There are few things the AFL media loves more than a pile-on. Once a player becomes unfashionable in the eyes of the footy media world, the industry moves quickly: nuance disappears, context evaporates, and a pre-written narrative starts to matter more than real output, performance, data and cold, hard facts.
For the past two seasons, Clayton Oliver has been relentlessly attacked – for both his on-field performance and through rampant, often unsubstantiated off-field speculation – by many in the footy media and the AFL ecosystem more broadly. I have the receipts, and it is a long list. Rarely was there serious acknowledgement that Oliver was largely being judged against his own absurdly high standards. Even less weight (and due sympathy) was given to the well-documented personal challenges he was carrying, the alarming level of media scrutiny surrounding him, and the wider dysfunction at Melbourne.
That narrative now looks ridiculous and many media figures’ comments and views on Clayton have aged like milk.
In 2026, Oliver is not merely “back”. He is putting together one of the best midfield seasons in the competition. On any serious, balanced reading of the numbers, he is a clear top-10 player in the AFL right now – yes, you read that correctly – and you could mount a very strong case that, among pure inside midfielders, he is the best in the game.
The silence around Clayton’s prolific season has perhaps unsurprisingly been deafening.
Part of that is because he now plays for GWS, a club that simply does not receive the same level of coverage as the Victorian outfits. If Clayton Oliver were producing this season in a Melbourne jumper – or certainly in a Collingwood jumper, had the Pies had their way in the off-season – the conversation would be unavoidable. Instead, because he is doing it in orange and charcoal, the football world has been slow to notice.
But after 10 rounds, the numbers are not subtle. The numbers are screaming.
Clayton Oliver’s 2026 season is unmistakably elite
Not “good”. Not “solid”. Elite.
Oliver’s 2026 league rankings across the key statistical metrics for a midfielder are extraordinary:
Metric | AFL Ranking
Contested possessions | 1st
Clearances | 1st
Stoppage clearances | 1st
Ground ball gets | 1st
Handballs | 1st
Total possessions | =1st
Effective disposals | 4th
Disposals | 4th
Centre clearances | 8th
Score involvements | 10th
Score launches | 9th
Score launches (among non-ruckmen) | 1st
Tackles | =24th
His season averages are just as compelling:
Metric | Clayton Oliver
Disposals | 31.2
Effective disposals | 23.7
Disposal efficiency | 76%
Clearances | 8.2
Stoppage clearances | 5.1
Centre clearances | 3.1
Contested possessions | 15.5
Ground ball gets | 11.0
Score involvements | 7.4
Score launches | 2.8
Tackles | 4.7
Handballs | 21.2
That is a million miles away from the profile of a “fading player” – or, as Kane Cornes inexplicably put it, a “roadblock” and someone “the game has gone past”. The numbers above are, very plainly, quite blatantly the profile of a dominant, elite midfielder still operating around the very top of the AFL talent table.
The criticism of Oliver’s disposal has also aged poorly. At 76% disposal efficiency while winning the hardest ball in the game and distributing most prolifically in the league by hand – often rapidly, under immense contested pressure – he is certainly not “butchering it”. He is being highly effective in one of the toughest and most important roles in the sport: absorbing contact, winning contested possession, collecting ground balls better than anyone in the competition, feeding runners, launching scores, winning clearances and doing the heavy lifting that allows cleaner outside players to shine. As for kicking efficiency: here is a fun fact, Clayton Oliver has a better percentage than Nick Daicos this season. Let that sink in.
Perhaps most importantly, Oliver is also eviscerating another lazy line of criticism: that he does not do enough damage.
He is 10th in the competition for score involvements and the number one non-ruckman for score launches. That matters. It obliterates the idea that he is merely a stoppage accumulator with limited offensive impact. For a defensive-minded, predominantly defensive-sided midfielder to be registering that level of score involvement is remarkable and it is a metric that his embarrassed detractors have conveniently ignored.
He is not just winning the hardest ball better than anyone. He is turning it into scores.
He is having major impact. That is not an opinion. That is a fact.
The most valuable player in football is still the elite inside midfielder
Modern football analysis has developed a strange habit of fetishising the pretty parts of the game while undervaluing the brutal ones.
The outside runner who receives the easy ball in space is celebrated. The half-back distributor with time and separation is celebrated. The uncontested king whose teammates actively look for him at every opportunity is definitely celebrated.
Those players matter.
But their impact is so often made possible by the player at the coalface: the player who wins the contest, lives in peak pressure moments, creates the clearance, wins the ground ball, makes the first decision under that pressure and allows the system to function.
The personification of that player is Clayton Oliver.
For midfielders, the most important metrics are not mysterious: clearances, contested possessions, effective disposals, disposal efficiency and score involvements tell the story about as clearly as anything can. Measuring midfielders is not a particularly ambiguous, subjective science – it is actually very easily achieved assessing all of the relevant, important statistical categories – this method also eliminates the noise, avalanche of bias and subsequent plethora of errant subjectivity and high-volume of inevitable human error.
