Welcome to predicted ladder season, where everyone is always wrong, including us.

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But there are a few rules to know so you can get as close to right as possible.

It’s the yearly column where we stupidly attempt to predict the entire 2025 season, putting all 18 teams in order. So why should you read to this one instead of everyone else’s?

Well, our top two for 2024 went alright. GWS (predicted second) made the top four, and Brisbane (predicted first) actually won the whole damn thing. We even stuck with them going into September, when they had to do it from fifth. And we had Geelong making the eight, which only a handful of Fox Footy experts tipped.

Just ignore everything else, like Adelaide being in our top four, and Sydney almost making it two straight years where the team we picked for 9th won the flag, and… look, this is the point, right? Ladder predicting is hard.

But there are some definite ways to get it wrong, and the main way is being way too conservative. Understandably nobody wants to look silly, but the ladder is always very different to what everyone expected.

Look back to last year, when every Fox Footy expert tipped Collingwood to make the eight. A full 17 of 21 picked Melbourne too, and more than half were on the Adelaide bandwagon with us. Nobody picked Hawthorn to play finals, never mind win one, that’s for sure!

That’s why sport is fun, because if everything went the way we expected, there’d be no reason to watch. But we can at least use some guidelines to try and get closer to being right.

Rule 1: On average, there will be three changes to the top eight (teams dropping out/climbing in), and at a minimum two.

This was bang-on in 2024, with Collingwood, Melbourne and St Kilda replaced by Geelong, the Western Bulldogs and Hawthorn. (Presumably via some sort of Victorian club quota system.)

There have never been fewer than two changes to the top eight since it was introduced, and thanks to a couple of four-change years recently, the average is over 2.9 changes.

It’s a lot harder to pick who’ll miss out than how many, but this is an important piece of information. If you’re just looking at the ladder and going “well, these seven reigning finalists are too good to miss out”, you’re already wrong.

Rule 2: On average, one team that missed the top eight the year before will climb into the top four.

This is perhaps our favourite rule, because it shows just how much can change between seasons.

While the early 2010s provided a few exceptions, the average is exactly one team per season going from outside the eight to inside the top four. Just four times since 1994, when the top eight was introduced, have we had a season where nobody made the leap (2009, 2010, 2013, 2014).

In recent years it’s been the same sort of team – an annual top-four contender who had one particularly poor season, who then reverted to their expected level of performance – with Geelong (2024) joining Port Adelaide (2023) and Collingwood (2022) as bolters.

Separately, it’s worth noting that very few teams come from outside the eight the year before to actually win the flag. In the top eight era only four teams have done it – Melbourne (2021), Richmond (2017), Geelong (2007) and Adelaide (1997).

Rule 3: The teams that finish 5th-8th are much more likely to drop out than the teams that finish 1st-4th.

This one is a bit more obvious, because by definition the teams in the bottom half of the eight performed worse than the teams in the top half of the eight.

Just over 70% of teams that have dropped out of the eight from year-to-year were teams that finished in the 5th to 8th bracket; of course last year was an exception, with No.1 Collingwood, No.4 Melbourne and No.6 St Kilda dropping out.

But the Demons and Saints did at least make sense because they went out of the 2023 finals in the opening two weeks – roughly 70% of teams that fell out of the top eight were in the same boat.

Of course, there’s a very weird trend going on this decade, where no premier has won a final the next year. Richmond (2020), Geelong (2022) and Collingwood (2023) all missed the ensuing finals, while Melbourne (2021) was out in straight sets – in fact in last year’s qualifying final, the Cats became the first 2020s premier to win another final at any point afterwards!

So if you wanted to tip Brisbane to fall out of the eight, well, they did both finish 5th-8th AND win the flag…

SO WHO ARE YOU PICKING FOR YOUR TOP EIGHT?

We are not going to follow the rules precisely, because we think the 2024 ladder was particularly strange.

For a start, Melbourne won 11 games with a percentage of 98.5 and finished 14th, which is utterly ridiculous. They would’ve been 11th with those numbers in 2023, and would’ve only missed the eight on percentage in 2021. It was an incredibly even season with only three bad teams – even Adelaide was competitive most weeks.

And then there’s the point we made going into the 2024 finals, that the bottom half of the eight was arguably stronger than the top half. Brisbane winning the flag helps that case a lot, but Hawthorn was a kick off a prelim too, and the Bulldogs were one of the best teams in the competition after the bye. Even Carlton, who fell backwards into September, was 11-4 and one of the flag favourites before a bunch of injuries and some close losses sent them spiralling.

At worst, you can make the argument the 5th to 8th group was stronger, and we’re pretty comfortable making it. If Carlton wasn’t cursed, we’d be tipping all four teams from that group to play finals again!

All of this makes it even harder to figure out who’s falling out of the eight… here’s our attempt. (And congratulations to the team in 9th on making the 2025 Grand Final.)

1. HAWTHORN

It can’t have been a complete fluke.

We’re torn on the Hawks, because we’re usually the low man on last year’s bolter during ladder prediction season – with the idea that it’s very hard to improve a huge amount from year-to-year, and typically a lot has to have gone right, meaning we’d expect regression a year later.

It’s why we didn’t rate Collingwood going into 2023, and look how well that went! (Wait…)

The difference between these Hawks and those Magpies is that the latter had a proven track record of contending with that core – something we didn’t give enough respect to.

The Hawks don’t have that, though, so why are we tipping them as our 2025 premiers?

Because of how ridiculously good they were in their winning run last year! In their 15-5 run to end the season, Sam Mitchell’s men had just two bad games – a drubbing against Sydney which was nowhere near as bad as the 76-point margin, and a genuine thumping down in Geelong.

Other than those two very tough games, they were either within a kick or victorious. In their last nine wins of the year, their average winning margin was over 10 goals! Remember, our principle with analysing teams is that good teams win, but great teams win well – and the Hawks were winning very, very well.

