AFL Coleman Medal Winner 2025 Odds – Expert Predictions & Tips

AFL betting sites had Hogan and Curnow pegged as the two men to beat heading into the season, but while one of them has remained solid in the betting, another has ballooned out to double-figures, being overtaken by multiple players. In an interesting quirk, each AFL state is represented among the top five favourites for the Coleman Medals, indicative of the national nature of the modern-day game, and below we take a look at how all of them – and a couple of other chances – are tracking in the race for this award.

Updated: 27th April 2025
 

Last season’s Coleman Medal winner missed the first few games of the season with an unfortunately obtained broken finger – having got it stuck in the toilet door on a bus on the eve of the Giants’ first game – but he has quickly made up for lost time. Hogan booted 4.0 in his first appearance of the season against the Hawks, and the next week capitalised on an easier matchup against the Eagles with a huge nine goals straight. He dropped back to two goals against the Saints the week after, but 15 goals in his first three games was some sort of return, and incredibly he did so without kicking a single behind.

That run of form already put him within reaching distance of the leading goalkickers in the league nearing the two-month mark of the season, and with easily the highest rate of goals per game he looks likely to continue climbing. Of course, Hogan will not be playing the hapless Eagles and booting nine goals every weekend, nor will he continue to kick at a 100% strike rate – though he was incredibly accurate with 77.26 last season. But while the five goals per game he managed through his first three probably isn’t sustainable, Hogan was the best goalkicker in the league last season and has quickly shown that he isn’t going to give up that tag easily, and having caught up to the leaders virtually within a fortnight of his return, he looks likely to be hard to beat again this season – something that virtually all betting sites in Australia seem to agree with.

Bet on Jesse Hogan to win the Coleman Medal at $5.00 with PlayUp

Ben King has hovered around the leading goalkickers for the past few years without ever really threatening to win the Coleman Medal, but like his team, the Suns’ spearhead might be set for his best season yet in 2025. With Gold Coast winning their first five games, King has been on the receiving end of plenty of opportunity and has taken advantage, booting 18.7 in his first five games – inclusive of their first loss against the Tigers in Round 6. 

Historically, King has not been one to boot all that many big bags, though he has been one of the most consistent in the league at kicking 2-4 per game over the past few years. A bag of 6 and 5 within his first month, however, suggested that might be about to change. But one thing worth being wary of when it comes to King is that the Suns’ early season winning streak came on the back of a relatively cushy draw. They enjoyed a high-quality win against the Suns, but their other victories came against the Demons, Kangaroos and Eagles, before they lost to the Tigers. With a much tougher draw to come, the Suns will not likely be winning quite so easily, and King will not be getting as much opportunity as he did in the early days. The Suns’ big man is not without a chance, but he may well struggle to maintain his current rate of goalkicking over the next few weeks and his odds will balloon out a bit as a result, and he may be available at better odds in a month or so.

Bet on Ben King to win the Coleman Medal at $6.00 with PlayUp

Though they had a promising start over the first two or three weeks of the season, the Kangaroos quickly fell in a heap with three consecutive hefty defeats. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the goalkicking form of Nick Larkey – one of the most traditional full forwards in the league – has largely followed that trend. Larkey kicked 5, 3 and then 4 goals in his first three games of the season, one of which the Roos won and the other two of which they were competitive enough in. But in the three big defeats which followed he managed just 5 goals in total, taking him to 17 through his first six games.

But while it’s no surprise to see Larkey’s form dwindle with the diminishing supply he has been on the receiving end of during that dip in form for his team, he has shown in the past that he is still more than capable of kicking goals in a bad team. Two years ago he finished third in the Coleman Medal with 71 goals despite the fact that his team won just three games, an incredibly impressive effort. The Roos might be struggling, but on paper they should be winning more than three games this season, and be avoiding the kind of massive losses which have been so prevalent in the past few years and the last couple of games. They haven’t shown it of late, but this could be the best team he’s played on for five years – not that they’d be beating much – and if they can find the form from the first three weeks of the season with some sort of regularity this year, Larkey will probably boot a lot of goals.

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

The man affectionately known as The Big Kahuna burst into calculations as one of the best key forwards in the game last year, with his 45 goals in 2024 three times more than he had managed in any of his previous three seasons. And goalkicking is not all that he can do either; for somebody who can hit the scoreboard so regularly, Treacy often plays relatively high up the field, throwing his big body into packs all the way up to the wing – in contrast to guys like Larkey and King, who tend to stay a little closer to goal.

But the Dockers’ spearhead still spends more than enough time deep inside 50 to hit the scoreboard heavily, and that’s just what he has done in the early stages of the 2025 season. Treacy booted just a single goal in Freo’s first game of the year, but managed at least three in each of his next four games, and six rounds in found himself equal on top of the Coleman Medal ladder with 18 goals. That rate of three per game is likely to be right around what is needed to win the Coleman Medal, and there is no reason to think that Treacy can’t maintain it. Fremantle’s forward line is not always the easiest place to operate and their best forward will have to go well beyond what he has ever achieved in a season to win this award, but at only 22 years of age he still has plenty of improvement in him and looks set for his best season yet.

