Like a lot of hardcore football fans, I can get pretty cranky when what passes for discussion about the game seems anything but, more about things like dollars, contracts, hirings and firings and petty squabbles, than actual kicks, marks and handballs.
Sometimes, however, it's unavoidable, some of the "off-field" stuff of such consequence to what happens on the field that it simply can't be ignored. In 2025, as I hand out my mid-season gongs, I feel like there's been equal amounts of both. Whatever, there's certainly been no shortage of incident. The highlights? Lowlights? The headlines? Here you go...
The 'Keystone Cops' award
The grumbling about the current AFL administration from the 18 clubs had been going on a while, but at least last year was confined mostly to a whispering campaign. But in just half a season in 2025, it boiled over into little short of outright rebellion after a series of missteps and own goals from footy ops boss Laura Kane and AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon on matters like Richmond defender Noah Balta's suspension for four games for an assault, lenient treatment of Willie Rioli's threats to Western Bulldog opponent Bailey Dale, the embarrassing to-and-froing with AFL umpires over their actions on Lachie Schultz's concussion.
Frankly, for a couple of weeks there, the AFL executive looked like a bunch of amateurs, straight out Keystone Cops. In that context, the appointment, then, of highly-respected club administrators Greg Swann and Tom Harley to the key AFL roles of executive general manager of football performance and chief operating officer respectively, is a desperately needed public relations masterstroke. Not only will it shore up Dillon's authority in the CEO chair by placating the clubs, but give the AFL machinery a more open and relatable look and feel. You sense already the operations at AFL headquarters are going to come across far less like a bureaucracy and far more like primarily an actual football competition, something all those in the higher echelons would do well to remember more often.
The 'Blue Rinse' award
In football, it seems grey is the new black. Three years after Geelong fielded the oldest team ever as it swept to Grand Final victory, Collingwood is putting an even older team on the park, and looking a cut above the rest of the competition in the process. Apart from an opening round stumble, the Pies haven't missed a beat, winning 11 of 12 games and losing to Geelong only because Jack Crisp missed a shot after the siren.
Huge defensively, where Jeremy Howe has been a rock, and supreme midfield, where Josh and Nick Daicos turn it on week after week and the rejuvenated 37-year-old Scott Pendlebury and 34-year-old Steele Sidebottom do similarly, and potent up forward, where Jamie Elliott is on fire with four bags of five goals or more, Collingwood is still winning the close ones but also putting plenty of rivals to the sword, winning five games by seven goals or more. All this despite Jordan De Goey barely having played a part. The Pies sure know how to hang on to a lead. And their game-and-a-half break on the rest of the competition already looks like a chasm.
The 'Let Them Eat Cake' award
There's plenty of people who'll say "told you so" about the increasingly precarious proposition that is the AFL's 19th team, Tasmania Devils. Unfortunately, not enough of them have anything to do with a league which has been too convinced it could arrogantly impose its vision of a new roofed-stadium on the state's public. After just assuming an unconvincing economic case for a venue for which proposed cost is now in the order of $1 billion would find favour, the league has run up against political turmoil and some vehement public opposition, despite the fact both major political parties are firm supporters of the stadium proposal.
Given that the state budget and its forecasts of massive, spiralling debt was the trigger for a no-confidence vote against Liberal premier Jeremy Rockliff and the calling of another election on 19 July, it's hard to see how even a change of government is going to placate the naysayers, far more concerned by very real problems of homelessness and in health and education than about just where the Devils may play. And particularly when there are two existing venues already being used for AFL football in Launceston and Hobart. I still find it hard to believe the AFL and its club would rather the whole thing fall over than at least get the Devils playing where Hawthorn and North Melbourne currently do.
The 'Short Memory' award
They say progress isn't always linear, but when, after four years of steady progression, Matthew Nicks' Crows took a step back last year, falling from narrowly missing finals to 15th, critical expectations about this season were anything but bullish. But at the halfway point, they're looking a lock for a top four spot, let alone a first finals appearance since 2017.
The recruitment of durable midfield pair Alex Neal-Bullen and James Peatling has been inspired, and just a little extra depth has really let the likes of brilliant skipper Jordan Dawson and Izak Rankine off the chain. Adelaide is back to its explosive best up forward, keys Riley Thilthorpe and Darcy Fogarty and smalls Ben Keays and Josh Rachele all in the AFL's top 20 goalkickers. But down back is the biggest statistical improvement. The Crows had been ninth and 10th for fewest points conceded the last two seasons. This year, they're second, and the likes of Josh Worrell, Mark Keane and veteran Rory Laid, returned to defence, have been standouts. With just one defeat by any more than 10 points, Adelaide is also avoiding those untimely lapses of yore. It's been a while in the making, but Nicks' rebuild of the Crows looks genuinely threatening now.
The 'Days Of Our Lives' award
This football soap opera has been going on so long now it's easy to forget it first emerged to the wider public only late in January, when the Western Bulldogs released a statement confirming that Jamarra Ugle-Hagan was dealing with "personal issues" and "undertaking flexible training arrangements". What became clearer the closer the season crept was that the Dogs would indeed have to solider on without their one-time star key forward potentially all season as he stayed away not just from training, but the club entirely. Since then, updates have been delivered primarily through sometimes disturbing second and third-hand reports of erratic behaviour off the field, and some occasionally cryptic social media posts from the man himself.
More recent updates, however, have been more promising for Bulldog fans, indeed the game as a whole, with Ugle-Hagan spending time at a health retreat in northern NSW, and last week posting a Rocky-style training montage that appeared to show his physical and mental health improving. Can he still play a part in the Bulldogs' season? Now that would be the stuff of a Hollywood drama.
The 'Walked Under A Ladder' award
To those who scoff at the dreaded "curse of the thrashed Grand Finalist", you convinced now? OK, so it's a longish bow, but Adelaide post-2017 and GWS post-2019 now appear to have company in the annals of teams whose Grand Final nightmares merely continued into the following season. New coach Dean Cox couldn't have copped a worse deal to start than the Swans' ridiculous catalogue of early-season injury, starting with midfield heartbeat Errol Gulden breaking an ankle pre-season. Skipper Callum Mills and star goalsneak Tom Papley have barely played at all, key forward Logan McDonald indeed not at all, and Joel Amartey has missed more games than he's played. With Isaac Heeney and Chad Warner both curbed at stages, what's emerged is the extent to which that pair and Gulden dictate their team's fortunes, and the perhaps even less palatable truth that Sydney's depth isn't quite what we once thought.
The Swans have come back from here before; in 2023, they were bottom four with only seven rounds remaining but still made finals. But somehow the odds seem greater this time, more senior hands out of touch, more critical parts of the equation trying to put things right with little continuity under their belts. And a coach still feeling his way in the driver's seat. All very different from the three-game break Sydney had on the rest of the competition around the same time last year.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.
Jarryd Barca and Mason Cox react to the AFL's decision to again stick with tradition and lock in a 2:30pm first bounce for this year's decider.