draft pick Willem Duursma is being talked up as an A-grade midfielder. No.4 pick Cooper Duff-Tytler is in the mould of Fremantle star Luke Jackson.
This is where the two clubs diverge most sharply. Fremantle must win now, with a list that sits in its prime years. Their window is open, but windows don't stay that way forever. Young midfielders age into their late twenties and thirties, and opportunities come rarely. West Coast, conversely, needs to lose with purpose and build patiently. They can afford some pain in 2026 if it means the foundations are truly set.
The question is not which approach is right; both have merit and both have risks. Fremantle could stay competitive for years if they get this window wrong, or they could squander it and watch their core disperse. West Coast could finally have clarity about their long-term direction, or they could draft players who never quite gel into genuine difference-makers. The AFL's patience with struggling clubs is not infinite, and Perth's two teams will spend 2026 proving very different points to their supporters.