A lot of things are going to happen in the 2017 AFL season; some we can predict, some we cannot. Last year I was accused of making predictions that were not nearly crazy or fearless enough.

That’s fair – most of what was in that column was more your garden-variety football punditry; a team missing the eight here, a team making the eight there, Josh Kennedy to win the Coleman medal, yada yada yada.

Not this year. Let’s get whacky, starting with…

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The Giants will go undefeated at Spotless Stadium

Greater Western Sydney’s fixture is a torturous mess of top eight travel. The Giants jet off to play Adelaide, West Coast, Hawthorn (in Tasmania) and Geelong at their home grounds, as well as doubling up on Sydney and road tripping to Tasmania to play North Melbourne. They play St Kilda and the Western Bulldogs at Etihad Stadium.

Some would call it an AFL House handicap.

The flip side of this horror show is a kind slate of games to be played at Spotless Stadium: Gold Coast, Collingwood, Richmond, Essendon, Geelong, Sydney, Fremantle and West Coast. I see the Giants going 8-0 in those games.

Matt Priddis and Sam Mitchell will lead the league in disposals for a pair

It is hard to overstate the huge potential of this pairing.

Matt Priddis has been working mostly one out on the inside during his 219 game career for the West Coast Eagles.

Sam Mitchell has been the distributor in chief at Hawthorn for the past ten seasons, winning his own ball and acting as middle man for many more Hawks possessions.



He was mostly one out last year, as Alastair Clarkson decided winning the hard ball was too passé for a maturing dynasty.

Priddis and Mitchell played together in the final two of West Coast’s preseason games, with the pair winning 27 and 28, and 27 and 39 disposals against the Dockers and Demons, respectively.

Priddis will enjoy having Mitchell as a running mate to assist him to feed the ball to a potent attacking West Coast midfield, while Mitchell will enjoy the handball artistry of Priddis.

Every second West Coast clearance is going to read Priddis to Mitchell, or Mitchell to Priddis. It’ll be so much fun.

Last year, Sydney’s Josh P Kennedy and Dan Hannebery were the league’s leading disposal winning pair with 62 kicks and handballs a game. Patrick Dangerfield and Joel Selwood were in second on 60 for Geelong.

Priddis and Mitchell will overtake these two dynamic duos, and take this peculiar crown.

Zach Merrett will make the All-Australian squad

Football hasn’t been kind to Essendon’s Zach Merrett. He joined the Dons in the 2013 draft, the year Essendon were stripped of their place in the finals series as a penalty for governance failures relating to their supplements program.



The three years since have been remarkably varied: a finals campaign in his maiden season, a dramatic fall and the spectre of two-thirds of his teammate s being banned for doping violations in 2015, and a doomed-from-the-start 2016 season.

Through it all, Merrett has been a shining light, signalling the promise of renewal at Windy Hill. He had a case to be in the All-Australian squad last season: near enough 30 disposals, 10 contested possessions, six tackles and 444 metres gained per game as a 21-year-old in a VFL midfield.

In the end the inadequacy of his teammates – read, Essendon’s three-win season – cost him. With a sturdier unit around him, Merrett might go backwards in counting stats, but his impact should grow once more. An All-Australian squad spot will be forthcoming.

The AFLPA will secure its players at least a 35 per cent pay increase over the term of the new collective bargaining agreement

It is remarkable that the AFL allowed its clubs to conduct business during last year’s trade period without any idea of the salary cap landscape for the next year and beyond.

It is remarkable still that we sit here, five months later, with no deal done.

The CBA will be tied away before next year’s trade period, with a big jump in the salary cap in prospect. There’s plenty of time to talk about that in the dog days.

Gary Ablett Junior will average 25 disposals and kick two goals per game

It appears Gary Ablett Junior will spend a large chunk of his 2017 running through the Gold Coast midfield.

On JLT Series form, that will be a good thing for the Suns – the little master won 22 touches and kicked two goals in a lone, limited hit out.



He rotated through the midfield and forward line, looking comfortable in both settings.

At the peak of his powers, Ablett was capable of kicking three or four goals a game as a full-time midfielder.

As a time share midfield-forward, a 40+ goal season is well within reach, and 25 disposals is the stuff of mere mortals.

Ablett’s return is one of many reasons to be positive about the Suns’ 2017 prospects.

