Your 2025 AFL Draft Questions Answered
The AFL Draft has snuck up on me this year given I had a lot of burnout from full time work, study, sports and just plain laziness. Als0, I haven’t even begun my final phantom draft (keep your eyes peeled for that one to be released soon).
But for the third year in a row the Mongrel Punt Draft Q&A is here, where you guys give me your questions and I do my best Cal Twomey impersonation and pretend like I know what I’m doing.
After all, anyone who tried to predict a draft will tell you it’s a crapshoot at best.
But that doesn’t stop me trying, so let’s look at those questions.
Thesmalltrades (reddit) asks: Thanks for posting. Always interested to see how you guys rank drafts.
I’m curious to see why you think the Eagles will take Marsh, as key position forwards (which is how he has been labelled in reports) seem to be the one area we seem to have depth (Archer Reid, Shanahan, Waterman, and potentially Williams) — and we’re seriously lacking elsewhere.
The answer lays simply that I think that the Eagles need to take the best player available at this given spot. Cooper Duff-Tytler and Willem Duursma are more or less locked in and that makes 100% sense as the two best non-attached players in the draft. Bids on Zeke Uwland and Harry Dean make sense here too.
The Eagles dream scenario is local product Jacob Farrow, who they’d love to fall but it feels less and less likely now. Referring back to my mock draft however with Mitch Marsh, I felt it made sense given I think having multiple developing talls goes a long way (see Richmond and how they picked three talls last season to promising signs).
But my final mock draft will be out this week. Will we see Marsh there? We’ll have to see.
We continue with the Eagles with Benjamin Wood asking: You do you think the Eagles will draft and any ideas if we will trade picks at the draft?
I could 100% see the Eagles trading up to land Jacob Farrow if possible, but the problem is Carlton will jettison their picks to North Melbourne and Essendon so I’m not sure where they might find a partner now.
Duursma and Duff-Tytler are pretty much locks, so I think it might be a case of the Eagles just waiting to see if someone they really like falls to them. I wonder if Josh Lindsay, an incredible kick who can play off halfback or in the midfield, could be a strong fit for them.
Dale Ford takes us to NSW with: Will Jacob Farrow by available at pick 12. He seems to suit our (GWS) usual strategy and we tend to like WA juniors. Of course we may surprise, I think our board is restricted to players who we believe want to come. Not an issue at the bottom of the draft where players just want AFL primarily but at the top they are going to an AFL club.
I think Cody Angove was a great call though.
You’re certainly right that the GWS draft board is a weird one. They throw out traditional draft boards and just go with how they see it, Cody Angove being one of the biggest bolters in recent memory.
As for Jacob Farrow, as mentioned above it just seems very unlikely now. I actually mocked Farrow to GWS in my current mock but I wonder if the late mail suggesting he has top 10 hype now will force me to change that (hey another cheap plug for the mock draft next week, who would have thought?).
Sam Griffiths wants to take us to the future, asking a 2026 question with: Will the addition of Dougie Cochrane be the massive upside that Port were hoping for next year once next year’s draft concession changes are done, or are Port going to have to trade up significantly to make the high pick happen?
So in short, the new draft rules next year for matching NGA bids means that teams can only match a bid with two picks now which is going to involve some wheeling and dealing as right now Dougie Cochrane is considered the odds on favourite to be the #1 pick in 2026.
Also teams have a 10% decrease on draft point matching starting this year, down from 20% from previous year (which is why Carlton are trading out both of their first rounders like madmen as the two pick rule is not in place yet as I mistakenly said in my first mock draft, whoops).
Pick 1 (if we assume he went top of the draft), is 3000 points which with the 10% discount means they have to match with two picks equal to 2700 points. The exact bundle of picks needed depends of course, but as a guideline the Blues holding #9 and #11 is 2560 points. Which is actually short of what Port would need.
So it all depends of course where the bid comes too. Some #1 calibre players such as Nick Daicos and Levi Ashcroft actually fell a bit because teams at the top of the draft don’t bid much. Even the Eagles are only likely to bid on Zeke Uwland and maybe Harry Dean with their #2 pick and not #1.
But as for Cochrane himself (disclaimer, I am a mad Port fan), the granting of Port’s priority access to him is literally the most exciting draft related news I’ve ever had. A 196cm utility that can play literally anything and who kicked 4 goals in the first half of his senior SANFL debut, he’s a special kind of unicorn.
