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 seen 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 had Hogan and Curnow pegged as the two men to beat heading into the season, but that quickly changed with injuries to them both on the eve of the season and a couple of others starting the year strongly. Below, we take a look at all of the top contenders.

Updated: 26th March 2025
 

Nick Larkey was brilliant a couple of years ago when he booted 71 goals in a dreadful team to finish third in the Coleman Medal race, but he was unable to back that up with just 46 last year. But for the first time in his career aside for his first couple of seasons, Larkey appears poised to be on a half-decent team in 2025. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves; the Roos’ impressive first fortnight doesn’t mean they are suddenly finals contenders, but at worst they should be relatively competitive and win more than the 2-4 games they have won for the past five years.

That means, of course, more forward 50 entries and more goals, and Larkey is likely to be responsible for plenty of them. That was certainly the case in the first couple of weeks of the year; in their Round 1 loss to the Dogs, the spearhead booted five goals then followed that up with three in the win against the Demons the next week. Those eight goals were accompanied by just two behinds, but for him more than perhaps any other player in the league, that is a sustainable rate of accuracy. Larkey is a beautiful kick for goal and rarely wastes an opportunity, and with more of those set to come his way in 2025 he could be in for the biggest haul of his career, and a potential Coleman Medal to go with it. 

Bet on Nick Larkey to win the Coleman Medal at $7.00 with BetRight

After storming home to win his inaugural Coleman Medal last year, there is no reason to think that Jesse Hogan won’t once again hit the scoreboard heavily in 2025. Easily playing the best football of his career well over a decade into it, he is one of the most dominant forward presences in the game, and is also playing on a team likely to be right up there this season. All of those factors combined to see him a favourite in this market alongside Charlie Curnow just prior to the season starting, but a bizarre injury on the eve of the season which saw him break a finger in a bus toilet has delayed the start of his season.

As hard to believe as that injury may sound, apparently it is legitimately what happened, but regardless it saw him miss the first couple of rounds of the season. Fortunately, that is likely to be just about it as far as games missed is concerned. Clearly missing a couple of games puts him at a disadvantage and if this race does end up close it could be the difference, but two or three games is not a lot over the course of the season. If anything, it’s only benefited those looking to back him in this market by boosting his odds a little, and if he returns in the kind of sizzling form he displayed throughout the back half of the year, these odds will likely shorten pretty quickly. He could be worth jumping on while the value is still what it is.

Bet on Jesse Hogan to win the Coleman Medal at $9.00 with PlayUp

Like Hogan, Curnow was relatively short-priced in this market in the lead-up to the season, but an injury which delayed his start saw his odds drift way out to double figures with some  sites. His first game back didn’t exactly help; though he only missed one game, he may as well have sat out too because he looked about as ready as a bright green banana to play that Round 2 clash against Hawthorn, and his 5 possessions and 0 goals did nothing to inspire any confidence in his backers, with all betting sites in Australia raising his odds significantly as a result.

But while Curnow was clearly underdone for that game, it shouldn’t take him too long to get back into the swing of things. The Blues had a really poor start to the season and that has also probably contributed to his odds drifting a little, but for all their woes they should still be at the least challenging for a top eight spot and getting more than enough supply to their key forward duo of Curnow and McKay for those two to kick plenty of goals. The 57 goals which Curnow managed last year was his lowest tally in three years, and no other player has as consistently been right in the Coleman Medal mix as he has in that time. Injury aside there is no reason to think he won’t be yet again this year, and given he’s been pretty fit and healthy since 2021 now, there is no reason to think the injury-prone tag which followed him early in his career is still relevant. No goals through the first couple of weeks of the season wasn’t an ideal start, but as I said with Hogan, it’s a long season. Curnow should be still close to favourite here, and there might not be many more opportunities to jump on him at double-figure odds this season.

Bet on Charlie Curnow to win the Coleman Medal at $10.00 with PlayUp

Ben King has steadily improved virtually every year he’s been on the park in the AFL, and if he does so again in 2025 it will put him right up there in the Coleman Medal count. Of course, with his Suns team having never made the finals he’s always had to be the number one option on an average team, and while that may be the case this year, this could be the best placed the AFL’s second newest team has ever been to actually make the top eight.

They started it like a house on fire with a 15-goal win against the Eagles, and King revelled in the plethora of forward 50 entries he was on the receiving end of. The big man booted six goals in that game, having never previously kicked more than five in his 95 AFL games to that point. Of course, the Eagles are not particularly good and he will not get the silver service he benefited from in that game every weekend, but it was nonetheless a strong start. King, more so than a few others in this list, will likely accumulate his goals over the year steadily from week to week, rarely failing to kick multiple goals but also not booting huge bags all that often. But if he can do that and sneak a couple of big games in like he did in Round 2 throughout the course of the year, that could easily get him well over 70 and potentially at the top of the list of goalkickers.