Now, to be fair, they thumped a lot of bad teams, but they blew a still-pretty-good Collingwood team off the MCG and demolished a Carlton side that was injury-ravaged yet still playing for its season. And then in the finals they were very impressive over a Western Bulldogs side who we really rate, and while they had a down night against Port Adelaide in the semi-final thriller, they still nearly got over the line in the sort of high-pressure game much of their young list wasn’t used to.

You can look at that Hawks run in two ways; either it was about momentum, and emotion, and positivity on top of positivity that just kept building… or it was them discovering something real and less nebulous. And we tend to believe in the latter.

They’re not gonna win by 10 goals every week, and teams will work on stopping them across the summer, but having drafted well and added some high-quality recruits, there are very few excuses. It would be genuinely disappointing if this Hawks list didn’t contend in 2025, which is crazy to say 12 months after we basically ignored them in the top eight race – but it’s true.

One last thing, which may not mean anything, or may end up meaning everything… surely it helps that they always seem to beat Brisbane?

The Hawks have genuinely been rubbish this decade, while the Lions have been perennial contenders. Yet Hawthorn is 5-0 in the 2020s against Brisbane! A big part of that is the fact all of the games have been in Victoria or Tasmania – they finally play at the Gabba in Round 24 this year – but it’s still pretty weird.

And it can’t hurt to have that track record over the reigning premiers, who we think will be up there again in 2025.

2. BRISBANE LIONS

They’re just really bloody talented. It’s that simple.

The Lions took the long, difficult path through the 2024 season but we held faith in them and they delivered, becoming the second team to win the flag from outside the top four this century.

It was a win for statistics. The ‘premiership window’ used by On the Couch may be a little simplistic, but there is clearly something to it – the Lions became the 18th of the last 20 premiers to be top six for points scored and points against, and the 20th of 20 to be top six for points against.

They had arguably the most talented list in the competition, and won the flag without full access to it. Remember, the likes of Keidean Coleman, Tom Doedee, Lincoln McCarthy, Darcy Gardiner and Oscar McInerney were all unavailable, while father-son addition Levi Ashcroft is supposed to be just as good as his Norm Smith-winning brother Will.

So does the loss of Joe Daniher negate all of that? At worst, it’s a wash, right?

“We were told that we couldn’t win it with Joe and Eric (Hipwood), and now we can’t win it without Joe,” Lachie Neale quipped to AAP at the recent AFL Captain’s Day.

Sorry Lachie, but we’re still at least slightly concerned. Daniher may have been inconsistent at times during games, but he was bloody consistent in the last two finals campaigns, and consistently healthy too.

From the time he joined Brisbane to the time he left, Daniher played 96 of a possible 102 games, only missing time during the 2022 season. He was a constant and important structural presence in the forward line and pinch-hitting in the ruck.

So it matters that they need to find a full-time replacement. But we think the huge amount of talent within this group can make up for that – they are good enough in all parts of the ground to buy themselves some time as they work through a slightly different game plan.

It’s unlikely Dayne Zorko will be quite as incredible at age 36 as he was at age 35, but then his presence across halfback was only necessitated by the Lions’ injury woes. Coleman nearly won the Norm Smith in a losing effort in 2023, so we can’t underrate the importance his return, even if it won’t be until a month or two into the season.

The fact so much went wrong last year actually makes us more confident about their 2025 chances – because they weren’t like Geelong or Collingwood who had some luck on their side on route to their flags, either through injuries or close game performance. They’re actually due a bit of good fortune, which is unusual for recent premiers.

The Lions are just too good to be bad.

3. FREMANTLE

That run to a semi-final in 2022 made the footy world a bit impatient when it came to the Dockers.

Youth and inexperience matters – there’s a strong correlation between a list’s average age and games played and its performance. In 2023, Fremantle was 15th for age and 16th for games played; they were still 15th and 17th last year.

So while it was still incredibly disappointing when they missed the 2024 finals when they were in the top four with a couple of months left, it was at least somewhat explainable.

Now they’re running out of excuses and Justin Longmuir, despite the recent announcement of a unique, new contract is running out of time. He cannot afford to miss the finals again – in our view, the rolling agreement means the Dockers can still sack him whenever they feel the need, without needing to make a call in the final year of his deal.

Thankfully he has enough talent on his hands that finals shouldn’t be a problem. Because Fremantle might have the most enviable group of young talent in the AFL.

Where is the weakness on this list? From Alex Pearce, Luke Ryan and Jordan Clark down back, to Hayden Young, Caleb Serong and Andrew Brayshaw in the middle, to Luke Jackson and Sean Darcy When Fit (his official new name) in the ruck, to Josh Treacy, Jye Amiss and Shai Bolton up forward, it’s a fantastic bunch.

That’s not to say it’s a perfect 23, and scoring remains a bit of an issue, but the emergence of Amiss and particularly Treacy has probably gone undersold in the east. If he backs up his 2024 form, the latter can genuinely be considered one of the best key forwards in the competition.

And when non-Victorian teams are this talented, they can really cash in on their home ground advantage. Think of how good Brisbane has been at the Gabba – Fremantle should become that dominant at Optus Stadium over the next few years. They get Sydney, the Bulldogs, Collingwood and Port Adelaide there before the bye, and beating all four would be a massive statement of intent.

Last year the Dockers lost to the Swans, Cats, Power and Eagles at home – the Sydney game can be counted out given it was in the immediate aftermath of the Cam McCarthy tragedy – but if they start going 9-2 or better in WA every year, they’re going to be very hard to keep out of the top four.

And remember, they get a free home game this year because of North Melbourne getting paid to ‘host’ them in Perth. 13 games in their home state?! What are they, a Victorian club?!?

Unless there’s some horrible run of injuries, it would be bizarre if Freo took a step backwards in 2025. Even if they play at the same level as last year, just playing better in close games would get them into the eight. And if they take a step forwards, they should absolutely be a flag contender.

