Port Adelaide Still Alone At The Top — 224 Games Gone, Seven Seasons Ended
After Round 18 the medicare ladder keeps Port Adelaide top of the casualty count on an estimated 224 games and a league-high seven season-enders, while Fremantle sit almost untouched. The competition has now tipped past 2,000 estimated games lost. Every figure is a modelled estimate, not an official club count.
After Round 18 the shape is familiar at the top and stretched at the bottom. Port Adelaide sit alone on an estimated 224 player-games lost — the better part of a full season of selections — with Essendon next on 178.5, Richmond on 159 and West Coast on 157. At the other end Fremantle have got off lightest by a distance on about 37 games, with Hawthorn (54) and Adelaide (60) the only other clubs still under 65. The gap between hardest-hit and healthiest is roughly 187.5 games. Across the 18, the season has now passed an estimated 2,092 games gone.
Port Adelaide's toll is not one big name but seven of them. Seven confirmed season-enders — the most of any club, headlined this week by Sam Powell-Pepper — join Ollie Lord, Esava Ratugolea and Connor Rozee on a list that has reshaped the side from the spine out. When a club sheds that much football the cost is the churn: fresh faces holding roles, combinations that never settle. Read plainly, an estimated 224 games gone belongs in any fair account of Port's season.
Three stories moved the ladder this week. Gold Coast added the single biggest hit — Elliott Himmelberg's ACL, their first season-ender of 2026, a +22 jump that climbs them two rungs to 99. Hawthorn had the busiest week of anyone, five fresh episodes for +10, yet still carry zero season-enders. And Collingwood's Darcy Moore was upgraded to season/2027, a fourth season-ender for a side chasing September. Western Bulldogs are the week's big faller, dropping five rungs as refined estimates trimmed their count to 89.5.
So here is what each club has lost — estimated and modelled rather than counted: Port Adelaide the most at about 224, Fremantle the least at roughly 37, and a wide field between. Knee injuries drive it, accounting for 22 of the 40 season-enders league-wide. How much slack that earns any club is yours to weigh.
That is what each club has lost to injury, estimated — offered as context, never an excuse. How much slack you cut a side for its casualty list is yours to weigh.