AFL top 100: Two rounds in, what have we discovered?

With the benefit of the first 18 games of full-strength, full-on AFL, what have we discovered and what can we predict for the 2021 AFL season?

The Tigers still appear to be the team to beat. As long as they have Dustin Martin, Richmond will continue to be the favourites for the flag.

With their backbone of eight multiple premiership winners that are all part of the top 100 game players of all time at the club, Richmond will continue to be the team to beat, but the ageing superstars are showing some signs of wear and tear.

Two weeks into the season, a number of the players who are the backbone of the team have been missing. Five of the eight top 100 players not surprisingly are already 30 years old or older.

They will be joined during the season by Dustin Martin and Dylan Grimes, leaving only Nick Vlastuin (26) of the group in their 20s, so their ability to perform strongly for the next 24 weeks will be tested.

(Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

The chasing pack are closing the gap. The improvement shown this year already by a number of teams suggest the contenders for a finals place will be many and varied.

The season will be nearing the end of the home-and-away season before the eight final positions are known.

Critical in this outcome will be the performances against those teams who finished in the bottom five last year.

Already Hawthorn, Sydney and Adelaide have pinched games that the finals contenders would have penciled in as likely wins.

Injuries, as always, will be critical. Any of a team’s best five players who are missing for any extended period of time will upset a team’s balance and place pressure on the fringe players to perform.

So far, Brisbane have lost Cam Rayner, Carlton have lost Charlie Curnow, Essendon have lost Michael Hurley and Dyson Heppell, Fremantle have lost Alex Pearce, Gold Coast have lost Matt Rowell and Collingwood have lost Jamie Elliott. They are all players who would have a big say in their teams’ performances this year.

The fixture always plays a part. History tells us that it is a regular occurrence for two of the previous year’s finalists to be replaced by two new teams.

The make-up of this year’s draw supports this with seven of last year’s eight finalists being the only teams that play three or more finalists twice. St Kilda have the task of playing four of them twice while the Western Bulldogs only have to do it twice.

(Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

Goals are golden. Whether you kick 11 goals with three players (a la Adelaide) or 18 goals with 11 players (a la Sydney), the only way to thrash an opponent and build a big percentage is by piling on the goals.

While percentage didn’t play a part in who finished eighth last year, it did in deciding who finished first or second, who finished fourth or fifth and who finished sixth or seventh, so it is a critical factor in the finals make-up.

Port Adelaide, who stayed on top of the ladder for the whole of last season, seem intent on doing it again and they are one of only two teams who have scored over 200 points after Week 2 of another intriguing season.

On the other hand, five teams have already had more than 200 points scored against them.

The most important ingredient is the players. With the continued refinement of the player development channel, it is now more than ever important to produce talent that is match-ready to perform.

The modern player has already spent six years in the system and hits the ground running more than ever before in his first season, as evidenced by the performance of Errol Gulden and Logan McDonald for the Swans and many others among the 25 debutants so far in 2021.

Add to this the 27 players who – in most cases – were head-hunted to boost their new teams’ performance and you can see why I am excited by the season ahead.