Oh wait, did I say “in short” at the beginning? My bad.
On the topic of draft bidding, Dalton Masterson asks: What could be the best way to ensure the best talent goes to all teams available, instead of the same over and over?
I’m actually against any sort of alteration to the rules right now, and not just because Port have a bumper crop over the upcoming two years. The AFL have kneejerked their way into more changes (the two pick rule) for 2026 because clubs like St Kilda and Geelong were complaining, but the last time they changed the rules was in 2024 AFTER the draft.
So in short, the rules they changed literally didn’t even go into effect for the next draft before they changed it again. That’s ridiculous.
I think the rules right now are going to be good though. The 10% discount is going to be making it tighter for clubs to match bids for multiple players (the Suns may run into that problem this year), while if you have some special high-end talent the two-pick rule is going to have to force some big trade decisions to accumulate the necessary picks.
Dalton also asks: With future picks now available two years in, should picks be available to trade throughout the season as well?
Unlike most, I am in favour of a midseason trade period eventually coming in. I think teams rebuilding anyway could actually net higher returns on players from more panicky finals chasing teams than if they get it at the end of the season.
But fans are notoriously allergic to changes in the way the game is run, so maybe a soft pick-only midseason trade period for a week could be a thought?
On the topic of trading picks, we have this from Neil Sproat: I don’t understand the points system. GCS seem to have a pocket full of top picks each year and can trade them for points that seem to be a lot lower picks.
In short, this is to do with the 20% draft deduction for matching bids which used to make it very easy for teams to match bids on high end talent for seemingly nothing.
This isn’t really on the Suns, they just have more bids to match than anyone else thanks to their Academy. But those loopholes are closing now and the Suns have some big bids to match this year which makes me wonder if some of the later bids might not be matched.
Anthony Benkovich asks: Who needs to nail this draft the most and why is it Essendon?
I actually 100% agree with this. Essendon, along with Melbourne and West Coast, are the three teams that need to get these picks right before Tasmania enter the comp (I’m not counting Richmond due to what I feel is going to be an amazing 2024 draft class).
But Essendon especially need to nail this. They’ve given up on a first round bust in Ben Hobbs and Elijah Tsatas is closely following behind on that road. Their captain wanted to leave for their archrival and their midfield is horrendous.
It’s not all doom and gloom though. While this is a weaker draft in general, there are some good midfield options and they do have three high picks. Also maybe their horrible injury luck will work out for the long term as it might have allowed them to unearth some hidden gems on the list like Archer May.
Troy Newton asks: Are Fremantle stupid enough to add Mason Cox to their list?
This is technically a draft question as he can be picked up in the rookie draft, but I don’t know if it can be considered stupid. Rucks are hard to come by and to get an experienced ruck as your third stringer isn’t the worst idea in the world.
Jason Carlon takes us back to Richmond with: Harry Scott looks likely to be picked up, he’s currently training with the main squad.
Do you think Richmond use pick 38 considering Louis Kellaway will probably get picked up outside the top 50 using pick 81 to match at no cost.
Or if a player like Ollie Greeves is still available do they look at trading back into the draft?
This is interesting because the Tigers do have six list spots available at time of writing, but they could use up to half of them to promote Seth Campbell, Mykelti Lefau and James Tresize to the senior list. This would give them three picks.
We know for sure they’re using at least two and it doesn’t seem logical to pass early with #38. So it’s going to depend on the amount of promotions the Tigers do. I don’t know if the Tigers would give up a future pick in a stronger draft to get Greeves though.
Aden Walters signs us off with: Your prediction for biggest bolter and slider?
Sullivan Robey for bigger bolter by far. We haven’t seen someone rocket up draft boards this quickly since Clayton Oliver. It needs to be said that 12 months ago, nobody knew the name of this kid and now he’s going to be picked in the top 10. In terms of surprises on the day, I’m eyeing GWS off with interest here because they have no regard for traditional draft boards.
As for the faller, the faller I had in my draft was Oskar Taylor who I simply couldn’t find any room for. But I also wonder about when the second ruckman is going to come off the board after Cooper Duff-Tytler. With that in mind, I wonder if Louis Emmett is going to fall deeper in the second round like a similar prospect last year in Alex Dodson.
That’s going to conclude us here with the Q&A, but be sure to keep an eye out for the final mock draft to come out before the draft this week as we welcome our newest AFL players!
