AFL Rankings: Round 12 2025

The Adelaide Crows currently look like a genuine top four team this season. They just beat the Sydney Swans by 90 points on the Swans’ home deck. They have the fourth highest winning percentage this season*, and the highest “for versus against” percentage.

The Crows picked up a few new recruits for this season, and slightly changed around their midfield. Alex Neal-Bullen, James Peatling, and Issac Cumming all joined the club. Rory Laird has permanently returned to the backline, and Matt Crouch has been injured for half the season. This has resulted in the most midfield time going to Jordan Dawson, Izak Rankine, Jake Soligo, and Peatling.

Of those changes, it might actually be what Neal-Bullen and Peatling offer up forward that is the biggest one. Some may be surprised – as I was – to find that Adelaide has (according to the AFL Player Ratings) three of the top 10 rated forwards or mid-forwards this season, and six of the top 30. Neal-Bullen and Peatling are two of those, but there has also been significant improvement from Riley Thilthorpe and Josh Rachele (see table below). The result has been a more well-rounded and settled forward set-up.

Those who remember Adelaide’s 2017 Grand Final team would probably recall that having a strong forward line as well, headlined by peak-Eddie Betts. Arguably this is still a touch below that, but so far it has helped the Crows return to the ranks of premiership contenders.

*I would normally just say ‘third on the ladder’ but Gold Coast have played one less game.

AFL Rankings: Round 11 2025

Return of the Dees

After Round 3, I wrote about how Melbourne looked entrenched as a ‘bottom four’ team. I noted how their main four midfielders – Max Gawn, Clayton Oliver, Christian Petracca, and Jack Viney – were averaging far fewer clearances and overall player rating points than they did at their peak, and as a result were no longer able to carry the Demons into even the middle reaches of the ladder.

Enter Kysaiah Pickett. Pickett has doubled his centre bounce attendances this year, and is averaging 20 disposals and two goals, which is about five more disposals than anyone else averaging two goals per game. He is currently the highest rated mid-forward in 2025 (that has played more than one match). Pickett has re-gained some of the contested ball for the team that Viney is no longer winning, but is more attacking as well.

As important to the Demons’ fortunes though has been the return to form of Gawn and Petracca. Petracca has been moved back to spending more time in the midfield, and while he is not quite back to the player he was at the Demons’ peak, he is certainly travelling better than he was during the season’s first few weeks in winning contested ball. Gawn meanwhile is averaging career highs for disposals, clearances, and intercept marks per game, which given the quality of his career is no small feat.

Melbourne now sits at five wins and six losses, and are looking like finals may no longer be almost completely out of reach. They trail only Carlton (who are a bit of an outlier) for contested possession differential, and the Western Bulldogs (also a bit of an outlier) for differential in centre clearances. They may not be all the way back yet to being a flag contender, but they do at least seem to be some of the way back to what they were good at.

Fall of the Swans

On the flipside, Melbourne’s opponents on the weekend the Sydney Swans do look like finals may now be almost out of reach.

The Swans made the Grand Final last year, which does not happen by ‘accident’, but it perhaps masked a bit that Sydney were not as strong during the second half of last season. In their last twelve games (including finals) their net point differential was actually negative. That has continued on into the first half of this season, and they now sit eleventh on the rankings and thirteenth on the ladder.

Sydney was very effective when they went inside 50 last season, averaging the second most points per inside 50 entry. This year they are third last. (Coincidentally the team that averaged the most points inside 50 last season, Carlton, have also fallen towards the bottom on this measure.) The Swans were never really outstanding at much else last season, and without that forward effectiveness, they have come back to being an average team. They miss Errol Gulden, and Isaac Heeney hasn’t quite been the dominant force he was in 2024. There’s a good chance they still grind out 10+ wins, but they’re a long way off challenging for the flag again, at least this season.

AFL Rankings: Round 10 2025

The Western Bulldogs are the most in-form team in the league, winning four of their past five games by an average of 71 points.* They are doing this in the way we have come to expect from the Dogs, that is through their A-grade midfield. However, their dominance in this area recently has been remarkable even by their standards.

