season begins this week with injuries and luck of the draw sure to impact the ladder. Composite: Getty images/AAP
In an increasingly even and attritional competition, the luck of the draw and the impact of injuries will be crucial. Here’s how we see the 2025 ladder playing out.
18th – Richmond
Scorched earth can be fun. It’s a lot more enjoyable when you’ve already banked three flags. It’s that sense of starting from scratch, of being there for the whole ride, of not getting devastated by losses. But it’s risky. What if this crop of kids don’t measure up? What if the 2024 draft has been overrated? You never quite know. You’re pinning a lot of hope on some un-raced colts from one of about three local private schools.
This is an enormous challenge for Adem Yze. He’s renowned as a strategy coach. But he has to be a development coach now. He has to sell hope. The question is whether he can be a salesman, an optimist, whether he can be like Brendon Bolton and walk into the press conference with a big grin after a 20-goal thumping, talking about green shoots and preaching patience. And with a loud, passionate and still loyal supporter base paying his bills, is he the right personality to bring them along for the ride?
17th – West Coast
For two or three years now, the Eagles been unable to properly plan for the future. They finally get some clean air and some clarity. It’s going to be hard. It may well be worse than last year. But they’ve brought in some very good, reliable players – survival hires really – and just the sort of players they need.
Andrew McQualter played under Ross Lyon and was in many ways the quintessential Lyon jobber. He was delisted three times. He never got a Brownlow vote. He was finished at 26. This is someone who’s done it the hard way. This is the toughest of coaching jobs. The pressure in Perth is ridiculous. The list is a shambles. But he’ll get plenty of time, he’ll get lots of resources, and he’ll get Harley Reid.
16th – North Melbourne
Watching North can drive you to drink. They’ll do a wonderful full ground transition and miss an easy set shot. They’ll drop an uncontested mark from a kick in. They’d bite off the risky kick through the middle and completely spray it. They’ll be right in games but suddenly concede four or five goals in time-on. They’ve had so many false dawns, so many wasted picks, so many dud trades, and so many deflating seasons.
Alastair Clarkson often mentions Chris Fagan’s Brisbane and their trajectory. The Lions popped in his third year. So did Clarkson’s Hawks. The cause for optimism was all there on stage at the Syd Barker medal. The average age of the top five finishers was 22 – two years younger than any other side. Their acquisitions from other clubs are all premiership players and all bring something different, things they’ve been desperately missing – a decent kick off half back, the height and foil of Jack Darling, and the versatility, aggression and leadership of Luke Parker.
15th – Gold Coast
They had a good run with injuries last year. They were gifted the softest draw the AFL could come up with. Their best players were all heading into their prime years. And they produced very little of substance. Damien Hardwick wants them to grow up. He wants them to be more physical, more resilient. He wants them to present as a team that actually cares.
The question, as always, is whether they be can be trusted. Can they be trusted to dig in through winter, and when injuries hit? Can they be trusted on the road? They have a talented list, the right coach, and all the favours. And you know what? I still don’t trust them one bit. Wake me up when they become a serious team.
14th – Carlton
I love the noise, the volatility and the numbers Carlton bring. But I’m not convinced about their depth, the way they play and the way they’re coached. They were underdone, outsmarted and overwhelmed against Brisbane. And there’s an urgency to the Carlton experience right now – that they’ve built this list for nearly a decade, that they have all the major pieces but not the minor ones, that nagging feeling that they might not be good enough and might not make it.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope the decline of last year was simply down to poor conditioning and rotten luck. They have a favourable draw and some of the best footballers in Australia. But I can’t move past what I saw in the Hawthorn game and the Brisbane final. And there’s something about that injury to Jagga Smith – where all optimism of summer and of youth came unglued with one errant step, with one scan, and with one press release – that may be a portent of a rough year ahead.
13th – St Kilda
At times last year, Ross Lyon would walk into the media room like a man booking in for root canal surgery. They were chasing their tails all year – out of sight, out of mind, and out of the eight.
