AFL Coleman Medal Winner 2025 Odds – Expert Predictions & Tips

The Coleman Medal is awarded annually to the player who ends the AFL home and away season with the most goals, and prior to last year had seen three of them in a row headed to Carlton – one to Harry McKay and two to Charlie Curnow. Giant Jesse Hogan bucked that trend by taking it out last season, also ending a trend which had see the number booted by the winner grow steadily each year this decade. He finished the year with 69, comfortably beating Jeremy Cameron with 58 in a relatively low-scoring tally, but we are still firmly in a resurgence of dominant key forwards and there is every chance more than that number will be needed to win it this year. AFL betting sites have Hogan and Curnow pegged as the two to beat, but there are plenty of other players in the mix and below, we take a look at the chances of the top handful of them.

Updated: 8th March 2025
 

Charlie Curnow was the winner of the 2022 and 2023 Coleman Medals and was right on track to make it three in a row last year, leading the count with just a month to go in the season. A couple of quiet games, however, were followed by his absence in the final two rounds, and with Hogan ending the season in a rich vein of form, the two-time winner ultimately fell a long way short. But assuming he stays on the park, he will likely be right back in the mix again this year. Curnow’s athletic ability make him one of the most dangerous forwards in the game, highly capable in the air but also excellent once the ball hits the deck, and with a pretty straight boot on him and a quality midfield delivering him the ball, it’s no surprise he so consistently finds himself towards the top of the goalkicking tally. With the Blues once again harbouring high hopes in 2025 and Curnow set to be a feature of their ambitions, it would be no surprise to see him pushing 70 or more goals once again this year.

Bet on Charlie Curnow to win the Coleman Medal @ $5.50 with PlayUp

Jesse Hogan has played as well as he ever has over the past year or two, but two-thirds of the way into last season he did not look a likely Coleman Medalist. He was good through the first 16 rounds of the year, but the 36 goals he had booted to that point at just over a couple of game had him nine in arrears of Curnow. From Round 17 onwards, however, a proverbial switch was flicked. He booted at least four goals in the next five games and ended with 33 over the last eight games of the home and away season (and eight in his two finals) to run away with the award, finishing 11 clear of the chasing pack. After more than a decade in the league across three different clubs, Hogan is finally fulfilling the potential which had Demons fans so excited all those years ago. He’s big, he’s strong, and he presents at the footy like a wrecking ball. What’s more, despite a somewhat awkward style he has developed into one of the best set shots in the game, last year booting an incredible 77 goals and just 26 behinds. Like the Blues, the Giants enter this year with high hopes, and if Hogan can continue to play the way he did in the last couple of months of last year in 2025, he will be tough to beat.

Bet on Jesse Hogan to win the Coleman Medal @ $7.00 with PlayUp 

Jeremy Cameron has won the Coleman Medal just once in his career, but if he played a different role he could easily have won more, potentially in a canter. When he’s on, Cameron is arguably the most devastating player in the game, and when he does play close to goal he is as capable as anyone of booting big bags. He showed that last year with a bag of 5, two bags of 6 and a last round 9-goal performance, but unlike the two names above him on this list he is not a lock for multiple goals every week. Cameron’s incredible versatility means that he spends a lot of time up the field, playing as a high half forward and even a wing on occasion. That role has still yielded plenty of goals over the past few years, but not quite enough to add a second Coleman Medal to his trophy cabinet. Coach Chris Scott will likely look to use him with similar versatility this season, though the retirement of Tom Hawkins may well open the door for a little more time closer to goal for Cameron. If it does, he could very easily replicate his Coleman Medal-winning effort from 2019.

Bet on Jeremy Cameron to win the Coleman Medal @ $11.00 with PlayUp

It’s not easy being a key forward on a bad team, but Nick Larkey has done a pretty good job of it over the past few years. His Kangaroos have won a grand total of 14 games over the past five years, but the 26-year-old has nonetheless continued to develop in that time and even came close to winning a Coleman Medal in 2023 when he booted 71 goals, despite his team being painfully bad. He was unable to replicate that last year, managing only 46, but with the Kangaroos expected to improve at least a little bit he might get more opportunity than he has had for some time. That’s not to say the Kangaroos will be good – they will almost certainly still lose a lot more games than they win and he will not be given nearly the supply of virtually every other player on this list, but having managed 71 goals on the 2023 incarnation of this team he has demonstrated himself more than capable of challenging for this award. Larkey plays like an old school forward, leading at the ball-carrier and being as good as anyone at converting his opportunities, and his consistent ability to kick multiple goals every game could see him in the mix for the Coleman, though there is no denying he will have a harder time of it than the names above. 