4. GEELONG

We always try to be honest about this – as a Geelong fan, we bring natural pessimism to any piece of analysis about the club. (Yes, even with all the success. We know we can be an insufferable fanbase.) Which is why it feels odd having them in the top four.

But they just look so incredibly steady, despite the departure of Tom Hawkins, despite the defence being surprisingly leaky last year, and despite the continued reliance on Patrick Dangerfield – the latter looked really good once he returned last year.

Their ability to restock this list without falling down the bottom of the ladder has been particularly impressive; while Ollie Dempsey’s Rising Star win was more about him being the best option who wasn’t suspended, he’s still an excellent find, along with Lawson Humphries.

Throw in slightly higher drafted young talents like Shannon Neale, Max Holmes and Sam De Koning, and the Cats recruiters are successfully restocking on the run. They’re still an older group, but they’ve got a few more years of Jeremy Cameron and Tom Stewart to rely on, allowing them to buy time to find even more replacements.

Adding Bailey Smith, theoretically, helps replenish the midfield. He’s certainly in the right age bracket and he’ll get more opportunity in the guts than he did in a stacked Dogs group, but his reputation has slightly outstripped his output as an AFL player so far – one incredible finals run and his high profile making him into a bigger star than is perhaps warranted.

But you can make a reasonable comparison between him and his new captain. No, Patrick Dangerfield isn’t the greatest kick in the world, but he’s been a superstar for a decade thanks to his top-class pace. Maybe Smith doesn’t have the same potential but it’s a similar situation.

The key to 2024, other than a better run with injuries, was Chris Scott and the coaching staff revolutionising what this team is. Adding youth has also added speed, and along with a greater attacking intent, the Cats are now one of the fastest if not the fastest teams in the competition.

They were the No.1 team in the competition for scores from the back half; they play and arguably master the chaotic transition style that is suddenly in vogue, and once their tremendous fleet of small forwards get access to the footy, they’re hard to stop.

The style can be taken advantage of – they allowed the second-most points of any finalist, and more than four non-finalists. But if they’re outscoring the opposition it doesn’t matter. It’s a tiny bit like we’re back in the early 90s with Blighty in charge!

The Cats’ treatment of the ruck is also intriguing. Toby Conway should be the future but Rhys Stanley got more of a run than many fans expected last year, and now it sounds like Sam De Koning is moving into the middle from defence.

It worked really well in a patch last year, so with a full pre-season perhaps he can be the type of weapon his brother is at Carlton, but it’s also a risk – he’s been a very good defender, and in the modern game the ruck role is becoming less and less important.

We’re in two minds overall. The Cats weren’t quite as good as the results suggested; the 7-0 start was a bit of a facade, and they didn’t exactly surge into September. They were a pretty good home and away team who did just enough to make the top four, then played out of their skins against the Power in the qualifying final.

But they were also leading eventual premiers with less than five minutes left in a home prelim final, and their incredible track record means they deserve our trust.

Also keep in mind Geelong has the easiest fixture among teams that won a final last year, including playing Richmond twice in the last eight weeks of the season.

5. COLLINGWOOD

The Magpies managed to continue bizarre trend of every 2020s AFL premier failing to win a final the next year – and joined Geelong and Richmond in missing the eight entirely.

While we can’t just throw a blanket over all those teams and say they simply had a premiership hangover, it’s only logical there’s a connection.

It has to be a mixture of things, from the shortened pre-season you get after a flag; the loss of motivation after winning one; everyone else targeting you; and the natural reversion to the mean after such a successful season. A lot has to go right for a team to win it all, and it’s normal to have things go wrong the next year.

And things went wrong for Collingwood, both in terms of injuries, game style and just plain luck. They were almost human in close games, still winning six games by a kick but also losing three close ones and having two draws (both of which they were lucky to hold on in).

The fact they won 13 games (including the draws as half-wins) despite all of that is a testament to their talent. They’re still a strong side and it’s why we expect them to bounce back this year.

They made a very interesting decision bringing in Dan Houston, and it speaks to an understanding of their list.

The Magpies are built to win now. They have by far the oldest and most experienced list in the AFL, with the likes of Scott Pendlebury, Jeremy Howe and Steele Sidebottom trying to hold off Father Time for one more year. Throw in injury-troubled big names like Jamie Elliott and Tom Mitchell and there’s a core of players here, all over 30 years old, who could all topple over at any point.

When that happens the Pies are going to be in some trouble. They have not drafted well recently – the players automatically tied to them like the Daicos brothers and Isaac Quaynor have worked out, and Beau McCreery was a great find, but that’s almost it.

So while they’re going to have some strong prime-aged talent in 2026 and beyond, including Houston who’s about to turn 28, they are primed for a step back because it sure doesn’t seem like they have the replacements ready.

Trading out their 2025 first-round pick in the Houston deal is therefore a risk, because it only exacerbates their lack of young talent, but it’s also maximising their strength. He’s one of the best attacking half-backs in the league, at a time when those players are particularly important, for a team that last year was a bit too slow and struggled with transition footy – especially when compared to their 2023 best.

Flags fly forever, and the Pies are acknowledging that their best chance of winning another one is right now, rather than 2026-29. So they may as well go for it.

And they can always hope that because they’re a big, successful club, rival players will want to join them and top-up the list that way. That may mean they don’t fall off as we’re expecting, although it’s very, very hard to build a successful list without at least building depth via the draft.

6. SYDNEY SWANS

We came extremely close to leaving the Swans out of our eight entirely – but it just felt a bit ridiculous.

They were 13-1 for crying out loud, and even with a few close losses and that bizarre Port Adelaide thumping, still finished a game and percentage of everyone else. Remember, of their six home and away losses, four were by less than a goal.

They basically had three bad games all year – the Bulldogs at the SCG, Port in Adelaide, and the Grand Final. Obviously the latter being listed there isn’t ideal, but thankfully they don’t make the whole season out of Grand Finals.

