Eighth – Hawthorn
The Hawks rolled into Adelaide last September on top of the world. Their opponents looked shot. Hawthorn had just demolished a team stacked with talent. They were a genuine premiership chance at that stage. But they copped the very best version of Port Adelaide. And they didn’t handle it well. The coach and his players were in tears. All were fuming. After four months of smiles, selfies, party tricks and assorted smart-assery, footy put them back in their place.
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They’re going to play in front of big crowds. Nine of their first 15 games are under lights. But the draw is harder, the expectations are higher, the competition will go to work on them, and the forward line in particular is heavily reliant on its jockeys and provocateurs. I have the utmost respect for the coach and I love the way they play, but many pundits have them as top-four certainties. I’m not convinced they’re quite there yet.
Seventh – Fremantle
There is a lot of talk that Fremantle is a premiership threat, that Shai Bolton is the icing on the cake, and that this is the year they can break their 30-year premiership drought. But I don’t think they’re ready. I still think they’re a bit immature, and a bit lopsided. It was all laid out for them last year and they didn’t take their chances. Yes, they had injuries and some bad luck. But they coughed up too many mini-finals against teams of similar quality. They didn’t quite trust themselves, didn’t quite organise themselves properly. Ultimately, they didn’t deserve to make it.
They’ll be a very interesting team to watch, and there will be a lot of pressure on them this year. Their age profile is perfect. They look great on paper, great in theory. They definitely have the makings of a premiership list. I’m just not confident it will be this year, and with this coach.
Sixth – Port Adelaide
I loved what Ken Hinkley did at the end of the Hawthorn game. I thought the $20,000 fine was one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen in footy. But by preliminary final night, they were a hodgepodge of a team, with a bunch of kids down back and a full-forward who was moving like the Tin Man.
In these kinds of previews, they’re always a good side to stick your neck out on. They always seem to perform a little bit better than most pundits expect and I originally had them as a top-four smoky, a strange thing to write about a team that consistently secures the double chance. I reckon Jason Horne-Francis can be one of the best players in the country and I have a sneaky soft spot for Jack Lukosius – a sumptuous kick but a rather bewildering footballer, exactly the sort of player Damien Hardwick gets rid of as quickly as he can. I’m a little bit spooked by their savage draw however, as well as the injury to Zak Butters.
Fifth – Greater Western Sydney
In 2024, the Giants beat Brisbane twice, including at the Gabba, and were seven goals up against them in a final. They beat Geelong in Geelong, and Hawthorn when they were on a hot streak. But ultimately, it was a season squandered. Most football clubs move on quickly. But how they’d love that September back – on and off the field.
Adam Kinglsey was a guest at the MCG and watched the Grand Final in a state of extreme agitation. We’re often told that they’re a team built for finals. But to win finals you also need gears, the ability to adapt, to halt momentum and to play your game for four quarters. I’m not convinced about Jake Stringer’s newfound enthusiasm for hard work. And I just think they play a bit of a risky brand that can come unstuck when the fatigue kicks in and the stakes are highest.
Fourth – Sydney
So many of us, including this correspondent, were seduced by Sydney. They were such a great team to watch. There was a pizazz, a swagger. Few teams in recent years could unleash a 20-minute burst quite like them.
And they froze. There were no surprises, no tricks and not a lot of flexibility about John Longmire’s coaching. His approach seemed to be – we’ll back our system, we’ll back out preparation, throw your best at us. Brisbane brought a bazooka, and blew them to smithereens in 15 minutes. All that glorious football, all the fanfare around the Big Three, all the SCG singalongs – blown to bits.
It takes an incredibly resilient team to come back from that. Are they that group? Or are they all for show? They’re scintillating on their day. But they’re a team with a lot of holes, and a lot of scars. New coach Dean Cox’s challenge is to pick up the pieces, to shore up what remains a wobbly backline and a streaky forward line, and to make them a bit less predictable. They’re too good a team to write off, but Errol Gulden getting about in a moonboot worries me.
Third – Melbourne
It couldn’t get much worse for the Demons than their 2024. They had investigative reporters sifting through their bins, independents potting them under parliamentary privilege, their best player thinking he was going to die, the CEO exiting muttering “culture”, and president well and truly Whateley-ed.
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The broadcasters clearly don’t want a bar of them. They won’t get the sexy timeslots and their only Friday night game is at GMHBA Stadium. But after finishing 14th, it’s actually a really soft draw. They’ve also been quietly turning over their list, getting games into what look like a very promising group of young players. And there are still 16 premiership players to choose from.
“We hold the pen to write the next chapter and we will hold that pen and we will write,” Simon Goodwin told the Herald Sun last month. I’m tempted to tip them as wooden spooners simply for the state of that sentence, but I reckon they’re a team that can slip under the radar and improve significantly.
Second – Brisbane
They kept Carlton scoreless for an hour. They were 44 points down against GWS and still won. They prevailed in one of the best preliminary finals ever played. A week later, they annihilated the glamour team, the top team, the favourites on the biggest stage. Now they welcome a player who many consider the best player in a crack draft, and slowly get back several key players felled by anterior cruciate ligament tears.
But Joe Daniher is kicking back in the Byron Bay hinterlands and leaves an enormous hole in the forward line. The football world only properly appreciated him right at the end. He’d kicked 61 and 58 goals in his final two seasons, took the best defender every week and always played well when it mattered.
The Lions have been up and contending for a long time now, and the competition has a recent history of going to school and grinding down teams like that. The past two premiers before them missed the finals the following year, a reminder of how hard it is to keep backing up. But I’m sure the Lions have the depth and class to challenge again.
Premiers – Collingwood
This Collingwood team has a lot of miles on the clock, a lot of wear on the tyres, and they’re punting on one last crack at a flag in 2025. But the entire Craig McRae era has been a gamble. They rode their luck for 18 months and all that luck deserted them in 2024. They were tardy out of the gates and when they finally got their players back late in the season, they were excellent, beating Brisbane, desperately unlucky against ladder leaders Sydney and looking at various stages like they could sneak in and do a lot of damage.
They are old and creaking but their list still has the right blend of superstars, role players, heights and depth. They (and captain Darcy Moore in particular) would love an aerial replacement for key back Nathan Murphy, but Dan Houston is probably the best kick in Australia, Harry Perryman will be a good buffer man and their band of players held together by masking tape are still capable of making an impact.
