Shortly after every AFL season finishes the off-season begins. For some, it’s even more competitive than the actual season itself.
The media landscape is flooded with loosely sourced speculation and rumour, much of it intended to benefit one party or another. Tim Finn sung about six months in a leaky boat – this is a couple of weeks in a leaky industry.
For around the past decade HPN has dove in at the other end of the spectrum. HPN uses past performance and future projections to value players and draft picks. HPN has also chatted with people in the industry over the years about this work, and has had our work published in the book Footballistics.
To value draft picks, HPN uses the Draft Pick Value Chart. The DPVC uses actual player performance (measured via PAV) from chosen draft picks, which is then smoothed to create an estimated output for each draft pick.
Valuing players is a far harder beast. However, HPN has a tool for that as well.
PAPLEY was created by HPN a few years back to project out a player’s future career based on some core attributes of the player – most distinctly their past performance (as measured by PAV). It’s not perfect but it might be the best tool for this going around.
A wide variety of players have topped the future career projections – almost all young. The younger a player is, the harder they are to project. Projection is not an exact science – there’s going to be a number of big misses each year, but it should shoot somewhere near the target when looking at the entire league.
This year Nick Daicos unsurprisingly tops the charts. According to PAV Daicos was one of the finest players in the league this year – albeit some distance adrift of Marcus Bontempelli. He’s also one of the rare players who is good early in his career.
The Draft Pick Value Chart rates pick 1 as being worth about 147 PAV across their career on average. Daicos’s PAPLEY of 296 PAV indicates that he is worth almost exactly two average pick ones.
That’s insane.
Club | Player | Age | 2025 PAV | PAPLEY | 2026 Projection |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Collingwood | Daicos, Nick | 21 | 25.42 | 296.1 | 26.3 |
Sydney | Gulden, Errol | 22 | 24.34 | 246.2 | 25.5 |
Port Adelaide | Horne-Francis, Jason | 21 | 20.71 | 228.6 | 21.5 |
North Melbourne | Sheezel, Harry | 20 | 16.71 | 226.4 | 19.1 |
Gold Coast | Anderson, Noah | 23 | 23.98 | 194.6 | 24.6 |
Fremantle | Serong, Caleb | 23 | 23.71 | 192 | 24.3 |
Sydney | Warner, Chad | 23 | 21.33 | 167.5 | 21.9 |
St Kilda | Wanganeen-Milera, Nasiah | 21 | 15.91 | 164.6 | 16.8 |
Gold Coast | Rowell, Matt | 23 | 20.63 | 163.8 | 21.5 |
West Coast | Reid, Harley | 19 | 12.94 | 161.8 | 11.4 |
Geelong | Holmes, Max | 22 | 19.37 | 160.5 | 18.3 |
Hawthorn | Newcombe, Jai | 23 | 20.65 | 160.3 | 21.2 |
Fremantle | Young, Hayden | 23 | 22.74 | 157.8 | 20.9 |
St Kilda | Wilson, Darcy | 19 | 12.42 | 153.6 | 11 |
Hawthorn | Weddle, Josh | 20 | 14.09 | 149.7 | 14 |
Injury and availability matters a lot to PAPLEY. If you can’t get on the park then you can’t be valuable. That’s often where the misses for the system occurs – just in case you are interested in one B. Smith.
PAPLEY also does projections for more discrete time periods. It’s over the next three to five years that older, established players tend to show their value.
Club | Player | Age | 2025 PAV | PAPLEY | Three year projection | Five year projection |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Collingwood | Daicos, Nick | 21 | 25.42 | 296.1 | 83.1 | 143 |
Western Bulldogs | Bontempelli, Marcus | 29 | 30.28 | 95.5 | 81.2 | 115.6 |
Sydney | Gulden, Errol | 22 | 24.34 | 246.2 | 79.5 | 134.7 |
Gold Coast | Anderson, Noah | 23 | 23.98 | 194.6 | 75.4 | 125.7 |
Fremantle | Serong, Caleb | 23 | 23.71 | 192 | 74.6 | 124.4 |
St Kilda | Marshall, Rowan | 29 | 25.84 | 75.4 | 68.1 | 97 |
Port Adelaide | Horne-Francis, Jason | 21 | 20.71 | 228.6 | 67.8 | 116.8 |
Sydney | Warner, Chad | 23 | 21.33 | 167.5 | 67.1 | 111.9 |
Gold Coast | Rowell, Matt | 23 | 20.63 | 163.8 | 66 | 110 |
Hawthorn | Newcombe, Jai | 23 | 20.65 | 160.3 | 64.9 | 108.3 |
North Melbourne | Sheezel, Harry | 20 | 16.71 | 226.4 | 64.2 | 112.7 |
Fremantle | Young, Hayden | 23 | 22.74 | 157.8 | 64.2 | 107 |
Melbourne | Gawn, Max | 33 | 23.37 | 32.6 | 63.9 | 90.4 |
Western Bulldogs | English, Tim | 27 | 20.83 | 91.9 | 62.6 | 95.5 |
Port Adelaide | Butters, Zak | 24 | 19.88 | 126.8 | 59.8 | 98.2 |
Brisbane | McCluggage, Hugh | 26 | 20.24 | 99.5 | 59.8 | 95.5 |
GWS | Green, Tom | 23 | 18.64 | 139.1 | 58.4 | 97.3 |
Carlton | Cripps, Patrick | 29 | 22.79 | 61.7 | 58.4 | 83.1 |
Richmond | Bolton, Shai | 26 | 17.03 | 95.3 | 57.8 | 92.3 |
Port Adelaide | Rozee, Connor | 24 | 17.46 | 120.5 | 57.6 | 94.5 |
Daicos still somehow reins supreme in this measure as well. There are more valuable young players now than any time that HPN has been tracking player values.
HPN also has developed the creatively titled “HPN Trade Calculator” that blends together the DPVC and PAPLEY projections. Basically, it allows you to play the role of your favourite footy manager in pulling together fake trades.
And in case you want to look at the DPVC on its own, here it is.