A new season, and it started with a… slightly less audible bang than it really should.
Yes, Opening Round was with us again, meaning just under half te league was left sitting on their hands, waiting and watching as the competition started.
Not exactly a great way to kick things off if you’re a supporter of one of those teams, but I guess the AFL knows what they’re doing, right?
Right?!?!
Yeah, of course they know – they’re highly-paid professionals.
With that out of the way, the commencement of the season means that our weekly updates… or almost weekly updates for some article, jump into action again, and one of them is this baby.
The Mongrel Punt Defensive Player of the Year is now in Year Seven. That’s right, we’ve graduated to high school. It fills a hole in the AFL landscape that is sorely neglected by both the league, and the AFL Media as a whole.
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)
2025 – HARRIS ANDREWS
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, contest wins, 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.
So, 2026 started with one of the big boys having a great weekend, only to be spoiled by one action that’ll cost him weeks. Meanwhile, another who stalled in 2025 has made the right moves to start 2026.
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?
