The 2016 AFL season has already thrown up a nasty curve ball or two for a bunch of teams. Who should keep swinging from the hips and go for the home run, and who should concede defeat and begin planning for their next at-bat?

Would it be wrong to say that the AFL’s top eight looks mostly acceptable, after just five rounds of football? Yes, yes it would.

History shows that after five rounds of football, we can expect an average of six of the league’s September combatants to be sitting pretty – leaving two spots still up for grabs.

Reality is a little messier than that, but not significantly so.

Indeed, there’s a strong case that at the very least, the current top five (North Melbourne, the Western Bulldogs, Sydney, Geelong, and Hawthorn) are firmly in finals frame. That leaves three spots available to the other 13 sides that compete in the Australian Rules Football League.

Maths alert: 13 does not go into three very well.

Where does that leave the likes of Fremantle (0-5), Richmond, Carlton, Essendon, Brisbane, and St Kilda (1-4)? Indeed, are Collingwood and Port Adelaide (2-3) already on toast after poor starts to the year? Should they start thinking about planning a run at 2017 and beyond? Let’s find out together.

Introducing: the Shut It Down matrix. Acronym suggestions welcome.

On the horizontal axis: the extent to which a team has something to ‘salvage’ or ‘play for’ in 2016. It could be finals aspirations, it could be to keep key personnel, it could be anything. Teams that are on the right of this axis have something to play for, and it is within reason to consider it achievable.

On the vertical axis: the scale of the prize on offer for a team that might consider taking the long view, playing the kids, sending their key players off to the surgeon (wink-wink, nudge-nudge). You could argue every team would like to have higher draft picks, but let’s put a lens of pragmatism on this. And just to make this more confusing than it already is, a team with a lot to gain will be on the bottom of the chart.

When combined, these two look something like the below. As you can probably tell by now, this is mostly for fun, but there will be some truth laced throughout the obscure 1970s prog rock references. And, per usual, if you don’t like what I say it’s because I hate you.

Let’s get to it, in reverse ladder order. Here is the Round 5, 2016 AFL Shut It Down matrix.

Fremantle Dockers
If the Dockers aren’t in the bottom left-hand corner of the matrix, then no team will ever be in the bottom left-hand corner of this matrix.

Fremantle are now 0-5, and if the 0-4 start was going to make finals difficult but achievable, then this can only make matters far, far worse.

They’re missing some important players now, too. Actually no, not some important players. All of the important players. In alphabetical order: Harley Bennell, Nat Fyfe, Michael Johnson, David Mundy and Aaron Sandilands are all on the sidelines due to injury. Is that the worst single-team injury list in recent AFL history? My guess would be yes, and I would also guess nothing comes close.

There is practically nothing for Fremantle to play for in 2016. A fashionable choice for the top four just a month ago, the Dockers might now win their second wooden spoon.

But the silver lining is they have one of the best coaches – I think – in the AFL, Ross Lyon, locked in for another four seasons, and a list with enough primo talent to build around.

We’ll get to Fremantle’s next steps in the months ahead, but for now, their short-term move is plain to see: play the kids, Ross.

Essendon Bombers
The Dons stunk it up on Anzac Day, and reminded us all that they are a team of youngsters, buttressed by a number of spare parts players that came together three months after the rest of the competition was settled.

Everything about this season is a write-off for Essendon, except for the potential fast tracking of their high-quality young talent. They don’t want to lose every single game in the way Fremantle might want to.

For Essendon though, the payoff of a low-ladder position is immense, particularly when coupled with the prospective loss of one or two prime age players in free agency.

The club’s budget is doubtlessly tight, but one would expect there have been some resources thrown at scouting and talent evaluation ahead of this year’s draft.

Brisbane Lions
Ahh the Lions. They are, slowly but surely, escaping football purgatory.

I like what coach Justin Leppitsch has done with his side this year. He appears to have thrown off the defensive shackles, and instructed his team to play with more flair and dare than in the past couple of years. Brisbane are scoring two goals per game more than last year, but right now are conceding more than three goals more than they did in 2015.

That’s okay for now. The Lions have played a stupidly difficult slate of games to start the year, and rather than lose them all by ten goals while struggling to register ten goals themselves, they’ve played some attractive football and likely won some more fans.

There’s a solid core of players forming, particularly through the middle of the ground, where the Lions have an enviable depth of B+ players. In the patches of play that I’ve seen, Josh Schache looks a legitimate, multi-year key forward option, and the rest of Brisbane’s talls – and there are plenty of them – are coming along.

So there is a prize for losing big this season for the Lions, but it is smaller than in previous years. I’d imagine the club would prefer a string of competitive losses while this side builds on its solid foundations.

But for this year, another stint in purgatory looks in prospect.

Carlton Blues
Like the Dockers, I plan to spend a bit of time with the Blues a little later in the year, so I’ll save the bulk of my remarks for then.

Coach Bolton has instilled a much smarter streak in his playing stocks, and they now more often than not work together as one in defence and attack. The discards they have gathered might not work out to be a royal flush, but they’ve got the potential to give Carlton a straight draw once the turn and river come around in the years ahead. They’re a team primed to take a scalp or two over the rest of the season, and in the weekend coming should comfortably account for the disorganised Essendon.

