Last year Collingwood missed the eight by percentage. The 2023 premiers beat eventual flag winners Brisbane both times during the 2024 season – but missed the eight.
This isn’t a comment on Collingwood’s season, nor even immediately on their prospects this year. It’s a comment on the rest of the teams this year. How tight was it for places in the eight last year? A team that missed the eight beat the eventual premiers twice.
The Magpies could easily rise again. Credit: Getty Images
The margin in the grand final was misleading – the Lions thrashed Sydney by 60 points – compared with the closeness of the season. Brisbane dominated the grand final but not the year; they finished the home-and-away season in fifth place.
It is brave, then, to be definitive about any forecast for the next 25 rounds, given the wafer thin margins of 2024. We’re yet to get any exposed form against opposition clubs. We only have the changes in the off-season, and the hilarious hyperbole about players suddenly transforming over summer. But we can still approach the year with assumptions, if not conclusions, about teams.
Who is really contending?
The Giants should win it, no doubt. Will they? Probably not. They have a great list with A-graders on every line. They lost a clutch of players in the off-season and while none of the dear departed were A-graders (Isaac Cumming, Harry Perryman, James Peatling and Nick Haynes), three of them were good enough to be in GWS’ best team during finals – and all need to be replaced. One replacement is Jake Stringer who – and this comment applies to every match he has ever played – could be anything.
But the Giant caution is they could have/should have won it all last year, but exited finals in straight sets. How do you get so far up in successive finals and cough up wins? It means you trust them at your peril this year.
The Giants have the talent to win the flag. But will they?Credit: Getty Images
The Swans have a new coach and new scars from last year’s grand final. The watch on them is for how much it damaged them and how different they will look. They will make the eight, but will they contend again?
On paper, the Cats are still an incredibly strong team and, like Sydney, they just make it. Yes, they get home games at Geelong, but they will be there in September again. Bailey Smith adds to their intrigue, their speed of ball movement and their quota of moustaches, mullets and Instagram followers.
Carlton have a team capable of winning it all and there is a growing urgency to capitalise while they have this rare generation of talent. But in the past two years the Blues have been unable to put together a balanced season. Two years ago, they started terribly and came home strongly; last year the backside fell out them.
The Blues were still second after 19 rounds and only ended up sneaking into the eight on percentage before losing the elimination final. They only won two of their last nine matches. Like GWS, the way they ended last year demands a note of caution when everything else about their profile says they can be contenders.
So much of the watch on them is a watch on Charlie Curnow. Their draft strategy was excellent, to get in as early as they could, and the buzz about Jagga Smith suggests he is a rare Nick Daicos type who is AFL-ready to make an impact.
And, of course, Brisbane could do it again. They are well coached, well run, stable and have a good list. They lost Joe Daniher, but gained another Ashcroft. As they showed last year – in a tight competition, get there and anything can happen.
The time is now for the Blues.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
Who could bolt?
The most obvious question mark for who can drive up the ladder is the team at the top of this story – Collingwood, premiers only 18 months ago. Adding Dan Houston and Perryman, they have been unabashed in their attempt to go all-in for another flag while their window is open. They need to prove last year was an aberration because with 12 players over 30 by season’s end, another death-by-a-thousand-cuts season and a finals miss means the cliff will loom quickly.
Melbourne, like Collingwood, are a huge question mark. Last year was a debacle – Clayton Oliver and Christian Petracca and the post-season messiness. It would be equally unsurprising were the Demons to win the flag or finish 12th. The noises out of Melbourne have been right about change and buying in, but noises are nearly always right in summer.
Fremantle are nearly in the same boat as Melbourne and Collingwood. They have recruited well and have a list that should be playing finals. But they have flattered to deceive in recent years and deserve caution.
Hawthorn were last year’s bolters. The question is whether their sharp rise created a new normal or whether they will settle back again. They are exposed now, and they have a tougher draw, but have recruited well. Tom Barrass and Josh Battle will stabilise the back six, which will enable James Sicily to roam forward. That might be important given uncertainty around Calsher Dear’s back injury.
