WATCHING Matt Rowell fumble groundballs against Collingwood on Saturday night was almost as jarring as watching 30 players scrap in a half-time melee.

You were left asking yourself: "What the hell is happening here?"

Rowell won the Brownlow Medal with a staggering 39 votes last year. So far, his injury-interrupted 2026 is nowhere near that level.

With 11 games under his belt (in which the Suns have won a barely believable two), the drop-off has moved past an anomaly and is now officially a concern.

Rowell has fallen away in every statistical category, with many markers showing it's his worst season since 2021, when he was still just a teenager and on the comeback trail from serious shoulder and knee injuries.

So, what's happened?

Last year, the inside midfield powerhouse was the competition's most prolific clearance winner. This year he is seventh.

He was second for centre clearances. Now he's outside the top 20.

Disposals are down, but most notably so are his metres gained (from 402 to 306), as are his score involvements (from 7.3 to 5.2).

The burst away from stoppages that characterised Rowell's wonderful 2025 is nowhere to be seen. 

This is where injuries have played a huge part.

Although it's fair to judge players equally once they're on the field, the fumbles and lack of burst correlate to the two problems that have dogged Rowell this year.

In February's AAMI Origin game in Perth, the 25-year-old broke a bone in his left hand that would keep him out of Gold Coast's first three matches.

He returned, wearing a brace, in early April against Melbourne.

He still does not have full range of motion in that hand and coach Damien Hardwick said this week Rowell would likely require a further operation once the season had finished.

A few weeks later an ankle problem popped up. Although the club was coy about the severity, the syndesmosis injury did not require surgery, and he returned after missing two matches.

Whether it's confidence in his body, a residual issue from the injuries, or just a lack of continuity, Rowell has not been the same since returning.

But he, for one, is not using his injuries as an excuse.

"My body's 100 per cent," he said early in June.

"There have been some frustrating moments at times. 

"You want to be out on the park every week doing what you want to do.

"The finger, then the ankle, they were frustrating times, but everyone goes through little niggles and injuries throughout the year."

Not only is Rowell's ball-winning ability down, but also his vaunted defensive work. Rowell has dropped from third for tackles in 2025 to now sit outside the top 10.

Tackles aren't everything, but Champion Data's catch-all Pressure Points metric for defensive work is also the lowest of his career in five years.

Whatever the problem causing Rowell's form, you can bet one of the competition's best players is doing everything possible to reverse the trend.

And Gold Coast needs him to if it's any chance of making a yelp in the back end of 2026, starting on Saturday night against Adelaide.