So the Swans are basically just running it back, with minimal to no changes except for the coach… and John Longmire to Dean Cox feels like it was built in a lab to be the most ‘nothing to see here, carry on’ handover possible. Cox has been there for ages and is going to keep the same successful system going.

Why would the Swans slide? Natural variance. We haven’t had repeat minor premiers since the 2012/2013 Hawks, and teams always target the best across the off-season to stop their successful game style.

Who would’ve said going into 2023 that Geelong was going to miss the finals? (None of the Fox Footy experts did.) Who would’ve said going into 2024 that Collingwood was going to miss the finals? (None of the Fox Footy experts did.) You can go from first to not-quite-worst-but-certainly-not-best very quickly.

Then it’s about injuries; because the Swans had the best run of any club in 2025. Nine players featured in all 26 games, and remarkably 20 players played 21 or more. Callum Mills would’ve been in that group had he not been injured multiple times, and Luke Parker would’ve been close had he not had major injuries and suspensions to deal with.

The Swans used 31 players, and five of them were obvious fill-ins who quickly went back out of the side. They basically had a 26-man squad to choose from for the entire season! That’s not normal!

And it was a stark contrast to 2023, where the Swans finished eighth after having an awful run with injuries, losing the second-most games from best 22 players. Availability is the best ability, and it’s a big reason why they were that much better in 2024.

Injuries played key roles in those aforementioned slides by the Cats and Magpies. So a less fortunate run for the Swans in 2025, combined with a bit of reversion to the mean, should see them slide a bit.

7. WESTERN BULLDOGS

Even while the Bulldogs were being blown off the MCG by the red-hot Hawks in their elimination final, we were muttering to those around us about how good the Dogs’ premiership profile was.

After all, once Rory Lobb moved into defence, Luke Beveridge’s side was one of the AFL’s best. Period.

They finished the year No.2 for points scored and No.1 for points against; they scored from both sources, ranking No.4 for points from turnover and No.1 for points from clearance. They controlled territory, ranking No.1 for inside 50 differential and No.1 for forward half intercepts.

That isn’t just a premiership profile, but an elite one. And while yes, they had some of their typical out-of-nowhere Bulldogs losses – 39 points to Adelaide just weeks out from the finals? Of course! – they also took some huge scalps.

In the last seven weeks of the season, the Bulldogs recorded arguably the two best consecutive wins of the year, beating Geelong in Geelong by 47 points, then Sydney in Sydney by 39 points. Throw in a six-goal win over GWS to seal a spot in September, and they comfortably beat three members of the top four.

But then came the most typical Beveridge Bulldogs thing ever. Because of those few random losses, and thanks to a slow 3-5 start to the season, they didn’t make the top four. (They still never have under the premiership coach.) And they drew a similarly red-hot Hawthorn in their elimination final, which sure as hell wasn’t at home against an MCG tenant, and had a bad night.

So it’s easy to look at the Dogs losing an elimination final and just write off 2024 as the same season as always – an average year from an average team, who always seem to finish either just inside the top eight (then losing the first week) or just outside it.

But they were clearly better than that, and they showed it late in the season. Most experts are going into 2025 having GWS higher on their predicted ladder than the Bulldogs – the Dogs beat them twice this year, including just a few games ago, comfortably! We are quite confident the Dogs were a better team than the Giants last year and that’s why we only have the former in our top eight.

Whether the Dogs can repeat last year’s form is another question entirely, and their pre-season injuries and absences forced us to take them out of our predicted top four; Liam Jones, Adam Treloar, Cody Weightman and Jamarra Ugle-Hagan are all bloody important, and all will miss the early rounds of the season.

That particularly matters when the Dogs face Collingwood, Carlton, Fremantle, Brisbane, GWS and Port Adelaide inside the opening eight rounds. So unless they really burst out of the blocks, there’s a good chance they’re 3-5 or worse, with pressure mounting on Luke Beveridge – the only AFL coach heading into the year not knowing whether he’ll be there in 2026.

But it just seems like they figured something out last year, and once they’re at full strength, it should be repeatable. They could easily fall apart with a bad early run and/or if they suffer more injuries, but the upside here is enormous. We believe in the Bulldogs.

Finally, it’s worth noting our mate Pythagoras’ second-strongest tip of the year is for them to improve. History says he’s right two-thirds of the time.

(Note: We wrote all of this before Marcus Bontempelli’s calf injury and have dropped them slightly because of it. We really did believe in them last year, and figured top four was a chance before this pre-season, but jeez…)

8. GOLD COAST SUNS

9. GWS GIANTS

10. CARLTON

11. ADELAIDE CROWS

12. PORT ADELAIDE

Yeah. We know. Them?!

We have been stalwart in believing Gold Coast will rise at some point. Picking the year it happens is the hard part, and there are so many good teams we want to squeeze into the eight.

But it’s the same thing as Brisbane going into 2019. They had been a mess of a footy club. They were always going to be bad… until they weren’t, and we were pretty much the only people who tipped the Lions to play finals that year.

We were very tempted to play it safe and just predict two changes, but had to stick with the numbers. For a while we had Melbourne in eighth, but as discussed below, they’re not exactly getting a clean run at it this year either. Adelaide was the other contender to surge, but we think they’re just a little ways off. We’ll get to them in a bit.

And so we have the Suns in eighth. Why?

Damien Hardwick’s first year was almost the drought-breaker, leading them to a club-record 11 wins. They were 9-8 after beating top-two bound Port Adelaide in Round 18, which brought their home record to a remarkable 9-0 (since the Gather Round ‘home’ game obviously wasn’t a true home game).

But it was the eight losses that were the problem. Eventually the Suns beat Essendon after the siren in Round 22, and then took care of wooden spooners Richmond in a Round 24 dead rubber, but they were otherwise winless on the road. It was utterly absurd.

Now, admittedly, a few of those losses were close. They should’ve beaten at least one of St Kilda (three points at Marvel), North Melbourne (four points at Marvel) or West Coast (10 points at Optus), and probably all three. Winning just two would’ve had them outside the eight only on percentage.