North Melbourne will outperform their projected win total, but not by enough to make it to September

North Melbourne’s over-under is set at 8.5 wins – level with Gold Coast for third lowest in the competition. That looks low right now.

I’m still convinced North Melbourne are going to be good, but after taking a look across the league I’m even more convinced that good is the new average… if that makes sense.

Preseason form is hard to gauge at the best of times, but for North Melbourne it is nearly impossible.



The Roos were one of seven teams to finish the JLT Series with a percentage of below 100, albeit they played the Swans, Hawks and Giants, all of whom were close to full strength.

They showed space and flash, to complement their stock-in-trade inside grunt work.

A weakened forward line, missing Ben Brown for the entirety and Mason Wood for the second and third games, remained competent and structured, and their midfield delivered what we’ve come to expect.

There is every chance North Melbourne are better than all of last year’s bottom six sides, and at worst find themselves on level pegging with the likes of Fremantle and Essendon.

That alone will help buttress North Melbourne’s competitiveness, and with a favourable draw I’m not at all convinced this is one of the worst four teams in the competition. Let’s see how it all comes together in the first month of the season proper.

Sydney will make it into the top four again, extending their streak to six years

After last week’s news – that Callum Mills had extended his contract with the Sydney Swans through 2022 – we have concrete evidence that Sydney are playing chess while the rest of the competition fumbles around a checkers board.

The administrative excellence of Sydney’s elder brother is one of the AFL’s constants, up there with the Richmond hype train, West Coast’s $5 million annual profit, and merry-go-round nuisance rule changes.

The Swans have finished in the top four during the home-and-away season for five straight seasons, winning two minor premierships and a real deal premiership.



Over that stretch, Sydney have completely overhauled their list, and enter this season with the third-youngest list (when rookies are included – seventh otherwise) in the AFL.

By locking up Mills, the Swans have secured the next evolution of their midfield: Isaac Heeney next comes out of contract in 2022 (the same year as Mills), while Luke Parker and Dan Hannebery are signed on until 2021.

Losing a player of the calibre of Tom Mitchell would hit any other team right between the eyes; the Swans flipped him to Hawthorn for pick 16 (plus a late pick swap), leveraging their own first round pick to trade up into the top 10 and select another high pedigree midfielder Ollie Florent at pick 11. It’s nuts.

Sydney will contend for the premiership once again. They are almost certainly one of the best two or three teams in the competition, with talent across the field and a game style that meshes with the league’s meta-game.

Lance Franklin enters year four of his mega deal, having already made a huge impact for his team, with another title shot.

Jack Bowes will win the Rising Star

Sydney’s Callum Mills showed the way to win: be a prodigiously talented midfielder that plays as a semi-accountable half back to strut your stuff.

Mills was a clear winner last season, and I expect Gold Coast’s Jack Bowes – doing a Mills, according to Gold Coast coach Rodney Eade – will follow suit in 2017.



Bowes is the latest in the AFL’s rapidly expanding man-child production line, with a heft that it used to take three or four seasons for an 18-year-old to work into.

From all reports he is an excellent decision maker, suited to the increasingly important role of set-up man.

Picking the Rising Star before a game has been played is like loading up on 23 red on a dimly lit gaming floor, but I’m fairly confident on this one.

Neither Dustin Martin or Nat Fyfe will change clubs

Sorry Josh, there will be no major free agent move this off season. Mark my words.

Neither Dustin Martin nor Nat Fyfe will begin the 2017 home-and-away season with a secure future beyond this season.

Want to know the number one reason for this? It isn’t the form of their teams, potential suitors or fashion labels; it’s the farcical debacle that is the AFL-AFLPA collective bargaining agreement negotiations.

Both Martin and Fyfe would be mad to sign anything – current club or otherwise – without a complete understanding of how much money is available to potential suitors. That is no doubt the biggest impediment to deals being signed in the short term.

We will take a look at both of these unique players’ situations throughout the year. But as of today, I am extremely confident both will remain with their current clubs.



There is no Moggs Creek factor at play; both have seen their clubs make moves in the off season to build around their prime years; both have tangible ties to their current clubs.

Things can change of course – both Richmond and Fremantle have a not insignificant risk of being terrible this season – but the smart money has to be on them both staying put.

Gary Ablett Junior will change clubs

Who do you think leaked the “Gary Ablett requested a trade” story after last year’s trade period?