Jack Ginnivan and Connor Macdonald were all smiles in 2024. Can the Hawks take the next step?Credit: AFL Photos
This is the broken record part of the story. (For younger readers who are not hipsters buying vinyl, a scratched album would play itself on a loop.) Gold Coast simply have to make finals at some point and this year should be it.
It’s Damien Hardwick’s second season, they’ve added class and experience with Daniel Rioli, and the extra season in players such as Jed Walter should finally lift them into the eight.
The vulnerable
The eight will not be the same as last year; it never is. So, which teams drop out for others to make it? Sydney, Brisbane, Geelong and GWS should all be locks for September.
Sam Darcy could be a superstar of the competition.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
Port Adelaide’s belting by Geelong and touch-up from Sydney in last year’s finals offers little confidence. They look better for Jack Lukosius coming in and Charlie Dixon going out. But a new query arises in whether the coaching succession plan adds urgency or creates uncertainty.
The Dogs should be a flag threat but the uncertainty around Jamarra Ugle-Hagan and other injuries, as well as their crash-and-burn final last year, creates lingering doubt. However, the memory of Sam Darcy’s 2024 season suggests this player and team could be anything. And that then leaves Carlton – see above.
The Nicks pass mark?
Crows coach Matthew Nicks.Credit: Getty Images
It’s Matthew Nicks’ sixth year in charge of the Crows and few coaches get a seventh year without playing finals. The murmurings in football are that the Crows would want to make the eight, or he will be under pressure to keep his job. If that becomes a sort of benchmark for the Crows board, it is an unfair one.
Adelaide’s list had not yet bottomed out when Nicks arrived. Under him, they have finished 18th, 15th, 14th, 10th and 16th. They should have made the finals in 2023 but for a goal umpiring mistake (admitted by the AFL), which cost them a win and a place in the eight. That season on the cusp of September created the expectation they should have made it last year. They finished 16th.
Consider the Crows’ task this way. To rise to finish ninth this year – not even make the eight – they need to be better than Melbourne, Gold Coast, St Kilda, Essendon, Fremantle and Collingwood, who all finished above them but missed finals. Only after you consider how many of those sides they are better than can you contemplate which of last year’s top eight they will dislodge.
Adelaide’s forward line looks as balanced and strong as most of last year’s finalists, but their midfield is bottom four. Nicks has a contract beyond this year and whether they make finals or not should not affect his tenure. If it does, they are unfairly setting him – and themselves – up.
Like the Crows, it’s hard to mount an argument for St Kilda to sneak ahead of Fremantle and Collingwood, who finished above them. They have lost Battle and have been battered by injuries in the summer.
Bottom six bolter?
Hawthorn’s outlier season (against the historic trend of the rate of improvement in the competition) has created unfortunate additional pressure on all other coaches of young teams. “See what Hawthorn have done? It can turn faster than you think. Youth is no alibi.”
Gold Coast are the most obvious bolters, but for their history of vertigo. North Melbourne will jump at some point and Luke Parker, Caleb Daniel and Jack Darling make them more hardened. They will pick off more wins in 2025, but it’s hard to see a quantum leap from them yet. West Coast and Richmond are still playing a different game this season to the other teams.
The Bombers are unlikely to be bolters.
They are in the bracket of teams for whom if everything went absolutely right – for example, if Sam Draper has a career-defining season – they could at best squeeze into the eight. But that is a very glass-half-full view.
Sam Draper is out of contract at the end of the year. The Bombers need him to have a career-defining season. Credit: Getty Images
A more likely scenario is that they tread water or dip backwards. That is not a bad thing in the longer term. Their list strategy last year was right, so forget the noise about their trading of picks. What they did was smart. They could have taken a sugar hit and plunged for Houston, but they need a lot more than that for their list going forward. Losing Stringer hurts them in as much as they lose the 40 goals he kicked last year. But they will not miss his defensive pressure.