Bet on Ben King to win the Coleman Medal at $10.00 with PlayUp

Jeremy Cameron might be the best player on this list – in fact he almost certainly is – but the damage he can cause to an opposition comes from far more than just his ability to hit the scoreboard. The positionless Cat roams the field with seeming abandon, picking up plenty of footy along the way, and while he is incredibly dangerous inside forward 50, his capacity to do damage further up the field means he doesn’t always set up shop in there the way the likes of Larkey and Hogan do.

Of course, with the retirement of Tom Hawkins – and the fact that Cameron turns 32 in March – there is the prospect of him spending more time forward this year, and if he does then he should just about be favourite in this market. But with talented teammates like Shannon Neale coming through, that is not yet guaranteed. Cameron started the year with a bag of four then managed just one the next week, and that may be the kind of trend we see throughout the year, as we did in 2024. Unlike King, who will methodically go about kicking around 3 goals a week, Cameron is more likely to have major fluctuations, with a few big bags mixed in with some quiet weeks from a goal-scoring perspective. He’s a little more of an unknown than some of his Coleman Medal contending counterparts, but Cameron is a freak of nature and one of the most prolific goal scorers of this generation, and he should not be omitted from calculations.

Bet on Jeremy Cameron to win the Coleman Medal at $12.00 with PlayUp

The Big Kahuna exploded onto the scene with a breakout 2024 season which saw him boot 45 goals having managed a total of just 29 in his previous three years, and he looks likely to take another step forward this year. At just 22 years of age, he is a presence up forward like few others in the league, and a pivotal player in what can at times be a stagnant Fremantle side from an offensive perspective.

Treacy kicked four goals in his second game of the season against the Swans, a number he managed on just two occasions last year, and more than likely he will get to that number a few more times this year. But as good as he is, there are a few things going against him. For starters, Treacy is not a traditional deep; he often plays a more traditional CHF role, getting up the ground and providing a link from the backline to the forwards. He also plays, as mentioned, on a Dockers team which doesn’t always make life easy for their forwards. Treacy could very easily find himself in the All-Australian team this year even if he boots only 50 goals or so, and with a couple of teammates who tend to stay closer to goal like Jye Amiss, things would really need to go right for Treacy to outscore all of the above names.

Bet on Josh Treacy to win the Coleman Medal at $13.00 with BetRight

Speaking of players who burst onto the scene last year, let’s talk Sam Darcy. The son of former Doggies’ ruckman Luke, Darcy Junior had big wraps on him coming into the league, but he is even better than advertised. After not doing much in his first two years in the AFL, he played 21 games and booted 38 goals as a 205cm 21-year-old last year, and if his start to this season is anything to go by, that was only just the beginning.

The agile big man had a quiet-ish season-opener against North, but under the bright Friday night lights against Collingwood in Round 2, he shone. Darcy took 8 marks and kicked 4 goals, but the numbers don’t do justice to his performance. He was everywhere, giving Collingwood captain Darcy Moore an absolute bath in the air and multiple times spinning onto his non-preferred left foot after taking a contested mark and hitting a long-range target lace out. He has the talent to be one of the very best players in the league, and while he might not be there just yet, he’s already a pivotal part of the Bulldogs list. Darcy is a lethal target in the air and a lovely kick for goal, though he does play a role which sees him spend a lot of time up the ground. A Coleman Medal this year is unlikely for him, but the sky is the limit for this kid and it would be a brave person to completely rule him out.

Bet on Sam Darcy to win the Coleman Medal at $13.00 with BetRight

Darcy Fogarty has looked the part for a few years now, with his brute strength and elite kicking making him a potentially very dangerous forward target. But like the Crows, he hasn’t quite been able to take that next step forward. Granted he increased his goal tally for the past five years, but it’s only very slowly creeping up to a number that would make him one of the pre-eminent forwards in the game, peaking at 41 last year. But Adelaide started the year in scintillating fashion, putting together two monstrous scores in their first two games, and Fogarty unsurprisingly played a major role in them.

He kicked four and then three goals in his opening two games of the season, and is both benefiting from and contributing to the Crows’ early season scoring onslaught. Adelaide won’t continue to kick 160 points every week, but they could feasibly be the highest scoring team in the league and if they are, expect Fogarty to easily surpass his highest ever goal-scoring tally. Given he has been in the league for seven seasons and never kicked more than 41 goals it’s hard to back him to lead the goal-kicking this year, but he seems primed to have the best season of his career.

Bet on Darcy Fogarty to win the Coleman Medal at $17.00 with BetRight

There are some excellent players on this list and plenty more that we haven’t mentioned, with the return of the key forward now well and truly underway. Each of the above eight names could theoretically win this without it being a huge surprise, and snuffing out value isn’t easy. But one man to whom my eye was immediately drawn was Charlie Curnow. His odds have doubled from what they were prior to the season, and all because what, he missed the first game and was held scoreless when prematurely brought back for the Blues’ second? His increase in odds seems like an overreaction to a slow start to the year for both his team and himself, and having won two of the last three Coleman Medals and looked likely for last year, he looks like the best value on the list at double-figure odds with some Australian betting sites.