So which team do you believe in? The dominant one which won as many home games as anyone in the AFL in 2024, or the pitiful one that couldn’t buy an away win to save their season?

The home wins mean more to us. Again excluding last year’s Gather Round, the Suns are 23-11 at home across the last three seasons, including 6-0 in Darwin.

And while that may be a different ground to Whatever Carrara Is Called This Year, it shares the important trait of being hot and humid; it sure seems like Gold Coast uses its experience in the conditions to its advantage. Remember when they scored a bazillion points against Geelong on that Thursday night game last year?

So they should win at least seven home games, and probably more. Let’s say the Suns need five away wins to play finals.

Well, in the first seven rounds alone they play West Coast, Melbourne, North Melbourne and Richmond away. Throw in home games against Essendon and Adelaide and if they’re any sort of serious, the Suns should start the year 6-0, or at least 5-1!

Perhaps their young core needs another year but it’s not a huge leap going from 11 wins to the finals, and there’s obviously an immense amount of top-end draftees here. If a few of them break out in 2025, they should play finals. If a whole bunch of them do, they could go Brisbane-style and host a qualifying final out of nowhere.

Throw in a bunch of little, less important factors too – teams always seem to do better after getting a new logo (we love the pink Gather Round guernsey), and it’s arguably a new era with Noah Anderson named captain after a year where he was certainly their best player. Surely it’s the Suns’ time.

Now don’t get us wrong, we’re finding it hard to imagine a list as talented as GWS’ missing the eight. We expected them to back up their impressive run to a 2023 preliminary final into a 2024 top-four finish; they did. Even if their straight sets finals exit was incredibly painful, it also showed they easily could’ve beaten both Grand Finalists – they were thereabouts for the flag and it just didn’t go their way.

Or were they? Because the Giants had the worst percentage of any top-eight team last year. It’s not like they had a freakish big loss to throw it out of whack, either.

What they had instead was a bunch of close wins. They went 6-1 in games decided by two goals or less – and much like Collingwood’s famous 2022 run, then lost two close games in the finals, showing how inconsistent performance in said games can be.

Not just that, but the Giants had four wins by less than a goal. Flip one of those results and instead of fourth, they would’ve been seventh on the ladder, playing an away elimination final.

Look, it was a really even season. The margins were tight. And both of these things can be true – the Giants were good enough to nearly beat both Grand Finalists in the finals, and not as good as the ladder suggested. Just look at them getting comfortably beaten by the Bulldogs in Round 24, a game that could’ve earned them a home qualifying final (so they were definitely trying!).

Those close wins disguised some problems. They allowed more inside 50s than every team outside of Richmond and North Melbourne, and the midfield is nowhere near as good as its lofty reputation, ranking 17th for clearance differential.

And those issues could be exposed while they revert to the mean in other areas, too. Much like their cross-town rivals, the Giants had a very good run with injuries last year; they also had Jesse Hogan having an incredibly good, out-of-the-box-level season.

We’re not trying to be party poopers, but look at his seasonal goal totals when playing at least 18 games – 44, 41, 47, 35, 49… and 77?! Yes, Hogan played a few extra games and kicked a bit straighter than usual last year, but it would seem more likely he’ll fall back a bit from that high watermark. We’re not even saying he drops back below 50 goals; he should still be a very good player. But it’s an unusual, sudden leap compared to career norms and that matters.

It wasn’t just their own accuracy. Purely in terms of goals versus behinds, the Giants were the second-most accurate team in the AFL last year – North Melbourne was first but had way fewer shots on goal – while Giants opponents as a collective were the least accurate.

That’s unusual, and has little to do with how they actually played. Certain players are better kicks than others, and certain teams generate higher-quality scoring shots, but on the whole team-wide accuracy is incredibly inconsistent; in 2023, for example, the Giants were bang-on the AFL average.

They could very, very easily make us look silly for this prediction. They will be a common top-four tip across the footy commentariat. But this list is younger than you think, and the veterans who’ve carried them for almost a decade are starting to fade out – you probably know Stephen Coniglio has taken a step back, but did you notice Toby Greene doing the same last year?

None of the players who left in the trade period were superstars but James Peatling, Harry Perryman and Isaac Cumming were cemented in the best 23. That the Giants have to replace them matters – and they can’t build the entire list out of small forwards, as they seem to be attempting.

The gap between 4th last year and ninth this year is actually quite small; it would not take much to slide. And the good news for them is the team we’ve tipped 9th in the last two seasons has ended up winning the minor premiership!

Similarly sliding we have Port Adelaide, who at least avoided a second consecutive straight sets finals exit, and we’re very confident should at least be good in 2025.

That’s because they’ve been roughly the same team for years. The one time they missed the finals recently, in 2022, the Power had a 2-7 record in close games. Since then, they’ve gone 12-3 in them – but percentage says they’ve been basically the same quality side each season.

The Power to win (close games)

2022: 10-12, 110.3%, 2-7 in close games

2023: 17-6, 112.7%, 6-2 in close games

2024: 16-7, 114.8%, 6-1 in close games (plus 1-0 in finals)

We’re not saying that’s the only difference between their good and bad seasons, but it’s clearly a big factor.

So this is why we’re saying Port Adelaide should at least be good in 2025. They have a clear, established level of being above average at footy this decade.

But it’s also a sign of how easy it’d be for them to take a step back. And if two straight years of elite close game performance is uncommon, three straight years is rare – even Collingwood won ‘just’ six of their 11 close games last year, finally reverting to the mean somewhat.

That, combined with a few bad absences (Dan Houston via trade, Todd Marshall and others via injury) would be enough to send Port out of the eight. And they can’t exactly rely on the emotional boost of the media saying Ken Hinkley is gonna get sacked to win a few extra games when they already know he’s leaving at the end of the year, right?

Houston’s departure, in particular, could be critical with how important back-half launchers like him are in modern footy.

