Series
AFL season 2025: Strap yourself in for the marathon journey
Catch up on the best news, expert analysis and hot predictions as the 2025 AFL season launches into gear.
- Opinion
- Opinion
Only one can win, but there are 10 sides contending for the premiership
Chief football writer Jake Niall gives his take on each team this season, as well as who he expects to play off in the grand final, who will win the Brownlow, the team on the slide and much more.
- Jake Niall
- Opinion
Is Petracca better than Cripps? Jake Niall’s top 30 AFL players for 2025
To be top 30 in an 18-team competition defines a footballer as genuinely elite. This exercise is simply about who’s the best.
- Jake Niall
- Analysis
Daicos is the favourite, but here is Caroline Wilson’s surprise Brownlow tip
Who will make the eight in 2025? Who will take home Charlie, and who will be named Rising Star? Our experts have their say in our season preview – and you can vote on each club’s finishing position too.
- The Age footy team
- Analysis
We drafted three teams of current AFL players. Which is the best?
In our first Real Footy podcast episode of 2025, we sat down to take part in a super draft, going head-to-head in an attempt to pick the best possible team of current footballers. After round 11, we check back in on where the teams are at and who the frontrunners are. Vote on which team is the best.
- Andrew Wu, Peter Ryan and Libby Birch
Of all the ‘unimportant’ topics we cover, this one is the most important
Meet our team of sport editors and footy journalists as we welcome three new columnists ahead of the 2025 AFL season.
- Patrick Elligett
Other series
Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2026
This year’s laugh fest has kicked off, with more than 2000 performers stepping up to the mic. Here, our writers take a closer look
- 10 stories
Hate of origin: Inside football’s most intense rivalry
Essendon and Hawthorn have hated each other for more than 40 years, from some old-fashioned thuggery and a fake drug scandal in the mid-80s to last year’s failed bid by the Hawks to poach the Bombers’ captain.
- 5 stories