Across those unambiguous, obvious pillars, Oliver’s profile is absurdly good.
He is first for contested possessions. First for clearances. Fourth for effective disposals. Tenth for score involvements. That combination is not just rare. It is almost unheard of.
In fact, if AFL fans were asked to build a formula for ranking midfielders – and weighted the things that actually matter most – Oliver would almost certainly sit at number one, or at the very least firmly inside the top five in almost all equations and scenarios. That is because most reasonable formulas built around stats and facts would have him as the most valuable midfielder in the competition, if not the most valuable player outright.
The comparison with other stars exposes the bias
Caleb Serong is a star. Nobody serious disputes that. He is rightly considered one of the better midfielders in the competition.
But compare Serong’s 2026 season to Oliver’s:
Metric | Clayton Oliver | Caleb Serong
Disposals | 31.2 | 24.9
Effective disposals | 23.7 | 16.3
Disposal efficiency | 76% | 66%
Contested possessions | 15.5 | 12.2
Ground ball gets | 11.0 | 8.1
Score involvements | 7.4 | 6.2
Tackles | 4.7 | 4.5
Serong is excellent. Oliver has simply been much better.
Then look at Marcus Bontempelli, widely regarded as either the best player in the game or, for Nick Daicos devotees, the second best – and this year’s Brownlow favourite.
Metric | Clayton Oliver | Marcus Bontempelli
Disposals | 31.2 | 27.3
Effective disposals | 23.7 | 19.6
Clearances | 8.2 | 4.8
Contested possessions | 15.5 | 10.5
Ground ball gets | 11.0 | 7.0
Score involvements | 7.4 | 6.7
Score launches | 2.8 | 1.3
Tackles | 4.7 | 4.3
Disposal efficiency | 76% | 72%
Bontempelli is a champion. He may well be the best player in the AFL. That is not the point.
The point is that Oliver’s 2026 output sits very comfortably and very obviously in that company – and in several of the major midfield categories, ahead of it.
Yet one player is granted the hero, almost uncriticisable status he deserves, while the other has copped an avalanche of insults, scrutiny and, at times, what looked a lot like bullying dressed up as so-called ‘analysis.’ I could name names but I won’t. I’ll give most of these repeat offenders a fair warning and a chance to redeem themselves…
I am all for reasonable criticism of players. It is very much part of the job for those in the football media. But when the criticism is trash – when it lacks basic fairness, perspective and proper analysis – then that junk deserves to be illuminated and called out.
When the narrative police get it horribly wrong, they deserve to be embarrassed.
Kane Cornes and the media pile-on have aged badly
Kane Cornes belongs in that basket when it comes to his Clarry takes.
Don’t get me wrong – I like Kane Cornes. I respect that he has strong opinions and does his homework. He has built a career on saying what others will not, and football is much better when commentators are willing to offer real views rather than safe, non-contributing media-trained fog.
But on Clayton Oliver, the criticism has gone well beyond his usual sharp analysis. It became relentless, lacking in basic objectivity, and increasingly wrong.
When Oliver moved to GWS, Cornes asked how much “buyer’s remorse” the Giants might already have after Oliver’s public exchanges with members of the media. He called Oliver’s conduct “incredibly stupid” and “highly embarrassing”, and warned that the Giants would need to “rein this guy in”. That was not an obscure view. It reflected the broader tone of a football media class that had largely written Oliver off and probably wanted him to fail in some instances.
The problem is that football and facts have not backed them up.
Even when his form dipped over the previous couple of seasons, his football was nowhere near as bad on paper as the tone and scale of the criticism suggested.
GWS did not acquire a “washed” player. They acquired a 28-year-old, three-time All-Australian, four-time Melbourne best and fairest, two-time AFLCA Champion Player of the Year and premiership champion with a point to prove.
They acquired a clearance monster, a contested-ball machine, a proven finals performer and one of the most decorated midfielders of the modern era.
Sure enough, in a rough year for the Giants, Oliver has been the clear highlight.
Clayton Oliver has been GWS’ best player this season by a mile
The Giants have plenty of talent, but through the season so far, Oliver has been their best player by the length of the Hume Highway.
Finn Callaghan has had huge moments, but his year has been inconsistent and uneven. Toby Greene, by his high standards, is having a stinker of a year — he’s been an error-machine and lacking consistent impact. Lachie Whitfield has not been at his usual brilliant, efficient best. Lachie Ash has not matched last year’s level and has made a large volume of key mistakes as the team’s attacking architect.
Oliver, by contrast, has been the much needed week-to-week bankability.
At this point, he is GWS’ clearest All-Australian candidate and surely cruising towards their best and fairest in his first season at the club. In a predominantly losing side, he is still sitting prominently in the coaches’ votes – currently 15th on the AFLCA leaderboard and the highest-ranked Giant.