And even if the Power are good, their fixture is bloody hard. The teams they face twice are Adelaide, Collingwood, Fremantle, Geelong, Hawthorn and Sydney – that’s five of our predicted top eight, plus the Crows who should rise and are always a Showdown threat anyway.

Compare that to last year, when Port got to play Richmond, St Kilda and Melbourne all twice, going 5-1 against the trio.

Finally, we’ll note both GWS and Port Adelaide were tipped to decline in our Pythagorean wins analysis for the year and we are following those numbers to an extent.

Let’s circle back to Carlton, who for a long time this pre-season, we were actually going to tip to make the Grand Final. But which Blues will show up to open 2025?

Will it be the Blues who won 22 of 28 games across late 2023 and early 2024, on route to being 11-4 and second on the ladder, six points clear of third with eight rounds left?

Or will it be the Blues we’ve seen since, who finished the year going 2-7, only making the finals because Fremantle couldn’t get the job done at home, then almost going an entire half of their elimination final against Brisbane scoreless?

We’ll note they were pretty unfortunate during that run, with five losses by 14 points or less, including the Collingwood and St Kilda games which were decided by a kick. They weren’t that far off.

But the key difference between those two versions of the Blues was injuries. And surely at this point everyone agrees they’re cursed?

Only Richmond lost more games from best 23 players across the season, and while Michael Voss had availability issues all year, most of the Blues’ losses seemed to be concentrated during their late losing skid.

They basically had three debutants in Round 23 (Jaxon Binns had played one quarter as the sub), and while they got back a few big names for the elimination final in Brisbane, the team didn’t look right and barely fired a shot.

(Side note: Of the top nine on the injury ladder, six missed the finals, including all three finals dropouts Melbourne, Collingwood and St Kilda – showing how damaging a run of injuries can be. Brisbane and Hawthorn were the super-impressive exceptions.)

But all of these injuries were actually why we wanted to tip Carlton to finally live up to the promise. Generally speaking, they’re pretty flukey – especially contact injuries – and it’s unusual for teams to repeatedly find themselves at the sorry end of the injury ladder. So surely this would be the year they actually got a good run at things!

Well, no. The preseason happened, with top draft pick Jagga Smith (who seemed certain to have a great rookie campaign) and Nic Newman both done for the year, and question marks over guns like Sam Walsh and Charlie Curnow. It was the same old dark navy news.

So we could absolutely see the Blues returning to their early 2024 form and making a deep September run. The one positive from their late-season fadeout is how it ensured they’d have an easier fixture in 2025 – the Blues have the easiest projected draw amongst last year’s finalists, and by some distance, playing North Melbourne and West Coast twice each (plus Essendon, who we don’t expect to contend).

That should be five or six wins right there; you’re almost halfway to the finals. But we just don’t want to trust this club, because from what we’ve seen from Carlton fans around us, it is one of the most frustrating experiences in sport to be emotionally invested in them. We’d rather avoid that.

That leaves Adelaide – who are our old friend Pythagoras’ big tip to improve in 2025.

But, to be fair, the Crows were the big tip to improve in 2024, too. And we suspect their failure to deliver on expectations will see a lot of people acting like us and keeping Matthew Nicks’ men out of the eight.

We feared last year they were still an A-grade midfielder away. Izak Rankine may be that A-grader, though – we don’t do player rankings but if we did, Rankine would be close to the top five. He should cement his status there in 2025.

And the Crows are hopeful Sid Draper, their top pick in a loaded draft who also happens to be South Australian, can grow into that status. (We hope they’re right, because the name Sid is really fun. It reminds us of Toy Story, or 1920s footy, back when there were players named things like Sid Dockendorff.)

Keep in mind that jumping from the bottom four to the top eight isn’t as crazy as it sounds – teams like Collingwood (2022) and Brisbane (2019) have done it recently, and the Crows really weren’t that far off the enormous pack of contenders in 2024 anyway.

Yes, they finished 15th with eight and a half wins, but their percentage of 99.1 suggests they were actually a bang-on average footy team. They really only had three games all year where they were uncompetitive – against Sydney twice, and the blowout at home against Hawthorn – and they were once again shocking in close games.

After going 1-5 in games decided by two goal or less in 2023, the Crows doubled down on their anti-clutchness, going 2-6 with a draw in 2024. They are basically the reverse of their cross-town rivals; the Power have gone 12-3 in close games over the same period.

Even if they’re just average in close games, they should rise back up the ladder a bit, and there’s room for growth elsewhere too. A full year from Riley Thilthorpe is very exciting, and we really liked their recruiting last trade period.

Kinda like Fremantle, this really is the year they should get back into the finals. They don’t have the excuse of youth any more, with the eight-oldest and 12th-most experienced list.

We could totally see the Crows being the year’s post-hype sleeper – as in, the year after everyone jumped on the bandwagon, they prove that everyone wasn’t wrong, just early.

But in a year with so many finals contenders we just couldn’t find a spot for them. It’s annoying, because we were leading the bandwagon last year, and we don’t want to miss the season it finally happens! They’re gonna get there at some point… maybe just not now.

13. MELBOURNE

We wanted to be Dee-lievers, because they could easily be the next Geelong-style perennial contender who just had a bad year. After all, they won 11 games in a season where everything went wrong.

Think of it this way; the core of Christian Petracca, Clayton Oliver and Max Gawn was a huge reason they made three consecutive top fours. They were three of the best 10 players in the competition through that period.

And in 2024, Petracca missed half the year, Oliver played but was a shadow of himself, and Gawn had his issues throughout. Throw in both Steven May and Jake Lever playing fewer than 20 games – overall the Demons were pretty high on the injury ladder anyway, but the specifics are even worse.

So if they can just have a normal 2025 campaign they should at least be better, even if they can’t make the top four… but things haven’t been normal. Gawn and Petracca have both been limited through injury, likewise Jack Viney plus young guns Judd McVee and Caleb Windsor, while Simon Goodwin has talked down the chances of Oliver being at his best for Round 1 as he still regains fitness.

Throw in a few issues emerging from their match simulation against North Melbourne, and with much of their premiership depth having departed over the last few years, all of these blows add up. The players you’d rank 15th to 23rd in this version of Melbourne just aren’t at the level of that group when they won the flag; especially as it stands with their injury list.

Perhaps they’ll put it all together; even late last season when they were falling out of the finals race, they were two points off beating top-four sides GWS and Port Adelaide.

But even when they were winning a bunch of games over 2022-23, it didn’t feel good tipping them. They always won ugly and now with the top teams playing a lot faster and off halfback, you wonder whether the Demons have been left behind. They need a greater proportion of their scores to come from turnover rather than stoppage.

They might be good. But with so many good teams around, we couldn’t put them any higher than this.

14. ESSENDON

The problem with Essendon has been that failure has bred more failure, and an ever-lasting desire to return to the past.

But the 2000 season isn’t walking through that door. Sheedy, Hird and Lloyd in their primes aren’t walking through that door. And, after some chaos at the start of this decade, it seems like they might be ending the continued cycle of pleading for patience, not getting any, and then the new bloke having to plead for patience again.

So we like that they didn’t do much in the trade period – for a long time the Bombers were acting like they were a few recruits away from a flag push, when they just weren’t. They know they need to draft their way out of this and then top up. (2023 was different because they were using cap space, not draft assets, to add talent.)

The problem was their timing. We’ll look back on the 2020 draft, which was unfortunately impacted by Covid (in terms of scouting and ability for the kids to actually play their games) as one of the weakest in recent history – and that’s when Essendon had an awesome hand of three top-10 picks.

Archie Perkins, Nik Cox and Zach Reid simply are not the core of a premiership list – that’s not criticising them specifically, it’s just the role players picked in the way they were picked need to play. And then in 2021, which had a way stronger top end of the draft pool, the Bombers both picked later in the first round and appear to have missed anyway.

Despite these issues the Bombers have a reasonably exciting group of young talent; Jye Caldwell has come along nicely, while the recruiters did really well to nab Sam Durham and Nic Martin cheaply. Massimo D’Ambrosio too, though his departure looked bad and got worse over the 2024 campaign. (To be fair, they also seem to have done much better with their last two first-round picks.)

Imagine if the Bombers had those players AND four really good first-round picks from the 2020 and 2021 drafts. They’d be amongst the best young teams in the comp! Instead they’re… fine? Maybe even good? But not better than that.

And the quiet 2024 trade period suggests they know this. It suggests a club that is willing to put its impatient fanbase another frustrating, average season as an investment in the future.

Maybe that means Essendon won’t just win 11 or 12 games, as they did in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2024, and either sneak into an away elimination final or just miss the eight. Maybe it means they’ll actually slide a bit further, as we’re predicting here.

Keep in mind the Bombers have a weirdly difficult fixture, having to play Sydney, Geelong, Carlton and the Bulldogs all twice. They have a few winnable ones early, but they’re not gonna start like last year, when they only lost two of their first 11 games.

15. ST KILDA

Someone has to be 15th, and we hate that it’s the Saints, because we liked them going into last year and still feel optimistic about how well they’ve been drafting.

And it seems like drafting is the only way they’re gonna build a contender again. Every time you read a story over the next six months about a team being willing to pay $1.5+ million a year to lure a young A-grader, it’s gonna be about the Saints. They’ve got cap space and they’re gonna try and spend it.

But we’ve been covering footy for a decade now, and we’re pretty confident in saying the small market Victorian teams have it the worst of anybody in the AFL.

St Kilda and North Melbourne in particular don’t have the financial heft and free agency draw of the bigger teams nearby, nor the track records of success. But then they also don’t have the advantage – and we do believe overall it’s an advantage, even with the travel burden – of the non-Victorian teams and their true home games.

The Saints and Kangaroos have at most six or seven games a year where they have more fans in attendance than the opposition does, which matters both financially and in terms of in-game advantages (because the biggest part of home ground advantage is the noise of affirmation influencing umpiring). And all of these factors combined make it harder for these clubs to be successful in the modern AFL.

They’ve become the ‘war chest’ team, which isn’t where you want to be, because managers are incentivised to talk to reporters about how much money you’re offering their players, in case it helps drive up the price at the club they actually want to play for. But they’re doing the right thing in offering these massive contracts because you’ve got to use the money while you’ve got it, and long-term deals allow you to reshape the salaries so that it doesn’t ruin your cap when you’re actually good.

Whether someone eventually accepts one of those offers or not, you have to get all the little things right, like drafting. And the Saints have done fantastically the last few years… though they’ve also reshaped the recruiting team that brought in those kids, with the late Chris Toce departing in 2023 before his tragic passing. All of these decisions were very heavily influenced by Ross Lyon, and he has a lot of power because he is the only real link to their last era of contention. We’re unsure as to whether all the changes were what’s best, but the Saints are now 100 per cent Lyon’s club.

And if he’s right in how to build a list, they could be back up the pointy end soon. The decision to focus on recruiting players who can run all day seemed to pay dividends in 2024, as they went 6-3 after the bye, beating Sydney, Geelong and Carlton. They ran out both games and the season itself.

But they just don’t have the top-end talent to contend right now – that’s why they’re trying so hard to pay a free agent. They know it. Jack Macrae is not the answer; even if he’s good, he’s not going to be that big of a difference maker.

A troubled pre-season has only added to our pessimism about their 2025 campaign, though at least the worst fears from that day Max King and Jack Sinclair both went down hurt did not come to pass.

16. NORTH MELBOURNE, then a gap to

17. WEST COAST EAGLES, then a gap to

18. RICHMOND

Look, North fans, all we could do is get you out of the bottom two. That’s progress!

The gulf just feels so massive between these teams and the other 15. Everyone wants to buy into the Kangaroos, in particular, finally escaping the bottom but let’s remember how far back they’re coming from.