The AFL grand final will start at 4:40pm Eastern Standard Time

There is far too much smoke for there to be no fire here. AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan took to Melbourne radio last Friday to declare he was “50/50” on the bounce time of this year’s grand final, in what looks to be the evolution of time change rhetoric which began following his first overseas trip at AFL CEO in 2015.

An even odds chance for change might as well be a confirmation.

It’s a lot of fuss about little, for mine. Yes, there is an element of tradition to the daytime grand final. Yes, there is no burning platform for change, which probably explains the drawn out nature of this debate.

But the global trend is for professional sports to be played in late afternoons and evenings, and in many ways the AFL is a hold out when it comes to this trend.



If the time change is coming, let’s hope confirmation comes sooner rather than later so we don’t have dozens of think pieces penned from the usual suspects when there’s actual football to write about.

In keeping with the even season, the Brownlow medal will be close run and won with 25 votes or less

Please don’t bet on the basis of this call; it’s 100 per cent gut feel.

I expect this year’s Brownlow medal count with eschew the blow outs of recent years and be something more in keeping with Adam Cooney’s 2008 win: 24 votes with a bunch of players finishing within a couple of strong games of pinching the medal.

Any of the usual suspects – past winners or strong vote winners – is in play.

We must start with the position that Dangerfield’s 2016 season is an anomaly; we cannot be sure 2017 Fyfe will be 2015 Fyfe. Dustin Martin’s Tigers can be expected to be a better team than last season. Luke Parker has assumed the mantle of “Sydney player most likely to poll among a blue chip midfield”. Rory Sloane is just hitting his prime. GWS polled the second most votes in the competition last year. Marcus Bontempelli scored 20 votes despite a slow start to the 2016 season.

In a season where every team will battle for every win all season, the conditions are ripe for a low scoring count. 25 votes or less will win the thing.

Every single Friday night football game will be appointment viewing

Check the slate for yourself. Yes, there’s a lot of red, white and blue, and a decent share of red and white, but there’s nary a potential fizzer on the schedule – Essendon’s two games notwithstanding. As I said on the release of last year’s fixture, Friday night is the league’s marquee spot once again.



Port Adelaide will go sideways, and they may begin looking for a new coach before the year is out

Ugh, where to begin with Port Adelaide. Finals runs of years past now look increasingly like they caused a case of Carlton Confusion: an over-rating of the team’s list, leading to a clutch of win-now moves that only push the team so much further. Don’t believe me?

We are only at the circumstantial phase of the case. Port Adelaide could still surprise the punditry with a solid 2017 season.

The Power, and Ken Hinkley, presaged the fast football evolution in their 2013 and 2014 finals runs, but have been caught out. Everyone else has caught up with pace and space.

I wrote after Round 4 last year that the Power could have slipped into the bottom four.

Port tightened things up over the remainder of 2016, but not by enough to escape a losing record.

They did, however, underperform their Pythagorean expected win total by 2.2 wins, suggesting the team could expect a bit more luck to go their way in 2017.

And its possible Hinkley has changed things up. Port get Patrick Ryder back from his year-long suspension – Angus Monfries too but I’m not sure he’s a regular part of this team going forward – and will surely play him as a ruckman.



Chad Wingard looks set for a stint in the midfield, a calculated risk that sacrifices some mercurialism inside forward 50 to add some dynamism to the on-ball division.

Most teams would enjoy the services of Wingard, Ollie Wines and Robbie Gray as a centre bounce trio.

Travis Boak appears to have been shifted a few places down the midfield rotation, lining up outside of the centre square more frequently during the JLT Series.

Jackson Trengove’s on-ball heroics from last season will be reprised, albeit on the ground rather than as the ruckman. Jack Hombsch is now running Port’s defensive 50, with Hamish Hartlett moving to the back line.

Many pundits have the Power falling right off the pace, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen.

Port Adelaide have plenty of nice players, and a handful of studs. There’s question marks about the team’s depth, although between mature age recruit Brett Eddy and man-child Sam Powell-Pepper, competition for spots will be healthier than in recent years.



A trip back to September looks a step too far this season, mostly due to the competition around Port Adelaide rather than any fundamental internal deterioration.

Unfortunately for Hinkley, that’s unlikely to please the club’s higher authority.

Stagnation, combined with precariously positioned demographics – Port Adelaide have 15 players aged 24 to 29 this year, equal to or more than challengers Melbourne, Collingwood and St Kilda, and more than last year’s finalists the Dogs, Giants and Swans – might force the board’s hand.

