AFL 2025 news: Indigenous All-Stars set for return against Fremantle in pre-season shake-up

The AFL’s best Indigenous stars are set to come together for a blockbuster pre-season clash with the Fremantle Dockers in the 2025 pre-season.

The AFL’s best Indigenous players are set to come together for an exhibition game against Fremantle in on February 15.

After a 10-year hiatus the Indigenous All-Star concept is being revived with the match to take place at Optus Stadium in Perth.

The AFL is set to release details around its return on Tuesday.

It had previously been played every two years with the last Indigenous All-Star game happening in 2015 against West Coast.

Fremantle’s new gun recruit Shai Bolton, Dockers captain Alex Pearce and veteran Michael Walters could line-up for the All-Star team against their teammates.

Players selected in the exhibition match will miss one of their club’s two pre-season games.

The Indigenous All-stars game had been a regular fixture on the AFL calendar and was often played in Darwin - but it has not been held since 2015 when a team played against West Coast.

Jarman Impey of the All Stars during the last Indigenous All-Stars game in 2015.

That game, at Perth’s Leederville Oval, was attended by a sell out crowd of 10,000 and was narrowly won by West Coast against an All-Stars team led by Port Adelaide and Hawthorn champion Shaun Burgoyne.

The league is keen to press the opportunity for Indigenous Players to represent their people in a match as part of a wider bid to address a recent decline in Indigenous participation in the AFL.

In 2020 there were 89 Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders on AFL clubs’ playing lists. By the start of the 2024 season, the numbers had dropped to just 72 footballers with five clubs, Port Adelaide with seven, St Kilda, Richmond, West Coast and Gold Coast all with six on their lists, dominating Indigenous numbers.

Since the club’s introduction to the AFL in 1995 the Dockers have boasted a proud tradition of promoting Indigenous talent, peaking in 2017 when eight Indigenous players represented the club in the AFL’s Indigenous round.

Optus Stadium also has strong links to the round with 55,656 people watching the Dreamtime match between Essendon and Richmond staged at the stadium during the Covid affected 2021 season.

A statue of Nicky Winmar’s defiant gesture to the Victoria Park crowd while playing for St Kilda against Collingwood in 1993, also sits just outside the stadium.

Originally published as AFL 2025 news: Indigenous All-Stars set for return against Fremantle in pre-season shake-up