The Lions were kings of the AFL jungle in 2024, but data suggests there are plenty of teams with realistic hopes of premiership glory in 2025. (Getty Images: AFL Photos/Robert Cianflone)
The official new year on the calendar may have been two months ago, but for dedicated footy fans the first bounce of the season is the real beginning.
The 2025 AFL season is already difficult to predict. The first game between Brisbane and Geelong has been postponed, and the proposed third game has been shifted to a date yet to be confirmed.Â
That could be a signifier for the season's on-field uncertainty.
ABC Sport is live blogging every round of the AFL and NRL seasons in 2025.
Never has it been harder to pick the great teams from the good, the good from the average and the average from … well, you get the picture.
Five different clubs have won the premiership over the previous half-decade, and 15 of the league's 18 teams have played finals in same period.
Last season was particularly tight. Brisbane, eventual premiers, sat outside the top eight at the end of round 15. The Giants, Bulldogs, Hawks and Blues were also out of the finals as late as round 16, 17, 21 and 22, respectively.
Fremantle and Essendon both missed the finals in the end, but sat inside the top four after round 17. Even the reigning premiers weren't safe, with Collingwood limping into a ninth-place finish.
The 2025 AFL season could be even harder to separate the cream from the crop. No side appears to be flawless, and almost every side will have hopes firmly set to playing footy in September.
Here's how 2025 is set to shape up, from the side currently at the top to potential risers up the ladder and fortunes for your club.
A new type of target
When teams tend to gather in the off-season, they look at not only their own way of playing but also that of the sides that will stand in their way for the flag.
The last side to raise the premiership cup is usually the top of that list. Opposition sides would have spent time over the off-season working out how to stop Brisbane, which finished the year winning 14 of 16 games.
Brisbane's ability to spread opposition defences with its diverse attacking game, and control the ball from the back half, made it hard to stop.
For opposition sides, Brisbane presents a different challenge to most recent premiers.
After the success of Richmond at the end of the 2010s with the concept of controlled chaos, backed by solid defence, many teams looked to adapt similar principles or work out how to contain them.Â
Teams like Collingwood and GWS enjoyed rises up the ladder led by ex-Richmond assistant coaches, while other sides, including 2022 premiers Geelong, noticeably shifted the speed and mode of how they moved the ball.
Brisbane presents as a slight counter to this mode. While they still regularly play fast, they do so in a kick-first, ball-retention-heavy way. The Lions are the first premier to have a kick more than handballing relative to the league average since West Coast in 2018.
They also had a staggering uncontested mark differential of +22 per game last year — dwarfing that of every other team. By contrast, most other recent premiers since West Coast in 2018 have been relatively even in that number.
This split represents one of the emerging divides in the league. While each senior coach is unique, many borrow ideas from other stops on their coaching journey. With a host of ex-Richmond acolytes now leading sides across the competition, there could be a clash of ideas in the coming season.
How the luck of the draw can help teams rise
In the last four seasons, a team has leapt from the bottom four of the ladder to the top eight, most recently typified by Hawthorn's shock rise last year.
If you extend that group to the bottom six, the streak goes all the way back to 2015. In fact three premiership teams have leapt from the bottom six to winning a flag in a three season span: Richmond in 2017; Melbourne in 2021; and Collingwood in 2023.
Success is never far away with a bit of skill, and a bit of fixture luck.
The current AFL fixture is a complex tapestry of team and ground availability, public holidays, mandated rest breaks and how each team performed last season.
The current fixture sees teams split into three different groups — teams one through six, seven through 12 and 13 to 18 from the year prior.
Top six sides — such as Sydney — face two or three other top six teams twice, making their draw more difficult. As a result, they will face fewer double ups from the lower two-thirds of the competition.
That's led to the trend above of teams rising quickly from the bottom six to the top eight each year. Often, it's accompanied by a year of bad injuries or bad luck, followed by a soft draw.
All bottom six sides from 2024 will play three other bottom six sides twice this year, providing a real chance to capitalise with a swift rise up the ladder. That could be a real boon to Gold Coast, Melbourne and Adelaide in particular.
But as GWS learned last year, predicting the difficulty of the fixture is hard. Most of their repeat opponents improved, turning their average draw into one of the AFL's hardest. That difference can be enough to sink a season — although GWS were good enough to power through.
Getting better, or not getting worse
The most important part of how a team will do isn't who you'll play, but who you will have on your side.
Most AFL sides are relatively stable from year to year, but recruitments and retirements can have a big impact on the fortunes of sides.
Some sides have been hit hard by the loss of players. Richmond lost more talent than any other club last year, with some suggesting the recent premiers may struggle to win a game.
Collingwood, with the recruitment of Dan Houston and Harry Perryman, have doubled down on the present focus for their squad and look to have gained the most ground for 2025 in the off-season.
The Pies look to be the oldest side going into 2025, placing the focus on winning now.
Reigning premiers Brisbane only lost one player of note, but it was an important one in Joe Daniher. Their ability to replace his forward line-shaping impact looms as one of the most important questions of the upcoming season.
How good were teams really?
A final factor to work out where teams might land this year is trying to work out how good each team really was last year. Footy is a beautiful game, but it is also full of sliding door moments and bouncing balls going astray.Â
Trying to account for luck — especially in close games — tends to be a good indicator of underlying team strength.
Adelaide, one of 2024's most disappointing sides, shape as having the biggest upside this year merely by normalising their performance in close games.Â
The Crows were involved in nine games decided by less than two goals but won just two of them and drew a third. That was a key factor to their 15th placed finish with a percentage a smidgen under 100 per cent.Â
That's potentially the profile of a team ready to return to the promise they showed back in 2023.
Also unlucky last year were the Dockers, who arguably missed finals due to some bad luck, and the Bulldogs, who should have expected a top-four berth given how strong they looked.
Naturally, several teams won more games than their underlying performance would suggest. Chief amongst these sides were Essendon and GWS, with the latter benefiting from extremely fortunate luck in front of goal in attack and defence.
Putting it all together
When accounting for most of the factors above, it becomes clear how close the year could be.
There's predicted to be a bigger gap between Richmond in 16th and Essendon in 15th than there is between Brisbane in third and Essendon. That projection doesn't account for talent acquired or lost over the off-season, or players lost to injury.
Over a dozen All-Australian squad members from the last two seasons head into the season under some form of injury cloud. The health of players such as Marcus Bontempelli, Errol Gulden and Zac Butters could make or break a season.
Last year was an incredibly tight season — almost unbelievably so. This one has already started out in a way no one predicted as recently as two weeks ago.
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