23-0 Game

The Perfect Season Footy Has Never Seen

Twenty-three games, twenty-three wins, not a single loss — a flawless 23-0. In well over a century of VFL/AFL football, it has never happened. The closest any club ever came was Essendon in 2000, a wrecking ball of a team that finished the home-and-away season 21-1, dropping just one game before September. The great dynasties — Hawthorn's three-peat of 2013-15, Brisbane's of 2001-03 — never even threatened it. Footy is played on a ground so big and a season so long that every side, eventually, has one Saturday where the bounce goes wrong.

That gap — between the best season ever played and a truly perfect one — is the whole point of this game. You are not trying to match the 2000 Bombers. You are trying to do the thing they couldn't.

How the 23-0 Game Works

There is no free draft here. A slot machine spins up a random club and a random decade — Geelong in the 90s, the Brisbane three-peat era, Richmond's 2017-20 dynasty — and you take two real players from that side before the wheel spins again. Place them on a proper oval in the classic structure: six in the back line, six through the midfield (rucks and rovers included), six up forward. Nine spins fill all eighteen positions, so every draw forces a decision: take the superstar mid now, or grab the key forward your front six is screaming for?

When the 18 is locked in, the engine weighs every line and simulates a full 23-game season against the other seventeen clubs — real AFL scorelines, goal by goal, with a live ladder at the end. One passenger anywhere on the ground and the perfect record is gone.

Why the Midfield Wins You September — and 23-0

Ask anyone who has watched a Brownlow count: footy is ruled by midfielders. The engine knows it too. Your centre-square six carry the heaviest weighting in the simulation, because clearances decide where the ball lives, and where the ball lives decides the scoreboard. The forward six come next — a great key forward turns inside-50s into goals instead of behinds — while the back six are your floor, the thing that keeps a bad day from becoming a loss.

Balance still beats brilliance. A complete 18 with no weak link will out-run a glamorous side carrying one passenger in the back pocket almost every time. Draft like a list manager building for September, not a fan collecting posters.

Four Decades of AFL Royalty

The player pool spans the modern game. The 1990s give you Ablett senior at his terrifying peak, Carey's North Melbourne, Lockett kicking bags that will never be matched. The 2000s bring the Brisbane three-peat machine, Hird's Essendon, Judd and Cousins running riot in the west. The 2010s are Hawthorn's golden era, Richmond's yellow-and-black wave, Ablett junior winning a Brownlow on the Gold Coast and Buddy Franklin doing Buddy Franklin things in Sydney. The 2020s deliver the modern monsters — Bontempelli, Cripps, Neale, and the Daicos show at Collingwood.

Because each spin can land in any decade, your 18 is almost always a cross-era fantasy: a 90s full back behind a 2020s midfield feeding a 2000s full forward. Half the fun is seeing which legends history throws together — and arguing about who misses out.

Tips for Chasing a Perfect Season

Stack the midfield first — it is the heaviest-weighted line, and a soft centre square caps your ceiling no matter how many goals your forwards kick. Treat your two picks per spin as a pair: if the club offers one elite player, take them, then use the second pick to quietly fill a back pocket or a wing you would never spend a good spin on. Save your reroll for a genuinely thin draw at the positions you have left, not for a club that merely lacks your favourite. And remember the engine is deliberately cruel: even a near-flawless 18 only has a chance at 23-0, never a guarantee — the perfect season is meant to feel mythical.

Play it twice and you'll never get the same run. Every spin rewrites which era of greatness you're working with.

Beyond the AFL

The perfect-season idea has jumped from sport to sport. It started in basketball as the viral 82-0 challenge — win all 82 NBA games — then spread to the Premier League as 38-0, the NFL as 17-0, and the World Cup as 7-0. The 23-0 game brings the format to Australian rules football, where eighteen positions, an oval the size of a paddock and the brutal maths of a 23-game season make it arguably the hardest perfect season of them all. If you can build a flawless 18 here, you can build anything.