The AFL’s China experiment will be a success, with a sell-out crowd, and great local coverage

And the home team will win.

By which I mean Gold Coast.

For karmic reasons.

Melbourne will beat St Kilda in Round 1 and North Melbourne in Round 9

It’s close, but Melbourne enter 2017 as the best of the rest of last season. All of the pieces are beginning to fall into place, with a decent schedule enough to push the Dees into 12 or 13 win territory.



That should be plenty good enough for finals football this season.

In my view, a critical part of rising from bland to solid is overcoming silly hoodoos. The Dees have two whoppers: they haven’t beaten St Kilda since the 2006 elimination final, and North Melbourne since Round 20, 2006.

Those losing streaks stand at 14 and 15 games. As a matter of cosmic significance, the Dees have been scheduled to play both of their bogey teams twice this season.

Melbourne are good, and good enough to beat both St Kilda and North Melbourne. They will do so in their respective first meetings with each team – this Saturday’s game against the Saints has emerged as match of the round in a stellar slate.

Patrick Cripps will become the second player in VFL/AFL history to record 200 clearances in a season

Brett Ratten holds the VFL/AFL record for clearances won in a season with 265 in 1999. No one else has won more than 200 in a single season – Sydney’s Josh P Kennedy is in second place with 191 last season. He also holds third and fourth spot on the all-time list.

Rounding out the top five is Carlton’s Patrick Cripps, whose 2016 saw him generate 185 clearances.

First things first: what the freaking hell was Ratten on in 1999? He averaged 10.2 clearances per game over 26 games, so even if he’d only played 22 games it’s likely Ratten still would have cracked 200.

Being more interested in Pokemon than drop punts before the turn of the century, someone will have to fill me in.



More importantly, Cripps is firmly in the frame to crack the double-ton in 2017. There’s little doubt his long frame gives him Kennedy-like leverage, and his role allows him to control Carlton’s output around stoppages. Moving from 185 to 200 clearances is less than an extra clearance per game – he’ll get there.

A player will go third-man-up by mistake

Now that the AFL has tightened up the Gore Rule, the stage is set for a former exponent of the third-man-up ruck tactic to blow their brains out all over a field.

There were 19 players that averaged 20 disposals and at least 1.5 hit outs per game last year – I won’t list them all, but of the group I’d say the hypercompetitive Nat Fyfe is the most likely offender.

In reality, a third-man-up free kick is almost certainly going to be paid in a situation where there are two ruckmen from the same team around a stoppage. They aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, after all.

Telstra’s AFL Live Crowd Support page will quieten down

Finger’s crossed. Since everyone discovered at the same time (20 seconds into the first JLT Series game) that there’d been a slight tweak to the AFL’s digital broadcast agreement with Telstra, resulting in a hard “seven inch” screen size broadcast limit imposed on the AFL Live app, Telstra’s Crowd Support page has been bombarded with complaints and abuse.

The reason for the change is obvious: News Corporation, which part owns Foxtel, are seeking to drive more previous AFL Live subscribers to pay $55 a month for Foxtel’s $29 Sport package (it must be bundled with a $26 a month basic package).

If you want to watch in HD, that’s an extra $10 a month. If you want to stream in HD, well, bad luck right now.



That’s the AFL’s prerogative. News Corporation obviously presented HQ with an offer they couldn’t refuse (sans the horse head… I guess…).

This broadcast agreement is locked in for six years, meaning the AFL’s over-the-top digital solution – which, by the way, is improving rapidly across every other major global sporting league – will be inferior to its previous iteration through to the start of the 2023 season. 2023! Foxtel probably won’t exist in 2023.

All we can hope is Telstra’s foreshadowed improvements to the AFL Live app are material enough to make the subscription price worth it.

In the meantime, fans will be forced pay $385 for the ability to stream live AFL games at a full-screen size on their tablet, compared to $89 last year.

Brisbane’s defence will improve by at least four goals a game

Brisbane’s defence offered the protection of flywire-door-in-a-cyclone last season. As Adrian Polykandrites put it a few week’s back, the Lions’ tactics were akin to playing Russian roulette with bullets in every chamber.

They took pace and space literally; leave lots of space for your opponent to score with great pace.

The Lions’ opponents scored 130.5 points per game on them last season – almost seven goals more than league average, and four goals more than the 17th placed Essendon.

