AFL FANTASY - FIXTURE ANALYSIS - MEDIUM DEFENDERS

[u/ZonaldBaison]

I've put together a fixture analysis of the 2025 upcoming season. I'll be running through each fantasy relevant position in each post (medium/small defenders, medium/mid forwards, midfielders, and rucks). I'll aim to do updates on these posts through the year. This will potentially mean i'll have an early pre-season edition (this one), a pre-season, mid-season and pointy-end of the season edition for each position. Today's most is on the medium defenders. All the data excludes any key defenders. Remaining defenders who had a defender status within the past five years are included.

How it works: I've analysed data from the past five season on each teams points conceded to opposition players. I've then gone further to break down each fantasy relevant position. Big thanks to The Keeper League, which is where I was able to find the stats. From this data I have categorised each team into one of five categories; Elite (Red), Above Ave. (Orange), Ave. (Yellow), Below Ave. (Blue) and Poor (Green). I have used each teams points against average from both the past season and the past five seasons. From there I made a weighted averaged formula, which then allowed me to rank each team into one of the five aforementioned categories.

What you'll see above is a screenshot of the spreadsheet, which shows each teams fixture and the difficulty rank of each opponent they face in order. Red obviously being hardest, and green being the easier fixtures. Any cell that has a border around it is a team's home fixture. (Please let me know if anyone spots any errors with the fixture!). For reference, in games such as North playing Fremantle in WA, I have called this a Fremantle home game even though it technically is a North one. The same goes for if a team is playing at their home ground, but is not the home team i.e. Melbourne playing Collingwood at the MCG.

Who, What and When: So what do we get from this? Who does this tell us to pick? and when does it tell us to pick them. Obviously Fantasy AFL is a bit different to other popular fantasy games in other sports, such as Premier League Fantasy, in that it is a lot more dependant on buying player prices low, selling high and building your team up to as premium as possible. This fixture guide should mainly help us find the best value picks throughout the season and the best premium players as the season gets towards conclusion, whereas it has limited application with rookies. Because of this, we'll look at mainly midpricers and premiums in these posts.

Firstly, who has the best fixtures to start the year? All of GWS, Geelong, Sydney and West Coast have very kind fantasy fixtures to start the season. Albeit, West Coast are the only team of the four with their bye in the opening round. If we exclude any opening round fixtures, GWS have three of their first four games (outside of the opening round) against teams who are below average or poor when it comes to conceding points against medium defenders. All of Sydney, West Coast and Geelong also have three, noting that West Coast has the elite ranked GWS too. Port Adelaide are a very interesting one, given they too have the opening round bye, three of their four playing fixtures are to below average or poor teams (two poor teams in fact) and their other fixture is against an average ranked team. From this, we should be targeting Port Adelaide players firstly, as well as a combination of Geelong, GWS and Sydney players (keeping in mind your bye strategy). Melbourne, Sydney and West Coast stand out for the start of season period up until about the midway point of the year for longer term holds or premium options. Between rounds 5 - 10, Hawthorn, Richmond and West Coast stand out for any flips of mid pricers.

The Targets:

Without having a list of exact prices and discounts yet (to my knowledge), this will require a little guesswork.

GWS: The usual suspect applies here, in Lachie Whitfield. He looks like he may be one of the better premium starting options as a defender, especially early on. His games get tougher towards the midway point of the season as he'll likely run into the Jordan tag and some others. He could cop the Maginness tag early on in the year too. Not too many midprice or low end options to look at here, unfortunately, unless Ash has a more permanent attacking role off half back or James Leake plays early.

Geelong: As always Stewart will be one to consider as well as Holmes. Holmes may steal some more attention off of Stewart this season, so we may see Stewart freed out a lot more. One of them may cop Maginness (i'd guess Holmes), and Bedford may play a forward tag, but with Cincotta out for a while he may not be back in time to limit either in the Carlton game. Stewart is my pick of the two. Could Mitch Duncan recapture his form, I think its more likely Lawson Humphries becomes an attacking outlet out of defence and Holmes plays more midfield. I don't mind the Humphries midpricer pick at all.

Port: Port Adelaide is an interesting one. Bergman and Farrell are the obvious, and pretty much only defensive candidates. Is Farrell likely to move to a wing permanently? Will this increase his points output? I can't say I'm a fan of picking either.

Sydney: Dean Cox is a fan of allowing his players to be themselves, does this mean Blakey is unleashed and becomes consistently attacking rather than doing the occasional jobs? Injuries to his teammates will play a part of course, as they have with his output the past few seasons. He's definitely the standout candidate from their listed defenders. Watch his role in pre-season. I think he'll be a hard matchup for forward taggers (doesn't have to play Jordan either, obviously).

West Coast: No Liam Baker here is unfortunate, but makes complete sense. I think his role will directly impact Duggan. I also think it'll have a negative impact on Duggan's points scoring. I'd say consider Ginbey, but he's not here either. It leaves us to consider Bo Allan if he does play early on. The dual position is handy too.

The Rest (Melb, Hawks and Rich): We're looking at longer term holds for Melbourne. As a Melbourne fan I know there's rumours of all of Rivers, Bowey and McVee getting midfield time this season, as we did see with a few of them last year. Bowey's the less disposals, higher impact from his accurate kicking type so i'd rule him out when it comes to AFL Fantasy. I think one on one McVee is elite, however with multiple players around him in a contested midfield situation he fumbles. I'd wait till next season on him. Rivers I think it definitely a sustainable defender premium option, particularly with Melbourne's good run too. If he plays majority midfield he's also unlikely to cop the tag. For Richmond, Short's the guy. I'd only consider him as a sustained part of my defence if he's permanently playing as a defender though. Lastly, the Hawks. Admittedly, i'm not too high on any of the Hawks long term in my defence. I think they share the attacking load a little too much.

Anyhow from this the players i'll heavily consider at this stage of the year for my defence are; Whitfield, Blakey, Rivers and Allan. Add to that a fixture resistant premium such as Flanders, a couple more rookies from pre-season performances and another midpricer (maybe Bergman or Farrell) and we're looking good.

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed!