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It’s ladder prediction time, as the AFL pre-season ramps up, but every year us so-called experts make the same mistake by playing it safe.
Every year, there are at least two changes to the top eight, and the average is almost three; but the more difficult call is figuring out who’ll crack the top four.
In 2024, it was Geelong returning to the pointy end of the ladder, rising all the way from 12th to a home preliminary final. (Something we floated in this very column last year.)
They continued the annual trend – every year since the AFL expanded from 16 clubs, an average of one team has made the leap from non-finalist to top four.
THE LADDER LEAPERS (Bottom 10 the year before to top four)
2024: Geelong (12th the year before to 3rd)
2023: Port Adelaide (11th to 3rd)
2022: Collingwood (17th to 4th)
2021: Melbourne (9th to 1st)
2020: Port Adelaide (10th to 1st)
2019: Brisbane (15th to 2nd)
2018: Collingwood (13th to 3rd) and Hawthorn (12th to 4th)
2017: Richmond (13th to 3rd)
2016: Geelong (10th to 2nd) and GWS (11th to 4th)
2015: West Coast (9th to 2nd)
2014: Nil (Best – North Melbourne 10th to 6th)
2013: Nil (Best – Richmond 12th to 5th)
2012: Adelaide (14th to 2nd)
2011: West Coast (16th to 4th)
Average since expansion from 16 teams = 1 leaper per season; ladder positions listed are before finals
Last year we nominated three main contenders and two made the finals – the Cats, plus the Western Bulldogs who rose from 9th to 6th. The third pick was a trendy one industry-wide, but Adelaide proved to be a disappointment.
So in trying to find who’ll make the ladder leap in 2025, we need to classify contenders into one of two categories.
1. The fallen power
Most recent examples: Geelong 2024, Port Adelaide 2023, Collingwood 2022
These are teams who were perennial top-four contenders and had one bad year, which proved to be the exception.
Of this group only the Magpies had a properly bad year, finishing 17th in 2021; the Cats and Power just had some injuries and got a bit less lucky in close games.
2. Delivering on the promise of youth
Most recent examples: Melbourne 2021, Brisbane 2019
These are teams who finally lived up to expectations after years down the bottom and some strong drafting, which built their lists back up to the level required for contention.
Admittedly the Demons are a bit of a hybrid, making a prelim in 2018 before dropping off in 2019, but that allowed them to pick up Luke Jackson and Kozzie Pickett who took their list over the top two years later
The Lions are a more classic example, finally escaping years of ignominy and nearly winning more games in 2019 alone (16) than they did across the 2015-18 seasons (17).
THE TOP CONTENDERS
Collingwood
Which category would they fit? The fallen power
In 2024: 9th, 12-9-2, 102.5%
Notable Ins: Harry Perryman (free agent, GWS), Dan Houston (trade, Port Adelaide), Tim Membrey (delisted free agent, St Kilda)
Notable Outs: Nathan Murphy (retired), John Noble (trade, Gold Coast), Joe Richards (trade, Port Adelaide)
For the fourth season in a row, the reigning premier failed to win a final.
But do you remember what happened the year after that for Richmond, Melbourne and Geelong? Two years after their flag, they all bounced back and made the eight, having varying levels of success but improving nonetheless.
It appears there’s a trend forming where the premier, with a shortened pre-season and a hungry pack of teams targeting them, gets swallowed by the pack. And there are likely a few reasons for this – but broadly speaking everything has to go right to win a flag, and so when a few players drop off from their career-best form, and a few others get hurt after a shortened pre-season, it makes it much harder to repeat.
The point is that Collingwood was still a pretty good team last season, but just dropped off in places, combined with a bit of an injury problem. While nine Magpies played every game, they cycled through a reasonably high total of 37 players (36 of them playing multiple times) – and some questionable drafting in recent years means the bottom of their list isn’t that good.
They still won 13 games (including the two draws as half-wins), and if they’d gotten the points in one of those ties, they would’ve played finals. Dual losing streaks, of three games to start the year and of four games in the depths of winter, made it too hard for the Pies to challenge again.
But their last month of the season was strong, beating Brisbane and Carlton, nearly beating Sydney away, and smashing Melbourne in their Round 24 dead rubber. And they passed the eye test, always feeling more dangerous than the ladder said they were.
They have the oldest and most experienced list in the AFL by a large margin, but those key veterans are generally all still good contributors. Unless the likes of Scott Pendlebury and Steele Sidebottom decide to finally act their age, there is clearly still a very strong core here.
And in footy, being old isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means you’re supposed to be good right now; though it also means you’re expected to be bad in the near future, because you can’t stay at the top of those metrics for long. (Even the retirement home down in Geelong has injected youth, as their 2022 Grand Final team was the oldest line-up in V/AFL history, and their list is now three years younger on average.)
So while the Magpies could drop off in 2026, assuming some of their greatest modern players decide to hang up the boots, they’ve clearly targeted 2025 as a year to contend. You don’t trade yet another first-round pick away for Dan Houston if you’re not trying to win now. (Though to be fair with their draft strike rate, maybe they’re better off not having their own picks.)
Fremantle
Which category would they fit? Delivering on the promise of youth
In 2024: 10th, 12-10-1, 111.9%
Notable Ins: Murphy Reid (draft, Pick 17), Shai Bolton (trade, Richmond), Quinton Narkle (pre-season supplemental selection period, Port Adelaide)
Notable Outs: Josh Corbett (retired), Matt Taberner (delisted)
A team that should’ve made the finals last year, that somehow didn’t thanks to some late losses (and one weird one in particular), but is now the hyped pre-season pick to bolt up the ladder. We’ve seen this story before.
Hopefully for Justin Longmuir’s sake, 2025’s Fremantle doesn’t repeat the story of 2024’s Adelaide, who were the popular tip to surge into September but never got going.
But like those Crows, the Dockers really should’ve played finals a year ago. It took poor performance in close games (1-5 with a draw when decided by two goals or less), and somehow getting smashed early on by one of the worst West Coast teams ever, AND losing their last four games of the season to miss the top eight in 2024.
It put a very sour taste on a year when Fremantle, not really expected to do much, spent 18 rounds inside the top eight and was third with a month remaining. But that improvement, including an equal-AFL high five All-Australian squad selections, still means something.
After cashing in their tasty hand of first-round draft picks to nab Shai Bolton from Richmond – the type of excitement machine the often-stolid Dockers could really use – they feel ready to return to the finals.
And this is still a very young group too, their list being the AFL’s 11th-oldest and 13th-most experienced; there is room for growth here.
We made the comparison above, but they don’t really feel like 2024 Adelaide. They feel more like 2021 Melbourne.
Remember how things went for those Demons? In 2018, it was the surprise run to a prelim. In 2019, a plummet back down the ladder, suggesting they had gone too early. In 2020 came the near-miss, finishing 9th thanks to results on the final Sunday of the season, and then in 2021 they rose all the way to a drought-breaking flag.
Well, let’s think about the Dockers. In 2022, it was the surprise run to a semi-final. In 2023, a plummet back down the ladder, suggesting they had gone too early. In 2024 came the near-miss, finishing 10th thanks to results on the final Sunday of the season. And then in 2025…
Why not Flagmantle? They’ve even got Luke Jackson. And maybe Kozzie Pickett soon too.
Melbourne
Which category would they fit? The fallen power
In 2024: 14th, 11-12, 98.5%
Notable Ins: Harvey Langford (draft, Pick 6), Xavier Lindsay (draft, Pick 11), Tom Campbell (free agent, St Kilda), Harry Sharp (trade, Brisbane)
Notable Outs: Angus Brayshaw (retired), Ben Brown (retired), Josh Schache (delisted), Lachie Hunter (retired), Alex Neal-Bullen (trade, Adelaide), Adam Tomlinson (delisted)
It feels like people have been a little too quick to write off the Demons, given they made three consecutive top fours before declining in a year with so many issues, on and off the field.
Yes, they finished 14th. But they were 1 per cent off 12th, and two wins and a much larger chunk of percentage off the top eight; inarguably a disappointing season but not as disastrous as it looks on paper.
And look at everything that went wrong in 2024. The sadness around Angus Brayshaw’s retirement. The off-field frustration with reports about Simon Goodwin, and the Joel Smith drug issue. The Clayton Oliver saga – stretching from whether he’d be traded, to whether he’d had a proper pre-season, to whether he was playing hurt, all of it resulting in a genuine superstar player being nowhere near his best. The Christian Petracca saga, from the handling of his King’s Birthday injury to the fact it cost him the rest of the season, and even saw him considering a trade.
Look, even dealing with one ‘saga’ can take down a footy club, but the 2024 Demons had more sagas than all Scandinavian folk tales combined. No wonder they didn’t play finals.
And so all the talk in the 2025 pre-season is, understandably, about putting the last 12 months in the past and getting back to their best. And if they can do that, they’ve still got an incredibly talented list that knows how to win a bunch of games of footy. Gawn, May, Viney, Petracca, Lever, Fritsch, Oliver and Pickett is still one of the better list cores you’ll see.
Their drafting could be the key element that gets them back to the top, though. Going against the AFL grain and being willing to trade up aggressively has seen the Demons add more top-end talent in the draft than they should have had access to based on their natural ladder positions; the Caleb Windsor pick already looks like a big win, they added two more top-11 picks last year, plus Judd McVee is a gem.
It’s a different strategy to, say, Collingwood, who have so frequently traded out their top-end picks for ready-made players. The Demons have instead used their picks to get highly-rated young players, who might have more of a chance of being a bust just because the error bars are so large on draftees, but if you hit with the picks you’re either getting them in their prime or, if they want to leave like Luke Jackson did, you’re getting a trade bounty in return which helps you get back into the draft.
It may prove a more sustainable method, and given how much of their 2021 premiership core was drafted and developed by the club, you can understand why the Demons would trust themselves to do it again.
The upside here is enormous – they won at least 16 games every year from 2021-23 with most of the same list as this, and if the young talent can replace those who’ve left (and to be clear, that’s quite a big group, with over 1000 games of experience lost this off-season), they could easily be there again.
Or they’ve hit the cliff and won’t contend again with this core, and they’ll finish a pedestrian 12th as their stars enter their decline phases. That would be disappointing, but at least winning one flag is better than missing out entirely.
IF EVERYTHING GOES RIGHT…
Adelaide Crows
Which category would they fit? Delivering on the promise of youth
In 2024: 15th, 8-14-1, 99.1%
Notable Ins: Sid Draper (draft, Pick 4), Isaac Cumming (free agent, GWS Giants), Alex Neal-Bullen (trade, Melbourne), James Peatling (trade, GWS Giants)
Notable Outs: Rory Sloane (retired), Elliott Himmelberg (free agent, Gold Coast)
Alright, let’s try this one again.
As often happens with hyped young groups, the Crows instead took a step back in 2024. Fears they were still a midfielder away came true, though a lot more went wrong than just that.
There were flashes of the brilliance some expected, from Izak Rankine’s superstar-level 15 games, to Riley Thilthorpe’s very promising seven, and on a team level too like beating the in-form Bulldogs and Giants late in the year, and playing Brisbane really close twice.
But they struggled in close games again, going 2-6 with a draw in games decided by two goals or less, and were often competitive but just not good enough to actually win. They may not have played like a bottom four team but they were one, a full two and a half wins behind 14th.
The hope is that this was the backwards step that ends up helping them. Their ins are a lot better than their outs, with top local midfielder Sid Draper joining three intriguing recruits who are all underrated by the general footy public (either due to their role or playing in western Sydney) and are set to have an impact.
Age is less of an excuse now; their overall list is the 8th-oldest, though the likes of Taylor Walker and Brodie Smith plus some older rookies skew that a bit. Still, they’re getting to the point where it’s time to deliver on the promise we’ve seen within them – a club this historically successful isn’t supposed to be down for this long. Seven years without finals footy is too much, and eight could see Matthew Nicks lose his job.
The electric 2023 season showed how good they can be, so they need to at least repeat that level to keep the coach secure. But it should only take a small step forwards from their 2023 level of play to make them a top-four contender in 2025.
Essendon
Which category would they fit? Well, uhh… promise of youth maybe
In 2024: 11th, 11-1-1, 93.5%
Notable Ins: Isaac Kako (draft, Pick 13), Jaxon Prior (pre-season supplemental selection period, Brisbane Lions)
Notable Outs: Dyson Heppell (retired), Nick Hind (delisted), Jake Kelly (retired), Jake Stringer (trade, GWS Giants)
Winning the trade period didn’t work, so the Bombers’ 2024 trade period strategy was a radical one – just don’t get involved.
Other than the last-minute dumping of Jake Stringer for peanuts, all Brad Scott’s team really did in the off-season was secure highly-rated Next Generation Academy forward Isaac Kako. If he lives up to the billing he’ll be loved by the fans and list management team alike.
But an 18-year-old small forward isn’t going to turn a middling team into a contender, and that’s what the Bombers are, and have been for some time.
As we’ve written about before they’ve been stuck on the treadmill of mediocrity for far too long, almost always finishing in the middle of the ladder, which makes it harder to improve – your flaws aren’t as obvious and thus as fixable, you’re not picking right up the top of the draft so you’re not getting A-grade teenage talent, and you’re stuck paying for an OK list which either means you can’t afford top free agents or you can’t make them want to play for you. (And in Essendon’s case, when you do have cash, you end up overpaying whoever’s on the market.)
So if you squint, and really believe in their player development, you could see the Bombers taking another step forwards. They were a little bit better in 2024 than in 2023, but they did the same old thing of starting really well then falling off a cliff. (When you’re 8-2 with a draw halfway through the season, it’s very hard to be irrelevant in the finals race with a couple of games left; somehow the Bombers found a way last year.)
They do not appear to have the genuine, game-changing A-graders who can turn them into a contender, and we won’t be believing they can make that leap until we see it happen before our eyes.
Gold Coast Suns
Which category would they fit? Delivering on the promise of youth
In 2024: 13th, 11-12, 99.1%
Notable Ins: Leo Lombard (draft, Pick 9), Elliott Himmelberg (free agent, Adelaide), John Noble (trade, Collingwood), Daniel Rioli (trade, Richmond)
Notable Outs: Brandon Ellis (retired), Levi Casboult (retired), Jack Lukosius (trade, Port Adelaide), Rory Atkins (trade, Port Adelaide)
It’s actually ridiculous how repetitive the Suns’ seasons are getting. For three straight years, they have:
– won two games in a row in Darwin at mid-season to get everyone excited;
– been exactly 7-7 going into their school holidays home game against Collingwood (to get the Victorians to fly north and pack out the stadium);
– lost to some terrible team out of nowhere (like West Coast last year, or North Melbourne in 2023 when the Roos gave up Pick 1 for no reason);
– and fallen out of the finals race with a few weeks left, finishing with between nine and 11 wins.
So are the Suns going to play finals at some point? Almost certainly yes. Damien Hardwick is too good a coach, and they have too much talent on the list, for them to continue being a mediocre football club.
They are no longer just a bunch of kids, either, with the ninth-oldest and ninth-most experienced list in the AFL. Daniel Rioli feels like a kid, but he comes to the club with the third-most games played out of anyone. John Noble, who it seems like came out of the mid-season draft yesterday, will be one of the more experienced players in the side whenever he plays.
They weren’t superstar additions but the kids they keep picking in the top 10 are supposed to be the superstars. We’d be a bit worried if Matt Rowell leaves after the season (and it seems like he might) but they’re not exactly lacking for young Academy midfielders behind him, adding another in Leo Lombard this past draft.
Jed Walter and Mac Andrew (who’s a lot further along, but has still only played 41 games) could be the best pair of pillars at either end of the ground in the AFL in a few years’ time. They have 10 top-10 picks on the list for crying out loud!
But trusting this to be the breakthrough year is like Charlie Brown with the football. We already know we’re going to talk ourselves into the Suns – ‘oh look, they were 9-3 at home and the other three teams that won nine games at home made the top four, if they can just be normal in away games they’re gonna be good’ – but why do that to ourselves? Why not just wait and see it happen first?
(Well, because here’s a secret with predictions – nobody really cares if play it safe and get it wrong, but if you’re right you get to tell everyone. It’s fun.)
St Kilda
Which category would they fit? Delivering on the promise of youth… sorta
In 2024: 12th, 11-12, 99.4%
Notable Ins: Tobie Travaglia (draft, Pick 8), Alix Tauru (draft, Pick 10), Jack Macrae (trade, Western Bulldogs), Jack Carroll (pre-season supplemental selection period, Carlton)
Notable Outs: Riley Bonner (delisted), Matthew Allison (delisted), Seb Ross (delisted), Josh Battle (free agent, Hawthorn), Tom Campbell (free agent, Melbourne), Tim Membrey (delisted), Jack Hayes (delisted), Ben Paton (delisted), Brad Crouch (retired)
The way you view the Saints going into 2025 really depends on how much you believe in their post-bye form.
If you’re just looking at the overall numbers – middling season, fell out of the finals race pretty quickly, had records of 3-8, 5-10 and then 6-11 – it was a big step backwards. The vibes weren’t great, topped off by Josh Battle finishing third in their best and fairest and then walking out to join Hawthorn, where he’s making less money than he would have by staying at St Kilda.
But there were bits of brilliance throughout. Callum Wilkie remains one of the great recent rookie bargains; Jack Sinclair is perennially underrated; Darcy Wilson had an awesome debut year and Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera is a star turning into a potential superstar, with the Saints having nailed the last few drafts.
And then you look at the team they were post-bye – 6-3, only losing to Port Adelaide by two points, Adelaide away (OK that wasn’t good) and Brisbane (by a million, which wasn’t good either). But they beat Carlton in a final-day classic which almost ruined the Blues’ season, upset two top-four teams in Sydney and Geelong, and smashed everyone else.
You could argue this was intentional; that the Saints, who have focused on hard running both strategically and through recruiting, had the season-long endurance to beat some teams they shouldn’t have just because they went harder for longer.
So while they may not be the most talented list, they’re going to try and get the most out of themselves. That can take you a fair way but probably not far enough to contend – they just don’t have the cattle right now. They’re at least one midfielder away, and the ageing Jack Macrae isn’t the answer (we’re not saying he’ll be bad, just that he won’t be the A-grader they need).
A bit more scoring would be nice but they don’t have to score to play finals; they were 15th for points scored in both 2023 and 2024, but were first for points allowed when they made the eight two years ago. They were a solid fifth last year, not too far off the best, though not enough to make it a true weapon.
We would not be shocked if the Saints played finals, unlike most analysts, a lot of whom are going to have them as the fourth member of the bottom four behind the rebuilding Eagles, Kangaroos and Tigers. By virtue of being a low-scoring team they play more close games, and went 4-6 in games decided by two goals or less in 2024 – they could easily get on a lucky run and slide into the eight that way.
But even the most optimistic fan would struggle to put them in their top four. They’re a high-floor, low-ceiling type of team.
NO, BUT THEY SHOULD BE BETTER
North Melbourne
Which category would they fit? Delivering on the promise of youth
West Coast Eagles
Which category would they fit? Delivering on the promise of youth
These two clubs have been grouped together for a while – unfortunately for them, right at the bottom of the ladder.
And look, at some point, the Eagles and especially the Kangaroos have to be better. Maybe one of them can escape the bottom four. But let’s just pump the brakes on either of these teams actually being good.
West Coast is still rebuilding. After not taking a first-round pick for three straight years, they’ve now used five in four seasons – and it would be more if they hadn’t opted to use some of their 2024 pick value to add Liam Baker instead.
But they lost over 1000 games of experience this off-season, and are bottom three for list age and experience. This is still the hard part, so even though they had flashes of competitiveness last season, the first year under Andrew McQualter should be a tricky one. The realistic timeframe is more like Chris Fagan’s introduction at Brisbane, winning 10 games in his first two seasons, before they became a perennial top-four contender.
Meanwhile there seems to be a growing consensus of “OK North, it’s time to be good now, you’ve been bad for too long”. And in a sense that’s fair – they’ve had one of the worst half-decades in modern footy history, and haven’t won a final in a decade.
But their rebuild has been anything but smooth, spanning multiple coaches and recruiting teams. This is Alastair Clarkson’s third year, but he hardly got a clean run at things in his first season at Arden Street. And they still have the AFL’s youngest list – after five straight bottom two finishes! That’s a sign of how slowly they’re progressing and how far they still have to go.
It would not shock us if one of these teams rose to the level of mediocrity, winning eight games, but that should be the goal not the expectation.
NO
Richmond
Which category would they fit? A new category called “wait wtf how”
Listen, if you reckon the Tigers can win the wooden spoon and lose almost 1300 games of experience, and THEN win an extra 13-plus games to make the top four in 2025… we admire your optimism.