It was across the board: 62.4 inside 50s conceded, scores conceded on 53 per cent of opposition inside 50s, and an opponent goal kicking percentage of 59 per cent: last, last and dead stinking last.



It was one of the worst single season performances of all-time – and I wager if you were to adjust for era, it could be No.1.

Clubs have been accused of tanking on better defensive performances than this (I am not accusing Brisbane of tanking).

Chris Fagan, Brisbane’s new head coach, has already bought a sense of structure and stability to his team’s stopping power.

The Lions won’t become the best defensive team in the competition overnight, and their key position stocks are mostly full of youngsters with plenty to learn. But having a defensive plan is worth four goals alone.

Adelaide will patch together a competent midfield, and record a positive inside 50 differential on the year

Plenty has been made of Adelaide’s relatively thin midfield this preseason; I jumped on the bandwagon a couple of weeks ago. Upon closer inspection, I’m jumping off.

Adelaide should have the stocks to piece together a solid enough midfield that can take advantage of their strengths at either end of the ground.

Rory Laird has looked at home in the patches of midfield play he’s been afforded in his JLT Series hit outs, and he can be expected to roll through there with greater frequency in the season proper.



If Wayne Milera gets a decent run at the senior team, he and Charlie Cameron can rotate through.

Troy Menzel has emerged from whatever bear trap he was stuck in looking more like a nuggety midfielder than flashy small forward.

Dean Gore might get a chance to become more than a rounding error in the Patrick Dangerfield trade.

There are options even if they are hardly ideal – although Laird’s ultimate destination is probably as a full-time midfielder.

Indeed, if I were Don Pyke I’d be more worried about the fingernail depth of Adelaide’s ruck stocks, particularly now Sam Jacobs is getting close to 30 years old as a career full-time ruckman.

All told, Adelaide’s cobbled together midfield should be enough to see the Crows tread water or slip back just a little, meaning they’ll record a positive inside 50 differential.

There will be only one change to last year’s finalists

It is going to be really tough for most of the AFL’s rising middle class to break into the top eight and play September football this season.

The likes of Melbourne, St Kilda, Richmond, Collingwood, Gold Coast and Port Adelaide could find themselves playing really good football… and missing the big dance.



There’s been some talk about ladder inertia in recent weeks – that counts for nothing in a single season setting. It is not a compelling reason to predict any of last year’s finalists will fall out of the gate (other than North Melbourne).

Coaches will be moved on after this season – the only question is the number. There’s a strong argument to be made that those who lose their jobs will do so mostly on the basis of bad timing.

2017 is shaping up as a thoroughly gripping 28-week contest to crown the first among as large a group of equals as we have seen begin an AFL season in a decade.

We’ve spent the past nine weeks scratching the surface of the potential madness of the football year ahead. Let’s go.

Here goes everything…

This is not the AFL ladder for 2017. It will look something like this – there will be eight teams that make it into the finals series and ten teams that do not, for example – but it will almost certainly not look exactly like this.

GWS Giants

West Coast Eagles

Sydney Swans

Western Bulldogs

Hawthorn Hawks

Adelaide Crows

Melbourne Demons

Geelong Cats

—–

Richmond Tigers

St Kilda Saints

Collingwood Magpies

Gold Coast Suns

Port Adelaide Power

North Melbourne Kangaroos

Fremantle Dockers

Essendon Bombers

Carlton Blues

Brisbane Lions

There is a long list of things I do not like about this ladder.



I do not like that I can only find one new spot in finals, and that it is the most obvious spot.

I do not like that I have a 17-win, 143-percentage Geelong team falling to eighth spot.

I do not like that North Melbourne are in the bottom six (albeit they could be there with eight wins).

I do not like that Richmond, St Kilda and Collingwood are all on the outside looking in.

I do not like that a team with Nat Fyfe at the helm is sitting in 15th place.

I do not like that I ran through the fixture and gave Greater Western Sydney 21 wins – that’s not healthy.

I do not like that Hawthorn are outside the top four, given they added both an A+ and B+ midfielder and have a genuine key forward in their best 22.

I do not like that there is no way to predict which of last year’s top seven gets smashed by injuries and falls out of contention.



They are some of the things I don’t like about this ladder. The one rock solid thing I do like about this ladder is that it will be wrong. It will be wrong in ways that we cannot foresee, and could hope to predict.