Last year was a race in two. This year, it’s a race in almost ten. The 2016 AFL Rising Star field is full of potential 200-game players, and looks to be among the best set of youngsters ever nominated for the award.

This year’s cohort has:

• A potential 300-game, multiple-time All Australian full back.
• A potential 300-game, multiple-time All Australian key forward.
• A midfield group that would probably be among the top five in the competition, right now, if they all played together.
• Half a dozen players who project as elite, with some kinks to iron out.

The other half of the group are hardly slouches either.

In March, we talked about the plethora of young talent that has burst onto the scene in the past two or three seasons. This year there are another dozen names we can throw into the mix.

Carlton’s Jacob Weitering already looks like the steady, defensive-50 hand every side moves heaven and earth to acquire. At 18 years of age, he became the anchor of a defensive unit that, improved tactics and teamwork rate aside, shaved three goals a game off of its points against in 2016.

Gold Coast’s Peter Wright, in his second season, put up scores that take the best key forwards four or five seasons to compile consistently. His running mate, Tom Lynch, put together a pretty handy season at centre half forward, sure, but 17 games and 27 goals is a mammoth effort given the quality of supply he was receiving.

Sydney’s Callum Mills earned the nickname ‘Mr Natural’, and could become the Swans’ own Joel Selwood with a premiership in his first season.

Darcy Parish and Clayton Oliver took on men twice their size (approximately) and came out unfazed. Oliver’s debut, in particular, is worth special mention: 22 disposals, seven clearances and 15 contested possessions in just 67 freaking minutes of game time (67 minutes is about half a game).

Caleb Daniel is a miniature – and that’s saying something – Sam Mitchell, who looks like he is incapable of making a bad decision with the ball in hand. He wears a helmet that hides his suave mop of hair, and is a clear foot shorter than fellow 2014 draftee Wright, but he rarely goes unnoticed.

Darcy Moore dropped bombs all over the Eagles in his quarter-and-a-half blitzkrieg, and has looked at home in a mostly vacant Collingwood forward line. Haircut aside, Darcy Byrne-Jones looks a picture of a modern half back. Jacob Hopper is already scary.

Christian Petracca was hyped, and for good reason. Connor Blakely and Lachie Weller shouldered a huge load at Fremantle in their forgettable season. Weak knees aside, Tom Papley and James Sicily both held down forward line spots in premiership contenders.

That’s 14 names, people. Take nothing away from the other nine youngsters thrown up in lights, of course, but the guys cited above are the generous serving of cream on top of a stupendous crop of first and second-year players (that’s how that metaphor works, right?).

The 2016 season will be remembered for many things, and five or so years from now there’s a strong chance we’ll look back and say that this was the best Rising Star class in the award’s history. (Click to Tweet)

A rich history it is
Being nominated a Rising Star is something of a rite of passage to enter the AFL’s upper echelons. The award has been around since 1993, and the league’s modern A-list all have what I imagine is a finely crafted, gold-plated equivalent of an Under 12s participation trophy in their respective pool rooms.

Rising Stars nominated for the award between 1993 and 2003 played an average of 174 games, compared to 98 for all players (including the 244 nominees).

A Rising Star nod is a marker of a solid start to an AFL career, but it isn’t the be all and end all. Brent Harvey was never nominated for the award, and he’s gone alright. Neither of the All Australia team’s Josh Kennedys were Rising Stars, either.

Meanwhile, Jaxson Barham and Garry Moss were nominated in 2009, only to play 21 games between them and find themselves out of the league shortly after.

Historically, you haven’t been able to win a Brownlow medal without first earning a Rising Star nomination. But between Chris Judd’s Brownlow win in 2010 and Nat Fyfe’s in 2015, the Brownlow medal was won by four players that weren’t nominated for the Rising Star award (Matt Priddis, Gary Ablett Jr, Jobe Watson and Dane Swan). Prior to that, the only two players who’d not been nominated but had won a Brownlow that played their first couple of years when the award was around were Ablett in 2009 and Jason Akermanis in 2001.

All told though, whoever picks the winner generally does a good job, as they have done this year.

Can we tell if this is the best group of players? Not exactly, but let’s give it a go anyway, using a simple rule: generally, the better the player, the more games they will play relative to a player of lesser ability. That’s a gross generalisation, but it’ll serve us nicely here.

Below, I’ve calculated the total games played of each year’s Rising Star cohort stretching back to 1993, standardised to 23 nominees (i.e. if there were only 22 rounds in a year, the games played are scaled up).

This is obviously flawed, because as you can and as any sane person would expect, there is an inverse relationship between games played and the year of the class we’re looking at. It’s hard to scale up, but we can make some broad observations about the numbers that’ll help us whittle down the list of years we may wish to compare 2016’s class. For brevity, I’ll pick two.

