AFL Grand Final 2026: Brisbane 96, Fremantle 89 and a Norm Smith Nobody Saw Coming

Brisbane have won a third consecutive premiership, beating Fremantle 14.12 (96) to 12.17 (89) at the MCG after kicking the last four goals of the 2026 AFL Grand Final. But the Norm Smith Medal went to the losing side. Fremantle's Shai Bolton polled 10 votes to become just the fifth player in history, and the first in 21 years, to be judged best on ground in a beaten grand final team and was booed by Brisbane supporters as he accepted it. Dayne Zorko and Will Ashcroft finished equal second on six votes each.

Nine minutes

Fremantle could taste it.

Fifty years without a premiership. A club that had never held the cup. A wet MCG, a slugfest, and a lead they had earned the hard way in conditions that suited them.

Then Brisbane kicked the last four goals of the game.

That is the whole premiership, right there. The Lions did not grind their way back over a quarter. They went bang, bang, bang, bang, and a club on the edge of the greatest day in its history was left standing on the MCG watching someone else lift the cup.

Seven points. 14.12 (96) to 12.17 (89).

Look at Fremantle's line again 12 goals, 17 behinds. Five more scoring shots than Brisbane. In a game decided by seven points, on a wet day when every set shot was a lottery, that is the number that will haunt Fremantle all summer.

Then they called his name

The Norm Smith Medal presentation is usually a formality by the time it happens. The winner is obvious, the crowd is celebrating, everyone claps.

Not this time.

Paul Chapman, the 2009 winner, read out Shai Bolton. Bolton, of Fremantle. Bolton, who had just lost.

The ABC's own live coverage called it a very surprising winner. Bolton himself looked as surprised as anyone.

And then the boos came a cascade of them from the Brisbane end, rolling across the ground while a man in purple stood holding the highest individual honour in Australian football on the worst afternoon of his career.

He ignored them.

"To our boys, heads up, we'll be back better and stronger," he said. He congratulated Brisbane, calling them the benchmark for a couple of years now. He thanked the Fremantle fans for coming. Then he was done.

Today was great. Kylie was awesome, best Grand Final I’ve seen. Congrats Lions on a 3peat. You deserve it! pic.twitter.com/fPMwMY7QTN

— Willy Aitch (@WillyAitch) September 26, 2026

The fifth man

Only five players have ever won the Norm Smith Medal in a losing grand final team. Bolton is now one of them.

Maurice Rioli, Richmond, 1982. Gary Ablett Snr, Geelong, 1989. Nathan Buckley, Collingwood, 2002. Chris Judd, West Coast, 2005. Shai Bolton, Fremantle, 2026.

Twenty-one years since the last one. That is the company he is in, and it is not bad company.

He is also Fremantle's first Norm Smith medallist. In a club history containing exactly zero premierships, that is a peculiar and slightly painful kind of first.

What he actually did

Bolton finished with 26 disposals, the most of any Fremantle player on the ground, along with 10 contested possessions, nine score involvements, nine inside 50s, seven marks, five tackles and close to 690 metres gained.

He kicked no goals. He had two behinds.

In the wet, with small forwards at a premium and the ball skidding, what the panel rewarded was a player who kept moving it forward when nobody else in purple could.

He arrived at Fremantle a two-time premiership player with Richmond. This was his first grand final for the Dockers. He was named All-Australian for the second time last month, after his first blazer in 2022, capping what has been the best season of his career.

He flew to Melbourne on Wednesday wanting a different medal.

The full Norm Smith voting

Three of the top five vote-getters were Fremantle players. Read that alongside the scoreline and you get a sense of how close this was.

It was one of the most evenly split Norm Smith votes in recent memory. Bolton did not sweep it he was named first on two of the five cards and collected minor votes on the other three. Zorko took two firsts and nothing else. Ashcroft was on every card but topped none.

Will Ashcroft deserves a line of his own here. He had won the Norm Smith Medal in each of the previous two grand finals, in 2024 and 2025. A third would have put him somewhere close to untouchable. He finished equal second, on a day his team won the flag. He will take that trade.

How Brisbane did it

This was the first heavily rain-affected decider since Geelong and St Kilda's slugfest in 2009, which shaped everything about how it was played.

Charlie Cameron got it started, snapping the opening goal off his left in exactly the conditions where one of the most prolific small forwards in finals history is most dangerous. Josh Treacy answered for Fremantle with a set shot from beyond 50. Jye Amiss and Patrick Voss joined in during the second term, Voss the only multiple goalkicker at half-time.

Then the last quarter, and the four goals that decided it.

Brisbane's Harris Andrews said afterwards that the Lions had planned to feed off Fremantle's "Wharfie Time" if the chance came. It came.

They are calling this side The Unstoppables, and three flags in three years is the argument. Chris Fagan's team has now made a habit of the thing that is hardest to do in sport, which is win when they are behind and the other side has the momentum.

What this means

If you follow Fremantle. Fifty years and still no premiership, and this is the closest the club has come. Seventeen behinds. Alex Pearce speaking on crutches after an Achilles injury. A best-on-ground medallist in the losing rooms. It is a brutal set of things to hold at once, and the side that did it is young enough to come back.

If you follow Brisbane. Three in a row. Only a handful of clubs in the history of the competition have done it. Whatever else is said about this era, that is the sentence that goes in the record book.

If you were watching the Norm Smith race. Ashcroft's bid for three straight was live until the final count, and he lost it to a player on the losing team. That is its own piece of history.

If you are wondering about the boos. They were not really about Bolton. A crowd that had just watched its team win a premiership expected to hear one of its own names read out. The reaction was to the decision, not the man though he was the one standing there absorbing it.

The line that will be replayed

Bolton's remarks lasted seconds. Congratulations to Brisbane. Heads up to his own players. Thank you to the fans.

Then: "We'll be back better and stronger."

Fremantle supporters have heard versions of that for fifty years. On the evidence of this side, and of the man holding the medal, there is more reason to believe it than usual.