The hardest thing in football is not producing the occasional spectacular game. Plenty of players can do that. The hardest thing is giving your team a high-impact performance almost every week.
That has been Oliver’s superpower for most of his career. Consistency is the most underrated asset in the AFL and for Clayton and a handful of other competition superstars it is their secret weapon that sets them apart.
The off-field pile-on makes the comeback even more impressive
Few players in the league have endured the level of scrutiny Oliver has faced. Every rumour, every visible frustration, every imperfect moment seemed to become another invitation for speculation.
Other players are often treated with great sensitivity when they go through difficult periods. With Oliver, too often, it felt like open season.
That matters, because public perception affects how performance is interpreted. Once a player is framed as troubled, difficult or a problem, every imperfect disposal becomes evidence. Every quiet quarter becomes confirmation. Every public misstep becomes a morality play.
The truth is, if someone wanted to highlight bad moments from any player in any game, they could have a field day. But some moments get targeted. Some players get targeted. And it could not have been clearer that Clayton Oliver was one of those players.
But those attacks and the narrative from the attackers was never going to define Clayton Oliver. Clarry just did what he does – he has put his head down and kept producing.
That is what makes this season’s story so compelling. He is not a universally adored media darling riding a wave of goodwill. He is not the most eloquent post-game interviewee who the commentators obsess over and paint as the hero. He is in fact a player many people seemed almost eager to see fail. Instead, he is reminding everyone exactly who he is and that makes his story all the more wonderful – and sweet.
This is a champion returning to something very close to his natural level.
The “decline” was exaggerated because his peak was absurd
The great trick in the Oliver discourse was pretending that a dip from historically elite form meant he was no longer elite at all.
At his best, Oliver was not merely a very good midfielder. For a sustained period, he was categorically the best pure inside midfielder in football. Even Champion Data whose player-ranking formula I do not personally rate at all, had him at or around number one for a very long stretch.
He set standards so high that anything below them was treated as collapse.
That is intellectually lazy. It is also illogical.
Players can be down on their own peak and still be very good. Oliver, even during a compromised period, remained far more productive than the coverage suggested. Now, in 2026, he has removed the ambiguity altogether.
The player many said was finished is first in the league for contested possessions, clearances, stoppage clearances and ground ball gets.
That is not a crazy redemption arc. That is simply a course correction back to his own league-high standard.
Consistency is the golden metric in footy and Oliver has had it for years
The AFL loves explosive brilliance, but consistency really is the true separator.
Nick Daicos has it. Lachie Neale has it. Jack Sinclair (another underrated star) has it. Bailey Smith now has it. Harris Andrews has it.
Clayton Oliver has had it for almost his entire career.
From very early on, he was not a player who drifted in and out of games or seasons. He was a week-after-week impact machine. His first 100 games deserve to be spoken about, like Nick Daicos’ ton as among the most impressive starts to an AFL career – not because he was flashy, but because he was immediately and relentlessly effective.
He wins the hardest ball in the sport more often than anyone else. He clears it more often than anyone else. He gets involved in scores at an elite rate. He launches attacks better than any of his positional peers. He tackles better than most. He competes hard and he performs nearly every week.
That is the essence of a great midfielder.
The Mongrel Punt’s recent 30-20-10 statistical analysis captures Oliver’s standing beautifully. Like a triple-double in the NBA, it tracks games in which AFL players record 30-plus disposals, 20-plus contested possessions and 10-plus clearances in the same match.
Clayton Oliver is the record holder, with 18 such games.
The next names on the list tell you everything: Patrick Cripps with 17, Josh Kennedy with 15, Patrick Dangerfield and Lachie Neale with 13 each, followed by Brownlow medallists Gary Ablett Jr and Nat Fyfe with 11 each.
That is the company Clayton Oliver belongs in.
The verdict: Clayton Oliver is a top-10 player in the AFL right now
Strip away the noise. Strip away the media grudges. Strip away the old headlines, the easy pile-ons, the lazy character assessments and the bizarre reluctance to praise a player who is objectively one of the game’s modern greats.
What remains is obvious.
Clayton Oliver is having an immense season.
He has been comfortably the best player at GWS. He is one of the best midfielders in the AFL. He is in clear All-Australian form. He is statistically dominant across the game’s most important midfield measures.
The media echo chamber got comfortable writing him off.
It should now be embarrassed.
Because Clayton Oliver did not disappear. He did not become irrelevant. He did not become the caricature drawn by his loudest critics.
He became exactly what he has been for almost the entirety of his career: one of the most valuable, consistent and damaging midfielders in the AFL.
Put simply, Clayton Oliver is not just back.
He is making a lot of people look very, very silly and I’ll be back with the receipts if the haters keep humiliating themselves.