In the first year of the award, 1993, we saw far and away the most games played by Rising Star nominees, at just under 5000. Eight per cent of those happen to be accounted for by 400-gamer Dustin Fletcher, but even then, that’s a mighty large column.

The 2007 class has gone over the 3500 games played barrier this year, and 16 of the 22 nominees from that year are still plying their trade (compared to 13 from 2008 and just ten from 2006). Let’s throw it on the list.

Here they are, round by round, side by side.

*denotes 2007 player that is still in the AFL

Phwoar, okay, I take it back. That 1993 Rising Star class is ridiculous: an average of 213 games played, six 300-gamers (including Fletcher on 400), four Brownlow medallists, some of the game’s greatest key forwards, and premiership players galore.

Almost every name in that list of 22 has done at least one notable thing in the AFL, and for most of them, it’s way more than one.

The 2007 group is pretty special too, although it’s not quite in the same league as the inaugural class. There’s a chance that these guys end up approaching the 1993 group in games played though, given the likes of Joel Selwood and Bryce Gibbs are made of granite. There could still be a Brownlow medal or two lurking among the 2007 class too, given it would be a war crime for Scott Pendlebury to play his career without winning one, and Selwood and Robbie Gray have been close before.

Over to you, class of 2016.

Okay, now to the preview…

As to the award at hand, it’s really, really hard to pick a winner this year. Any one of half a dozen would feel cheated if they didn’t win it, and unlike last season, they key forward-dominated voting panel doesn’t have a 44-goal kicking Jesse Hogan available to it.

Last year’s award was between Hogan and Carlton’s Patrick Cripps. I went with Cripps, who has set all kinds of records this season, and I stick by that call. This year, though, looks like a classic stayaway.

Firstly, Sydney’s Callum Mills was crunched all the way into less-than-even odds seemingly on a whim early last week, resulting in most agencies closing their books on the award for fear of another David King-style leak.

That would suggest the award is Mills’, and well may it be, because he’s had an incredible debut season. The 19-year-old has averaged 19 disposals, five marks and seven intercept possessions playing a roaming role on Sydney’s half back line. In a year where the half back became arguably the most important position group on the ground, Mills’ ability to go from academy prospect to field marshal has been one of the stories of the year. His pristine disposal and excellent decision making suggest he’ll be a long term, and central, cog for the Swans.

His chief rival is the Western Bulldogs’ Caleb Daniel. Daniel has played a more traditional roving role, a position that is somewhat out of favour in the more flex-oriented midfield stances adopted across the league. He has an uncanny ability to win the ball on the ground, and has a release on his handball that would give peak-Jobe Watson a shake. Daniel’s decision making already projects as elite, despite being in the chaos machine that is the Dogs. It’s almost too simple to say he’s a young Sam Mitchell, but that’s the best comparison. If that’s his ceiling, the Dogs have moneyballed their way into an excellent player.

Jacob Weitering will be thereabouts, and should get a vote boost by virtue that he’s a key position player in a sea of top-rated midfielders. He too would be a deserving winner, given he was able to join a back six that was best described as a matador’s cape and instantly give it credibility and gravitas. Young elite key position players are always tasty; tall guys are supposed to take an extra few years to develop into the player that they’ll ultimately become.

Peter Wright will also get votes because of his stature. Interestingly, Wright’s season was the highest rated of the Rising Star crop by Champion Data, when they compared how each player did against their position group after a similar number of games. What that says is he was able to come into the Gold Coast team and instantly contribute. He and Lynch will be a nightmare for opposition defensive coaches from next season.

Rounding out the top five will be Darcy Parish, who – and I trust you’re sensing a theme here – was able to slot into a depleted Essendon midfield and win plenty of his own ball. Parish would have probably played 20 games regardless of whether he was playing alongside Jobe Watson and Dyson Heppell or James Kelly and Brendon Goddard, but the role he played was certainly larger as a result of the unique situation the Bombers found themselves in. Dons fans, who – let’s face it – probably watched more Essendon footy than everyone else combined, reckon he should win it. Naturally. If we take the fan goggles off of that prediction, a high-placed finish should ensue.

Those five players should be the top five, which leaves some very talented youngsters out of the placings. Apologies to Clayton Oliver, who I thoroughly enjoyed watching the year, Jacob Hopper, Christian Petracca, Connor Blakely and James Sicily, who in any other year would have designs on a top two or three finish.

The 2016 Rising Star class will be remembered as a cracker in years to come. Can they overtake the murderer’s row of 1993, which included Nathan Buckley, James Hird (before his all-time, all-world sports heel turn), Mark Ricciuto, Dustin Fletcher, Matthew Richardson, Saverio Rocca, Glenn Archer, David Neitz, Shane Crawford, Scott West and Peter Everitt?

Time will tell, but I’d think they’ll come mighty close.