Lyon has spent the summer watering down expectations and throwing squillion-dollar offers at players we’ve barely heard of. But I can see what he’s planting. I think it will bear fruit in the long run. I like who they’ve drafted in the past few years and I actually like the way they play. I doubt many pundits will have them as high as 13th. But there’s significant talent on this list. There are some sublime kicks, and some of the best sprinters and endurance runners in the competition. There’s enough evidence that they can match it with the best.
I just don’t think they’ll pop this year. They’ve copped too brutal a draw, they’re too inexperienced, they’re too afflicted by injuries and their midfield is still too plain.
12th – Western Bulldogs
Luke Beveridge was a bit shell-shocked following his team’s fifth elimination final loss. He thought they were capable of something special. He dusted himself off, went caravanning, and had his players completing orienteering courses and solving Dr Seuss riddles in the Noosa woods. All in all, a standard summer for Bevo.
I’ve never really subscribed to the view that he has some sort of wonder list at his disposal. It’s a view that’s frequently held against him. But it’s a view that the club itself holds – that they have most of the pieces and they just need to keep fronting up. But they keep fronting up, and their campaigns keep ending for the same reason. They’re not good enough. They have high draft picks, they have million-dollar players – and up until last week, they had Marcus Bontempelli. But they also have a lot of holes, and a lot of players who are a few years off being proper footballers. Worst of all, they now have a scarcely believable injury list. Beveridge often excels when he’s cornered, when everyone’s writing him off. But the Bulldogs play all the best teams in the first two months and they’re going to be without arguably the club’s best-ever player for most of them. I reckon they’re in trouble.
11th – Essendon
I think Brad Scott has the right idea – to urge caution, to get rid of dickheads, to take the long way home. But Essendon is a really difficult club to sell that message to. Somewhere, right now, there’s a former Essendon legend of some era muttering, “where’s the effort, where’s the mongrel, where’s the hurt?” But Essendon’s problem has never been effort. Their problem has been talent.
Finally, there’s evidence that’s changing. Let’s not get too excited by a Tuesday night practice match. But Essendon fans have been supporting in a state of anxiety since Stephen Dank first waddled in and they’re entitled to dream big. The draw looks favourable, at least for the first half of the year. Ominously, it looks taxing during winter, not a season that has been kind to them in recent years. It’s hard to forget the hesitant, hapless, zombified team that fronted up against St Kilda. But for all the schadenfreude, finals countdowns and Allan Hird columns (someone needs to cut off that man’s internet access), they may finally be on the cusp of contending again.
10th – Adelaide
Adelaide fans are sick of slow builds, near misses, plodding midfields, daylight robbery and exhortations for patience. They blew the first month last year, and never looked like recovering. Before long, the city was closing in on them. The local rag went hard. The locals came with pitchforks. The talkback lines were hysterical.
There’s optimism right now though. They lost six games by fewer than two goals last year, and teams like that often improve rapidly. They traded well and drafted an exceptional local talent. I like their backline, which is young and relatively unheralded, but I’m not yet sold on their midfield and ruck stocks, which can be a bit plodding. They can spike, but it’s heavily reliant on the health of Izak Rankine, Riley Thilthorpe and Josh Rachele, who for reasons in and out of their control have yet to prove themselves as long-haul footballers.
Ninth – Geelong
In the second quarter of one of the great preliminary finals, half a dozen headbands were whirring through the middle of the MCG. The Cats had cut Port to ribbons and were doing the same to a crack Lions side. A mix of bad luck, critical errors, wear and tear and Brisbane’s excellent play cost them though, and given what Sydney dished up six days later, it was an opportunity missed.
It’s such a different Geelong side these days – quicker, craftier, and better to watch. They’ll throw in a bad month, slip out of the conversation, promote a hammer thrower, or a hurler, or some bloke from the HR department at Corrs and sneak up on the competition again. I just have my doubts about their midfield depth and whether Bailey Smith’s tardy foot skills are going to help them improve.
AFL 2024 predicted ladder part two will be published tomorrow.
