Every September, Australian Football League (AFL) fans are told the same thing: the grand final is the hardest game of the year – faster, fiercer and more brutal than the matches that came before it.

It is something commentators, players and footy followers often repeat, but nobody checks.

So, we checked, ahead of this Saturday’s decider between Fremantle and Brisbane.

Using the AFL’s own match statistics and the historical records at AFL Tables, we built a dataset of all 5,111 games played between 2000 and 2025, to investigate statistics that pointed to harder, tougher contests – things like tackles and contested possessions.

What changes during the finals?

The first surprise is there are slightly fewer disposals (kicks and hand passes) in finals, compared to regular games. Teams average 347.5 disposals in a final compared to 361.5 in a regular game, and almost all of that drop is handballs, which fall from 152.5 to 140.6. Kicks barely change.

What also changes is how the ball is won.

Uncontested possessions (when a player kicks or handballs in space, away from physical contact) drop from 220.3 a game to 203.2, while contested possession rates climb from 38.6% to 41.1%.

Marking follows suit: uncontested marks fall from 78.9 to 72.7 while contested marks rise from 10.6 to 11.5.

These figures point to there being less free space in finals, with more body-to-body contests as players fight to win and dispose of the........

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