Bet on Josh Treacy to win the Coleman Medal at $8.00 with PlayUp

Riley Thilthorpe seems to have undergone one of the great transformations of the century over the past few years. Selected with the number two pick back in 2020, he entered the league as a skinny boy, and while he showed some signs he did not exactly set the world on fire over his first three years. Then he missed most of 2024, and when he returned you would have been forgiven for thinking that the Crows were pulling a swifty and had sent out a different man than their former high draft pick. Now heavily bearded and boasting a rig that seems sculpted by Michelangelo, Thilthorpe has rapidly transformed into a key pillar in the Crows’ dominant forward line.

He showed some signs of his improvement late last year, booting 15 goals in his seven games, but he has taken it to another level so far in 2025. He started the year like a house on fire with three goals in each of his first three games and then five in the next, and while he just managed a single in the next two, he still looks set to kick a lot of goals this year. Going against Thilthorpe is a) the fact that he has never kicked more than 18 goals in a season before and b) he is competing to be fed with the hungry Darcy Fogarty and Taylor Walker. But he also happens to be playing in a forward line which is on the receiving end of some of the best ball movement in the league, and which looks likely to kick more goals than any other in the league. Thilthorpe has only been among the Coleman Medal hopes for a few weeks having never been before in his career, so in that sense he is a risk in this market, but the way he is travelling early in the season he is a chance.

Bet on Riley Thilthorpe to win the Coleman Medal at $9.00 with PlayUp

Two-time Coleman Medalist Charlie Curnow entered the season as the runaway favourite in this market alongside Hogan, but a slow start has seen his odds drift out quickly. So is this a sign that his chances to win a third Coleman are on the slide, or does it simply mean that now is a great time to jump on board at boosted odds? The jury remains out, but there is no real reason to think that Curnow will not ultimately be able to replicate the kind of goal totals he has managed over the past couple of seasons, unless you are particularly negative about the Blues’ prospects.

Their slow start to the season was mirrored by and in some way a result of the slow start of Curnow. He missed their horror Round 1 loss to the Tigers through injury and looked as though he returned far too soon the next week, but since then he has been gearing up to the kind of form that we’ve become accustomed to, aided by the fact that the Blues have started playing some better footy against more amenable opponents. After no goals in the first two weeks, he booted 10 in his next four, and while that has put him behind the eight ball in this race, he is more than good enough to make it up. The Blues, despite their bad start, have found a much-needed injection of confidence with a couple of easy wins, and should be able to at least put themselves in the finals mix. If Curnow remains uninjured, he will be a major part of that, and could easily boot 70+ goals for the third year running.

Bet on Charlie Curnow to win the Coleman Medal at $11.00 with PlayUp

The second member of the Crows’ lethal forward line on this list is Darcy Fogarty, who looks to have taken another step forward in his eighth season in the AFL. His talent has always been clear, with elite strength, very strong hands and a booming right boot making his highlights reel look mighty impressive. He has never before booted more than 41 goals in a season though, but he has upped his number in each of the last five years and looks set to do it again this year – most likely by a significant margin.

Fogarty booted multiple goals in each of the Crows’ first five games, racing to 16 in that time alongside just three behinds. A goalless outing followed against the Crows, though given the conditions of that game no one could blame him for that. Fogarty is going to play a major role all season long on a team that is trying to establish itself as a genuine Premiership contender, and which is doing so on the back of an almost unparallelled ability to score. Like Thilthorpe, Fogarty will be on the end of a fast moving footy, but it’s not just his teammates up the field that make him so dangerous. He is a quality forward with elite finishing skills, and should be booting potentially in excess of 60 goals this year. Also like Thilthorpe he may have to share the goals around a little, but there should be plenty of them to go around at Adelaide.

Bet on Darcy Fogarty to win the Coleman Medal at $12.00 with PlayUp

Finally to Jeremy Cameron, who is perhaps as capable as anybody in the league of kicking big bags but does not necessarily always play a role conducive to doing so. If Cameron played the same role that many others on this list do, he would be extremely hard to beat in this race. But his incredible athleticism means that he is deployed with a little more versatility by coach Chris Scott, often roaming around the wing and collecting plenty of footy away from goal.

There was always the potential for Cameron to boot a fair few more than the 58 home and away season goals he managed last year due to the retirement of Tom Hawkins, but with Shannon Neale slotting into the forward line nicely and Patrick Dangerfield turning into a near-permanent – and very dangerous – forward, that prospect appears to have diminished. Cameron booted four goals in his first game of the year and another four three games later, but managed just one per game in between. It was a similar trend last year, too, when he popped up with big bags a handful of times but also went through streaks of playing further up the ground and not scoring much, and that appears likely to be the case again this year. He’ll score plenty of goals, but might not be close to goal often enough to win the Coleman Medal.

Bet on Jeremy Cameron to win the Coleman Medal at $18.00 with PlayUp

The Coleman Medal appears very likely to come from the above eight names and a couple of others, with the gap from 10th to 11th with betting sites very large. But among those eight to ten players, there is not a whole lot to separate them. Hogan has certainly been the most prolific goalkicker early in the season after missing the first few games, and even at $5 with sites like Bet365 he’s not the worst pick on the board. But the man who looks like the best value might be Charlie Curnow. Having won this award in 2022 and 2023 and finished second last year, he has been the pre-eminent goalkicker in the AFL for a few years now. Certainly he and his Blues had a slow start to the season, but things appear to be turning around. The double-figure odds currently on offer for him to win a third Coleman Medal might not last for all that long.