They won three games with a percentage of 63.5 last year; enough for a wooden spoon in many seasons.

The gap between the Roos and 15th-placed Adelaide was 5.5 wins and about 36 points of percentage. That’s bigger than the gap between 1st-placed Sydney and 11th-placed Essendon – and that’s the gap the Roos have to make up just to escape the bottom three.

The more realistic scenario for any of these teams not finishing in the bottom three would be them winning eight-ish games, perhaps thanks to a few close ones going their way, while one of the teams above like St Kilda, Essendon or Melbourne really collapses to six or seven wins. That’s possible. Is it likely? We don’t think so.

But we do think North Melbourne will the best of this bunch. It’s everything you could think of – the additional time they’ve spent rebuilding which will eventually pay off; the very impressive top-end draftees they keep adding; the fact they were much more competitive after the bye last year; the trust we have in Alastair Clarkson, especially compared to the younger coaches at the Eagles and Tigers.

The biggest thing is looking at how the clubs behaved in the off-season, because they know themselves pretty well. And the Kangaroos behaved like a team that’s ready to rise.

Finally adding some mature-aged talent to top up the young list makes all the sense in the world; Jack Darling and Luke Parker are cheap throws at the stumps (and Parker came with a young teammate in Jacob Konstanty, who’ll get an actual chance at AFL games here), while Caleb Daniel has taken a step backwards but should still have a few good years at lest.

Then there’s draft night itself, which in a vaccum we found baffling, but in context we can at least respect the audacity of.

As a reminder, the Roos traded their future first-round pick – which even in the most optimistic scenario, should be a top-10 pick – to Richmond for pick 27 and a future second.

It’s an immense gamble, but you do need the added context of the 2024 draft crop being viewed as particularly strong, and the 2025 crop being viewed as both weaker and heavily compromised. So Matt Whitlock, the key-position prospect who slid down the order and was taken by North, was worth more than your average pick 27 on draft night.

More to the point it’s an acceleration of North’s timeline – the reverse of the Jason Horne-Francis scenario, when they effectively traded a top 2021 pick for a top 2022 pick (plus extra goodies). It’s not about whether North gave away a really valuable pick or if it slides; it’s about them saying we want to use our draft assets now to be good earlier.

Now, if the Tigers go and take a future superstar with North’s Pick 5 or whatever it ends up being in the 2025 draft, they’ll look a bit silly. But that’s the risk they took and teams in their position need to take risks.

Keep in mind when you look at the ladder and see the Eagles on five wins and North on three wins, that seriously overstates the gap between those teams. North had a 13-point lead with 30 minutes gone in the fourth quarter of their Round 22 meeting – an utterly bizarre collapse later, and the Eagles are ‘two games better’, when they just weren’t.

West Coast sorta accelerated their rebuild by adding Liam Baker, but it’s pretty much a wash with Tom Barrass going the other way, so we can’t group them with the Kangaroos as a team desperate to bounce immediately.

Especially when you’re adding a new, first-time coach in Andrew McQualter. Perhaps he’ll prove to be an immediate genius, but it’s very uncommon for rookies in the coaches’ box to find success right away – the likes of Craig McRae are the exception (and also Collingwood was coming off one bad year, not three).

They did reasonably well in the trade and draft period; while the Baker machinations frustrated their fans, they ended up getting the best local prospect without having to move up the order – and stole an extra late pick from Port Adelaide when the Power traded up a spot. Those are the sorts of little moves that add up over time.

But they’re surely at least a year away from being any good. The list needs time both to develop and to understand McQualter’s system.

It’s not irrelevant that they won five games last year, as many as North and Richmond combined, but that’s more a sign that they’re a normal bad team than an especially bad team.

Whereas Richmond should be an especially bad team. In fact, we are more confident putting them 18th than we are putting any team in any position on this predicted ladder.

We’re not saying they’re going winless, because kinda like West Coast at their absolute lowest ebb, there’s enough established talent still here (when healthy) to compete at least a few times this season. Remember, they had a shocking run with injury in 2024 which made them look even worse than they truly were.

And teams just don’t go winless in modern footy – they win a random one against a good team that had a shocking day, or pinch some close ones. It’s really, really hard to be THAT bad.

But they have lost over 1000 games of experience for two consecutive off-seasons. Nobody is calling this tanking, because it’s not like they’re trying to lose games during the season itself -they are simply pushing as hard as they can on the accelerator.

Taking six first-round picks, plus the first pick of the second round, is a genuinely mind-boggling haul, especially if the 2024 draft is as good as all the recruiters think it was. And remember, they traded their seventh first-round pick to North for the Roos’ future first! It would be a surprise if Richmond didn’t have two top-five picks in the 2025 draft.

The only points of comparison we have are expansion teams, and expansion teams are always awful. The Tigers are basically an expansion side that somehow convinced more veterans than usual to play for them.

It would be remarkable if they avoided a bottom two finish. And really, it’d be weird if they didn’t win the wooden spoon. They are clearly a weaker list going into 2025 than they were going into 2024, and they won two games last year.

A much gentler run with injuries could mean they actually win a couple more games, of course, but that’s just the randomness of footy. On paper, they are clearly 18th of 18, and the only person who should be slightly concerned about that is Adem Yze – because it’s very hard to be the rebuild coach.

He will get support and patience from a club that’s much stronger than it was the last time it needed to build back up… it’s just that losing is tough, even when you’re not just expecting it, but accepting it.

Max Laughton’s 2025 predicted AFL ladder

1. Hawthorn

2. Brisbane Lions

3. Fremantle

4. Geelong

5. Collingwood

6. Sydney Swans

7. Western Bulldogs

8. Gold Coast Suns

—

9. GWS Giants

10. Carlton

11. Adelaide Crows

12. Port Adelaide

13. Melbourne

14. Essendon

15. St Kilda

16. North Melbourne

17. West Coast Eagles

18. Richmond

2025 AFL Grand Final: Hawthorn def Brisbane Lions