1 Three losses constitutes a streak, and when it’s at the start of the season, it somehow has even more of a psychological impact. It’s worse still when you were a club with those dreaded expectations of finals during the preseason. Scrutiny has zeroed in upon Collingwood and Sydney tonight, as an 0-3 win-loss will provoke all kinds of panicked overreaction, even with 19 more games to go …

2 But as long as the footy season is, you can generally get a feel for the shape of this year’s comp quite early. We’re big believers in the round seven rule, accredited to The Age’s Rohan Connolly, which finds that the eight finals’ sides are by and large identified after the teams have played six or seven games. So, yes, we probably shouldn’t overreact after three games, but we also acknowledge that we’re almost halfway to round seven.

3 It’s a Showdown week, and Adelaide has been abuzz with the fact that this is the first time that the Power and Crows have met as the top two on the ladder (small sample-size alert!). Port captain Travis Boak was attempting some kind of under-reaction caucus with his Adelaide counterpart Taylor Walker in the lead-up: “For both of us it's an important match – one of us will go three and zero and have a great start to the year. But for us, and I'm sure they're the same, we will just build it up as another week.” Boak might be underplaying, but the Crows have some decided motivation this week – if Don Pyke’s team wins a fourth straight Showdown, they’ll have evened up the stakes in the rivalry game, 21 each. An Adelaide hasn’t led this series since the year 2000.

Port's Sam Powell-Pepper, breakout star.

4 One of our favourite overreactions: the breakout star of the early rounds, which surely goes to Port’s Sam Powell-Pepper. We’re not for a moment suggesting that he’s not worthy of the hype – that stiff-arm alone is worth it. There is a fair question about how the WA sides under-reacted on the East Perth teen – yet another draft misread on a big-bodied midfielder?

5 Final thought, via Fox Footy pundit and Inside Sport columnist Brian Lake on GWS young gun Josh Kelly’s nine-year, $9m deal – at that price, Lake asked if Kelly was “marketable” enough? It may strike as a curious question, but it’s wholly appropriate. There’s a larger question of how many players in the AFL make a dent in the market at all – is the value of a player how many tickets he can sell, as opposed to helping his team win games and drawing people that way? But with clubs holding cap space and needing to spend it, these are the kinds of deals that happen …