Bet on Nick Larkey to win the Coleman Medal @ $15.00 with PlayUp

Josh Treacy had a year to remember in 2024. His fourth season in the league was a breakout as he became Fremantle’s dominant forward, kicking 45 goals for the season having previously only kicked 29 for his career. Treacy is far from just a goalkicker; last year he showed his wares as an option up the field, taking plenty of marks and generally throwing his body around. But he did also kick a good number of goals, and had he not missed the last three games of the season would likely have surpassed the 50-mark. The Dockers are not always the easiest team to play forward for, but their previously stagnant ball movement improved last year. With Treacy’s dramatic increase in goals last year there is certainly the potential for him to do the same this year, though he does have to contend with the fact that the Dockers have other forwards, such as Jye Amiss, who will more likely spend more time closer to goal while he roams up the field. Treacy is a gun and could be in for a big year, but even if he does it may not translate to the number of goals needed to win the Coleman Medal.

Bet on Josh Treacy to win the Coleman Medal @ $15.00 with PlayUp 

Few people in the AFL world, probably including the man himself, would have ever seen Jake Waterman as a potential Coleman Medal winner. Through his first six years in the league he kicked no more than 18 goals in a single season, and started 2024 with 2, 1, 1 and 2 goals. Then out of nowhere, he matched that season-high in the next four games and kicked another 5 in his next to jump to top spot in the goalkicking tally. He was unsurprisingly unable to maintain that pace for the rest of the season, but he did still prove a handful for opposing defences and ultimately ended the year with 53 goals on a really bad team – some effort considering he’d kicked just 69 in his six years prior. Waterman doesn’t have the size of most names on this list and is really more of a third tall, but he has really evolved as a lead-up forward in much the same vein as his predecessors in Josh Kennedy and Jack Darling. Unfortunately he will again likely be on a poor team this year even if the Eagles do improve a bit, and even if he is capable of surpassing last year’s effort, beating all of Curnow, Hogan, Cameron and co might be a stretch.

Bet on Jake Waterman to win the Coleman Medal @ $17.00 with PlayUp

Sam Darcy was another who had a breakout season in 2024, and with his coming in a season he entered with just seven AFL games to his name, further improvement is very much on the cards this year. Darcy was terrific in just his third year on an AFL list, playing 21 games and kicking 38 goals playing as a forward/ruck for the Doggies. Impressive as that year was, he clearly has to increase that number of goals significantly to be anywhere near the top of the goalkicking leaderboard come season’s end. The Bulldogs have a well-publicised surplus of key forwards, but with Rory Lobb successful moving to the backline last year and Jamarra Ugle-Hagan’s future very much up in the air, Darcy looks set to at least start the year as their pre-eminent forward target and likely play that role for much of 2025. If he does, there is no reason he can’t go close to 50 goals and beyond this year. But impressive as he was last year, it would be a remarkable effort to climb all the way to the top of the Coleman Medal leaderboard in just his fourth year.

Bet on Sam Darcy to win the Coleman Medal @ $17.00 with PlayUp

Ben King is yet another forward who had the best season of his career to date in 2024, booting a career-high 55 goals across his 22 games. He has now had three consecutive really solid years from a goalkicking perspective (excluding 2022, which he missed entirely due to an ACL injury), and he is only getting better. King actually led the Coleman Medal race alongside Curnow more than halfway into last season, and while he didn’t exactly slow down, others – most notably Hogan – picked up the pace and left him in their dust. King has so far in his career not been one to kick huge bags, but he does very consistently kick three or four per game and with the Suns likely to once again be hovering around the edge of the top eight this year, he should have as much opportunity as ever to do that. If he wants to win this award he’ll probably need a few more hauls of 5+, but at only 24 years of age he should still have plenty of room for improvement. As far as long odds outsiders go, he is far from your worst option.

Bet on Ben King to win the Coleman Medal @ $17.00 with PlayUp

There are plenty of players capable of taking out the 2025 Coleman Medal, with a couple not even on that list also not without a chance. Ben King looms as the best value selection given his year-on-year improvement and the 55 goals he managed last year, but the top three are exactly that for a reason. It’s hard to imagine Curnow not finishing in the top three or four if he plays a full year, but at $11 with some betting agencies including PlayUp, Cameron looks like a decent bet. His goalkicking prowess is close to unmatched on his day and even though Shannon Neale looms as a likely replacement for Tom Hawkins, the absence of Cameron’s formerly dominant key forward partner should result in more goals for him. With his aging legs also likely to result in more time closer to goal, Cameron could be in for a couple more big hauls than he has managed in the last few seasons, and that could be the difference.