In their past five matches, the Bulldogs have averaged 57 points from stoppages – three goals more than any team expect Geelong, and almost six goals more than their opposition (see table below). Their clearance differential has been +12, where generally a team is doing well to be +5. The Dogs are winning the clearances both in the centre and around the ground.

Since Luke Beveridge began coaching the Bulldogs in 2015, they have a pretty good history of winning the stoppages, particularly in the current decade (see table above). They ranked first for clearance differential last year, and have ranked top three in every season since 2021. They were first in this category when they bulldozed their way to the premiership in 2016. They have also become better at turning this strength into scores, ranking first in differential for points scored from stoppages last season.

Somewhat remarkably, the Bulldogs have achieved this without a dominant hit out ruck – Tim English is an excellent player around the ground and decent clearance winner himself, but usually gets beaten in the ruck contest. They can also seem to do it without being great at winning first possession. They are breaking about even with their opponents in first possession at stoppages this season, yet are still managing to be far better at getting the first effective disposal.

The Bulldogs have also maintained this strength through significant changes in personnel. Jack Macrae, Josh Dunkley, and Bailey Smith have all left the team in recent seasons. Adam Treloar has been injured for most of this one. The mainstays in the middle over the Beveridge years (injuries aside) have been Marcus Bontempelli and Tom Liberatore. Beveridge has kept managing to find good support for his leaders, usually from unlikely sources – most recently former half-back Ed Richards, Carlton discard Matthew Kennedy, and second-year player Joel Freijah.

It takes more than just winning the stoppages for a team to win the premiership, as the Bulldogs have found out over the years. It can certainly give a decent boost though. Even if the Dogs cannot maintain this extraordinarily high level of dominance in stoppages, this area should stand them in really good stead over the rest of 2025.

*Yes, I’m aware of your record this year Collingwood, and still stand by this statement.

AFL Rankings: Round 9 2025

AFL Rankings: Round 8 2025

AFL Rankings: Round 7 2025

AFL Rankings: Round 6 2025

Collingwood are top of the ladder, and has been the most improved team on the rankings this season. They won the premiership in 2023, and then missed the finals altogether the next season. Now though they look back to their premiership-winning form, beating three preliminary finalists by a combined 174 points.

Indeed, they are possibly better so far this season than their 2023 premiership side. That team had only a slight positive differential for inside 50s, contested possessions and possession chains. The current team ranks at or near the top for this statistics.

Much was made of Collingwood’s recruits – two-time All-Australian Dan Houston, Harry Perryman, and Tim Membrey. To some degree this is true – Houston looks to be an upgrade in the backline over John Noble (though Noble is being well-utilised at Gold Coast), and Membrey seems to be a more productive key forward than anyone who stood beside Brody Mihocek last year.

Some of the improvement however seems to have come from within. Steele Sidebottom and Ned Long were respectively ‘too old’ or ‘too young’ to be considered as primary parts of Collingwood’s midfield mix last season. Sidebottom though has almost doubled his contested ‘loose ball gets’, and Long has almost doubled his output across a range of categories. Daniel McStay’s return from injury has also helped with the forward stocks.

Collingwood’s playing list is built for now - it’s the oldest in VFL/AFL history - and it still makes them a premiership threat. Their form over the past month has been historically dominant. Whether they can retain that for the next few months remains to be seen.

AFL Rankings: Round 5 2025

AFL Rankings: Round 4 2025

AFL Rankings: Round 3 2025

After three matches, Melbourne are winless, and in the bottom four. In the rankings, they are in now also in the bottom four. They have been well beaten in their past two matches by North Melbourne and Gold Coast. To be fair, they were very competitive in their first match against GWS, and almost won. Even if they had though, their last two losses would still have them as a bottom four team.

The decline into ‘bottom four-dom’ started happening late last season. They lost three of their last six games by more than 45 points, although they were missing one of their best players in Christian Petracca, and another of their best Clayton Oliver was clearly underdone. And the steady decline has been going on longer than that.

Melbourne’s premiership team in 2021 and finals sides after that were built on a strong midfield and a miserly defence. Currently they have neither. They conceded 120 points to both North Melbourne and Gold Coast. They had 25 less inside 50s than the Suns.

And they are getting smashed in the clearances. They were -12 against the Roos, and -16 against the Suns. This is with a midfield that still includes Max Gawn, Clayton Oliver, Christian Petracca, and Jack Viney, even if the midfield group has been expanded a bit more.

Melbourne’s star midfield quartet has had a 20 per cent combined drop-off in their average AFL Player Rating so far this season compared with 2024 (see table below). Gawn, Petracca, and Viney are averaging two less clearances per game. Oliver is averaging three more, but is averaging six clangers and only three inside 50s. What was once the best midfield in the land has been mediocre, no longer able to more than make up for the team’s other deficiencies.

The prospect of them turning it around is looking bleaker. Gawn will turn 34 this year. Jack Viney will turn 31. Petracca and Oliver should be in their prime, but both have had various dramas over the past couple of years. It was the best Demons team in almost six decades, but its time may be coming to an end.

AFL Rankings: Round 2 2025

After a disappointing 2024, the Adelaide Crows have started off 2025 with two massive wins and two massive scores. First, they kicked 21.9 against St. Kilda to win by 63 points, and then on the weekend they amassed 25.11 to beat Essendon by 61 points. It’s an impressive start to say the least, but how sustainable is it?

As those scorelines indicate, the Crows have been unusually accurate to start the season. Based on the quality of their shots at goal, they scored 24 points more than expected against the Saints and 43 points more than expected against the Bombers.

Still, that is an average expected score of about 115 points, which is nothing to be sneezed at. The Crows are giving themselves plenty of opportunities to score, averaging 61 inside 50s, 11 more than their opposition.

What will be interesting to watch is if they can keep this up without being dominant in the clearances or contested possessions. They’ve been OK in those areas so far, with a +3 differential in clearances, and +4 differential in contested possessions across their first two games.

It is in the uncontested game that the Crows have really excelled though. They took 115 uncontested marks against Essendon on the weekend, compared to the Bombers’ 52. This follows up a figure of 92 uncontested marks to 75 against St. Kilda the week before. (The AFL average is 76.) Winning uncontested possessions does not necessarily lead to winning on the scoreboard, but it’s clearly working for the Crows so far this season.

Adelaide were probably better than their win-loss record last year showed, as they won only two (and drew one) out of nine games that were decided by two goals or less. They look to have significantly improved this season. They’re likely not a 20-goal powerhouse each week, but they seem to have the tools to make the finals for the first time under coach Matthew Nicks.

AFL Rankings: Round 1 2025

Three teams that various pundits can make finals this year, or even challenge for the flag, had poor performances on the weekend – Carlton, Fremantle, and Port Adelaide.

Carlton lost to ‘wooden spoon’ favourites Richmond, after being 41 points ahead. Fremantle got well beaten at ‘the Cattery’, losing by 13 goals to Geelong. In Ken Hinkley’s last season as coach, Port Adelaide recorded their worst loss of his tenure, falling by 91 points to Collingwood.

One of those losses isn’t quite as bad as it appears, if you can get past the odds before the game. Carlton were arguably still the ‘better team’ on the night against Richmond (though the young Tigers, with their efforts to get back and ahead, were surely deserved winners), with eight more scoring shots, 21 more contested possessions, and 25 more inside 50s. Even letting the Tigers get so close though was not a great sign.

Even aside from the scoring margins Fremantle and Port Adelaide were more soundly beaten, although against stronger opposition. Fremantle had 12 less inside 50s and 14 less contested possessions than the Cats, while Port had 17 less inside 50s and only two contested marks against the Pies.  

These were disappointing results, although it is just ‘one game’. The larger point here however is – why were these teams considered contenders anyway? While it would be foolish to count anyone completely out in March, none of them were among the better performed teams last season, and they actually all fell away as the season went on. Carlton has won only two out of their past ten matches, Fremantle has lost their past five, and Port Adelaide suffered a big loss in the finals at home to Geelong before rallying to a close (though impressive) win the next week.

In the rankings, they are in the middle, about dead on average. Certainly things can change over the course of a season, and they could still be premiership contenders. (They could also get worse.) For now though, they seem a fair way off the pace of the competition’s best teams.*

*Watch now as Carlton beat Hawthorn on Thursday night.

AFL Rankings: Opening Round 2025