Big Daddy is home…
Over the past five years of the Mongrel Punt Defensive Player of the Year Award, only one man has finished inside the top ten every single season.
And in 2025, nothing has changed, with the heartbeat of the Brisbane Lions leaping into the number open spot after the third round of the season.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article detailing the wolf, or in this case, the lion sitting atop the hill, and the hungry wolf climbing it.
Harris Andrews still sits atop the hill. Sam Taylor still has a lot of climbing to do.
The Mongrel Punt DPOY fills a hole in the AFL landscape.
With so much attention lavished on the midfielders and forwards, I found that outside of the All-Australian team, there was no real recognition for the best defenders in the game. It was the same for wingmen, and we now cover those players in our Robbie Flower Wingman of the Year Award.
The Defensive Player of the Year does not have the name of a great player attached to it (yet) but what it does have is six years of data analysing the best defenders in the game, ranking them on a weekly basis, and compiling that data into a leaderboard for each season.
We started this in 2020, with Fremantle’s interceptor/defender making the most of the shortened season to win the inaugural award. This accompanied his initial All-Australian selection, however, since then only none of our DPOY selections have worn the blazer – how they missed out is genuinely concerning when you look at who did make it in those seasons.
Previous winners listed below.
2020 – LUKE RYAN
2021 – JACOB WEITERING
2022 – JAMES SICILY
2023 – HARRIS ANDREWS
2024 – SAM COLLINS/LACHIE WHITFIELD (TIED)
How does it work?
Each week, defenders are ranked in a range of categories pertinent to their roles as defenders. These include disposals combined with efficiency, one-percenters, intercepts, rebound 50s, metres gained, tackles, as well as votes from a range of sources.
There is particular focus on the purest of the defensive art – the spoils, and players who excel in that area tend to score consistently throughout the season, as evidenced by Andrews, Weitering, and Collins winning the award.
That said, the man who shared the award with Collins in 2024, Lachie Whitfield, proved that there is definitely scope for a running, rebounding defender to take the award home, too. We are as close to an equal-opportunity DPOY award as you’ll find.
Yep, that’s it for non Inner-Circle members. Sorry people – see below.
Now, I know some of you will ask – I am a member; why can’t I see this? This is for the Inner Circle Member tier – always has been. This is what these people generously pay a bit extra for, so I am more than happy to dive deep for them when it comes to this content. If you’re a Mongrel Member and you’d like to upgrade, go right ahead. If not, that’s cool, as well. But this is not a new thing – has been that way for over three years now. Wanna join them?
