AFL Ultimate Player Ratings 2024: Glenn McFarlane and Jon Ralph rate every AFL player
The Ultimate Player Ratings are back for 2024 — every AFL player rated and examined in the most comprehensive guide to each list.
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Peter Daicos would claim that his brilliant young son has been preparing his entire football career for his latest AFL challenge.
Third-year star Nick Daicos will start the 2024 AFL season with the world at his feet.
A marketable, personable, hardworking premiership star who almost played a grand final on one leg and still found the poise to deliver that astonishing no-look handball to Jordan De Goey with the game up for grabs.
THE ULTIMATE PLAYER RATINGS FOR 2024 START ON MONDAY AT 6AM
The 21-year-old’s late-season injury might have cost him his first Brownlow Medal but he will enter the season as footy’s brightest star and the No. 1 ranked player in the Herald Sun’s ultimate player rankings.
Ahead of chief football writer Mark Robinson’s official top 50 list, the Herald Sun has ranked every player across all 18 clubs based on their anticipated performance in the 2024 AFL season.
The criteria: 2023 performances, expected improvement, their role in their given side, their progress over summer, club intel and a little bit of old-fashioned gut feel.
Daicos (a ranking of 94) is our No. 1 selection ahead of Western Bulldogs captain Marcus Bontempelli and GWS skipper Toby Greene (93), then Melbourne’s Christian Petracca (92) and Sydney’s rising star Errol Gulden (92).
Rounding out the top 12 are Carlton’s Charlie Curnow and Port Adelaide’s Zak Butters (both 91), ahead of Connor Rozee, Sam Taylor, Jeremy Cameron, Sam Walsh and Jordan De Goey (90).
It is impossible not to consider that stunning collection of talent and identify the new breed of AFL midfield megastar.
Call them footy’s new fab midfielders’ five under 25 – the flawless Daicos, the AFL’s running man in Walsh, the pint-sized wrecking ball in Butters, the flashing feet of Rozee and Sydney left-footed destroyer Gulden.
All of them played the 2023 season at age 23 or younger – Rozee turned 24 in January – as representatives of the relentless pipeline of talent this league produces.
And yet if the new breed will challenge the likes of De Goey, Bontempelli and Petracca, the upcoming season brings fresh challenges for Daicos.
Namely, is he ready for the week-in, week-out attention that a full-time midfield role brings?
Collingwood fans would point to the reality Daicos was never held to less than 25 possessions in the entire 2023 season save for the Round 21 Hawthorn clash where he injured his knee while tagger Finn Maginness tried to bring him down to size.
Those Pies fans would suggest in a predominantly non-tagging league most clubs will decline to assign Daicos a single-minded minder.
But if teams want to allow Daicos to run around without attention as a full-time midfielder they might as well hand the Pies the 2024 premiership cup now.
Dig deeper into the 2023 season and it is apparent teams never stopped Daicos racking up big possession counts but they did curtail his influence quite significantly.
He easily saw off the early-season attention of Port Adelaide’s Lachie Jones (round 2, three Brownlow votes) and Jack Graham (round 3, two Brownlow votes), but Ben Keays curtailed his influence a little in round 7 as he was kept to 47 per cent kicking efficiency.
In round 8 Sydney’s Ryan Clarke restricted him to only 25 possessions and 82 ranking points, while Ed Curnow kept him to 27 possessions in round 10.
As a pure midfielder, he notched only five possessions in 73 minutes against Maginness but he was hampered by that knee injury before his day ended early.
Port Adelaide’s Willem Drew was single-minded in round 19 and while Daicos still won 25 possessions (along with a goal and nine clearances) he wasn’t influential as the Pies roared home to win by two points.
So rivals will go to work on him as he prepares for that added attention.
Few players have been as comfortable playing in any area of the ground given his exploits pushing into attack and few have the running power to burn off pesky taggers.
So buckle up and enjoy the ride as Collingwood and Daicos go from the hunter to the hunted.
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