But Messrs Trigg and Stephen Silvagni will be hoping, quietly, that there aren’t too many more surprise victories for this group. Everyone’s eye should be on the prize: another year or two with plenty of chips at the draft table. Take the red pill, Bolts.

Richmond Tigers
They. Do. This. Every. Single. Bloody. Year.

Richmond are nothing more than a pedestrian football team right now, playing a confused style with players that don’t have the confidence to execute it consistently, regardless. Cam Rose, frustrated Richmond fan, said it all yesterday, so there is little use repeating his words. Suffice to say a backwards step – even if it’s only a half one – is not acceptable for the full season. The pressure is on Richmond as a club now.

But lurking in the back of the football department’s minds will be all of this talk that they don’t have the playing stocks that are up to it. The Tigers have hit up the league’s secondary market frequently in recent years, which has come at the expense of game time for their draftees. Richmond have made 28 national draft selections (including rookie elevations) in the five years from 2010 to 2014, and rank 15th in average games played by those draftees.

A trip down the ladder would afford the Tigers a chance to pick another highly rated youngster or two, but it would probably come at the expense of their head coach, who is already under more scrutiny than is justified.

The dilemma they face is probably only in my mind, though. This is a team that is gunning for finals, and given what we’ve watched them do, repeatedly, in recent years, it is a goal certainly worth striving for.

A ninth placed finish would be almost too perfect though. Can we have that, please?

St Kilda Saints
St Kilda are in an interesting spot. They’ve put up big scores, almost got over line against the reigning premiers at their Island Fortress of Winningness, and have kept up with their opponents for three-quarters in most games. But they’re yet to win a single last quarter, including in their lone victory, over Collingwood in Round 3.

If Robbie Gray wasn’t playing in Round 1, and you-know-what hadn’t happened in Round 4, the footy world would be abuzz with talk of St Kilda’s young, rising list and balls-to-the-wall playing style. Alas, they’re a footnote – playing out a season in line with the consensus.

However, my pre-season prophecy on the Saints is proving true, to a point. St Kilda are indeed hard to play against this season, but are also still – for the most part – a raw, unformed lump of clay. The signs of a good team are here for all to see, but it’s the final five or ten per cent that’s still missing.

The Saints are on a solid trajectory, and should end up winning more than the 6.5 games they did in 2015. They travel out of Melbourne just three more times for the year, two trips of which are to play teams they’d likely lose against even if they were playing in more familiar surrounds (West Coast and Adelaide).

They’re still in building mode, but they would be mostly happy with where their young talent stocks sit – indeed, they have 25 players on their list aged 22 or younger. The incremental gain of a pick in the top five versus the top ten is likely meaningless, and one would expect the Saints to deal their first rounder for some more mature talent anyway. The benefits of winning games in 2016 are significant for this group.

Port Adelaide Power
We covered the Power last week, and things didn’t improve on the weekend for the teal and black. A first quarter of competitiveness gave way to second, third and fourth quarters of pedestrian play.

The problem for Port Adelaide now is that there is enough of a gap between them and the best sides in the competition that a finals spot might be too hard to come by. At the same time, the Power are out their second round draft pick in this year, and have clearly by their actions in recent years considered themselves flush with young talent.

The only list management-related prize for slipping down the ladder this season will be a slightly lower number for their first round pick – and this is a list that all of a sudden looks more than an additional highly rated youngster away from a sustained run at the flag.

The Power have an interesting little dilemma with this pick, too, given they dealt out of the first round last season. If they trade it away, they will be bound to use first round picks in the 2017 and 2018 drafts, under the league’s rules for trading future picks.

Instead, the Power have more intangible things to play for; proving that their 2014 surge wasn’t a one-off, that their playing stocks are better than they have shown in the past 18 months, and that their current coach is the right man for the job.

They could prove us all wrong, recapture their mojo, and work their way into a finals spot. But right now, that looks some way off.

Collingwood Magpies
The Pies are like the Tigers – everything is on the line. As best as we can tell, Collingwood’s higher ups had finals in their sights in 2016, and after a middling start, have set themselves back in that endeavour.

A win against the Bombers on Anzac Day was to be expected, and the manner in which is occurred was more in line with everyone’s expectations before the season got underway. In that first half, the Pies moved the ball and defended deliberately, eschewing the meandering nature of their play from the first four rounds.

Collingwood looked far more organised in defence, and while part of that was likely due to Essendon’s tendency to play slow, you have to start somewhere.

At 2-3, the Pies are still in the frame for a finals berth. But they will have to make up a sizeable percentage gap, as well as four points in the loss column to challenge the teams above them for a spot. An elimination final might be a stretch target from here, but an absolute non-negotiable will be to crack the ten wins they achieved last season – lest the Pies condemn themselves to four straight seasons of more losing.

Postscript: We’re not talking about Melbourne and the draft!
It might only be a product of an arbitrary cut-off point, but it feels great to be having a conversation about positioning for the future that doesn’t involve the Melbourne Demons. They are one of the positive stories of the season to date, and look to have made good on the pre-season promise of more attacking flair in the first five rounds of the season proper.

This is an excellent development, and shows what can be achieved when all elements of a team’s operations are aligned and working together. Big Four, take note.