Player Intelligence — Player Contribution Index · measured against each player's own history · 2026
Every AFL player since 2017. Every stat.
Methodology & provenance
PCI — the Player Contribution Index — is one number for every game: a player's real contribution to winning football, where 1.00 is the level of a typical winning-team player. Career, Season and Last 3 are the running averages. Alongside it sit the player's role and their four qualities — Ability · Capacity · Consistency · Adaptability. Click any player for the full breakdown.
Unit Intelligence — DEF · MID · FWD · ranked by unit rating within unit · 2026
How each club's three lines — defence, midfield and forward — stack up against the same line at every other club.
Every side has three lines — defence, midfield and forward. Our unit rating scores each on the same 1.000 scale we use everywhere (1.000 = winning level, higher is better). By default it reads a line's best six, so a couple of fringe players don't drag a strong group down — flip Depth to Full unit to average everyone. It's a read on current form, not value.
Methodology & provenance
Every side splits into three units — Defence · Midfield · Forwards. UCI (the Unit Contribution Index) is the average contribution of a unit's best six, so a couple of rotation players don't drag an elite group down — switch Depth to Full unit to average everyone. It reads a unit's current form, not its overall value. The 50 Funnel by unit shows how each unit moves the ball forward.
Team Intelligence — 18 teams ranked by team rating · current round
All 18 clubs at a glance. Click any crest to open its full intelligence page — form, strengths, weaknesses, and where it really sits.
How each side contributes to winning, measured against the winning benchmark — a team rating of 1.00 is the level of a typical winning team. The four phases — Advance · Convert · Control · Disrupt — are weighted by how much each actually drives wins.
Round Intelligence — select a round to view its match intelligence
Every game in the round — the final result, who really controlled it, and our verdict on each side's performance.
Every match this round, graded on how each side contributed to winning. Click a match card to open its full report.
Season Intelligence — rounds ranked by round rating
How the whole competition has moved round by round across 2026, using our team rating for every side.
The season at a glance — each round's team rating, the four phase scores, and True-Win / Fortunate-Win / Self-Inflicted / True-Defeat counts. Click a round to drill in.
Performance Intelligence — match conditions
The weather, venues and benchmarks behind the numbers — the context layer behind every read.
Conditions — how a player's output shifts under different match conditions, and how reliably. Winning Football — how the Actual 13 and the traditional metrics separate winning from losing — now has its own room at the top of the Research Desk.
Ask CIL. The portal renders the population effect for the dimension and applies the render-decision gate to the selected subject.Search Pulse — fan attention & demand context
What supporters are searching for, where demand is moving, what triggered it — and whether the football evidence backs the attention.
A fan attention & demand layer beside the season — not sentiment, not prediction. Search interest is directional (Google Trends is relative and noisy). The payoff is the last card: where public attention and actual TSI performance agree, and where they don't.
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The Agenda — the AFL conversation, tested against the football
What the football media is discussing now — ranked by narrative force and source spread, then checked against the Actual Footy evidence. Coverage is attention, not truth.
The AFL media cycle as a control room, not a news feed. Every major narrative is scored for reach, then tested against the Actual Footy evidence (team rating · verdict · impact). The payoff is the first card: where the conversation and the actual performance agree — and where the attention is running ahead of, or behind, the football. Diagnostic, never a forecast.
How to read this
The Back Page — today's football, written from the second scoreboard
The stories Actual Footy is prepared to stand behind. Engine-generated, evidence-led, and written from the TSI playbook. The scoreboard is evidence. This is the verdict.
One day. One argument. One verdict.
Every edition opens with the most Actual Footy story of the day — not the loudest AFL headline, the one the evidence can carry. Where the ladder and the football disagree, the Back Page takes the side of the football. The first edition lands at Round 19.
- 01R19Lead EditorialThe day's main argument — the verdict, the popular narrative, and where the evidence parts from it.
- 02R19Match VerdictEvery game turned from a scoreline into a read: who won the result, and who won the football.
- 03R19Player FileOne player, measured against their own role and history — breakout, hidden value, or profile ahead of form.
- 04R19Media CorrectionWhere the outside narrative and the evidence diverge — what was said, what the football says, and why.
- 05R19The Hidden TeamThe club the audience has stopped covering that the diagnostics have not stopped rating.
- 06R19The Back PocketFour smaller truths from the week's football — sharp, short, and easy to miss.
A single short-form column. One take, very sharp — same place, same tone, every day.
A newspaper says here is what happened. The Back Page says here is the argument the evidence can support.
The flagship essay slot — 1,000–1,800 words, two to four a week. The misread, the mechanism, and what changes now. Where the brand builds its intellectual capital.
The Media room tracks the external narrative — who's being talked about, how loudly, and where the coverage is pointing.
The Back Page is the masthead: the arguments the engine is prepared to stand behind, written from the evidence and kept on the record.
Every edition becomes part of a permanent, structured record — searchable by club, player, round, verdict, format and evidence type. Nothing the brand argues disappears after 24 hours.
The Back Page is the publication layer of Actual Footy — engine-generated stories written from the same diagnostic read as the rest of the cockpit, archived into a record of what the second scoreboard revealed. Editions begin at Round 19.