The Roar's AFL top 50 players, 50-41: Roos sharpshooter rewarded, veterans prove age is just a number

The 2024 AFL season is here!

Not officially – no, the first bounce of the season proper isn’t for another few weeks, but The Roar’s annual countdown of the league’s top 50 players has arrived.

If you’re new here, it’s all very simple. Five Roar AFL experts – myself, Tim Miller, Dem Panopoulos, Cameron Rose and new recruit Matt Russell – each listed our top 60 players as of this very moment.

Those cumulative lists were added up, and over the next five days how things shook out will be revealed, finishing up on Friday with our top 10.

I’ve got the honour of introducing the first ten players on our list.

Agree with our picks? Let the debate start in the comments section below.

50. Jack Steele 

St Kilda | Midfielder 

The Saints captain is arguably the heart and soul of his footy club. But, thanks to St Kilda’s perennial status as Victoria’s scrappy underdog, I’m convinced he doesn’t get the plaudits he deserves. 

His 2023 continued a fine career, bouncing back from an injury-hampered 2022 to lead the Saints into the finals. Averaging 24 touches, seven tackles and five clearances, the 28-year old further cemented himself as one of the best in-and-under midfielders in the game – and spoiler alert, one of only two Saints in this top 50. 

I had the Saints skipper at 44 – he’s far from the flashiest player going around, but he’s one of most dependable – and will remain so as the team he leads tilts for a second successive finals berth in 2024. 

49. Tom Hawkins

Geelong Cats | Forward

Don’t take Hawkins’ position on this list – he placed 17th last year off the back of the Cats’ 2022 premiership – as a negative. 

He not only kicked 49 goals in 2023 – the 13th year he’s hit that mark – but he was still setting new benchmarks too: his eight goals against Essendon last April was a career-high.

Another record should fall for him this year, too: he needs just nine games to best close mate Joel Selwood and become Geelong’s games record holder. 

At 35, Hawkins’ remains so, so integral to an increasingly younger Cats outfit, and a strong compatriot for their new spearhead in Jeremy Cameron (more on him later in the week).

If they win another premiership sometime soon, the Tomahawk will probably still be a key piece of their puzzle. 

Tom Hawkins – 347 games and still going strong for Geelong. (Photo by James Elsby/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

48. Josh Dunkley 

Brisbane Lions | Midfielder 

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, or so they say. But Dunkley’s first season at the Lions was arguably the finest of his career – and this was coming off a best and fairest in his last year at the Western Bulldogs

The 27-year old was hyper-consistent during the Lions’ successful 2023, playing all but two games. The stats back that up: he was second only to Lachie Neale at the club for contested possessions (302), while tackling more than any other Lion (165 at 6.88 per match). 

Dunkley narrowly missed my cut – I placed him at 53 – but I’m incredibly keen to see what his sophomore season in Queensland is like.

47. Bayley Fritsch

Melbourne | Forward

The first of five players from this group I neglected to place in my submitted list, Fritsch has rocketed up in everyone’s estimations in the last three years to become the Demons’ best – and sometimes, only – forward. 

While his goal count last season fell short of his 2021 and 2022 highs, he still led the Demons’ tally with 37. Always dangerous near goal, the 27-year old provides sorely needed class in attack that compliments Melbourne’s dominant on-ball brigade. 

For a team that has mainstays in the middle, one of the competition’s best rucks and a sublime defence, Fritsch is the forward.

46. Jack Macrae

Western Bulldogs | Midfielder 

Like Steele, the Bulldogs workhorse is a desperately underrated midfielder. But unlike his Saints counterpart, who has often had to be the man for his club, Macrae is quietly great in the shadow of his more applauded colleagues – two of whom you’ll be hearing more of later this week. 

The 29-year old wasn’t at his very best in 2023 – not compared to the heights of his superb 2021 and 2022 seasons, at least.

Unsurprisingly, though, he had a different idea of what ‘wasn’t at his very best’ meant, averaging 26 touches, four tackles and four clearances to remain in the upper echelon of on-ballers in the league, if not at the level that had him ranked 22nd in this list 12 months ago

I’m both mad at myself – but also proved my own point about him being underrated – for forgetting Macrae on my list. D’oh. 

Jack Macrae might be the best player to have never won a club best and fairest. (Photo by Steve Bell/AFL Photos/via Getty Images)

45. Tom Papley

Sydney Swans | Forward

It’s quite the sliding doors moment: if Papley’s trade request to Carlton at the end of 2019 had gone through, the Blues would have been granted one of the game’s best small forwards.

How much difference could that have made to their premiership aspirations in the last two years?

Alas for Blues fans, Sydney kept him; and he’s thrived. I wrote in last year’s list – when he was ranked a place lower than now at 46 – that he has been a ‘perpetual menace in attack’ from the moment he debuted as a mature-aged rookie in 2016. That remained true in 2023 as he again led the Swans’ goalkicking with 37, with 21 goal assists (equal 12th in the comp), showing that he’s just as happy to help his fellow forwards while remaining the main man.

Papley’s talent is obvious, but my enthusiasm isn’t: like last year, he didn’t make my top 50. 

44. Chad Warner

Sydney Swans | Midfielder 

Warner was the surprise packet in last year’s list, debuting at 28 after a deeply impressive 2022 season.

That 2023 was seen as a slight plateauing is the surest sign yet the 22-year old is a superstar of the present, ever mind the future: averaging 25 touches, four tackles and five clearances a game, Warner also slotted 15 goals – including this superb kick from the boundary against the Suns.

Warner is a high-risk, high-reward style of player – he’s remains among the competition’s worst for turnovers per disposal – and because of that, the young gun is someone I decided not to place on my list.

But I’m not blind to his upside – the kid’s only 22. One to (continue to) watch.

43. Nick Larkey

North Melbourne | Forward

Beginning the season with six goals and finishing with nine (and an All-Australian jumper) Larkey’s 2023 record says it all – 71 goals and 24 behinds, at a seriously impressive 71 per cent accuracy. 

Indispensably important for the struggling North, the Roos spearhead cemented himself as one of the leading tall forwards in the game – perhaps behind only Carlton’s Charlie Curnow and Adelaide’s Taylor Walker.

But while that star pair have been beneficiaries of strong teams around them, Larkey is making the most of what he receives from a much lower-calibre team, regularly booting big bags – four, five, six or even more goals – in walloping losses for his side.

Now a vice-captain, his success at North definitely excites me, and I ranked him just outside the top 30. Expect to see even more people take notice as he fights for a Coleman Medal in 2024.

Is Nick Larkey in the AFL’s top 50 players? (Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)

42. Scott Pendlebury

Collingwood | Midfielder 

Obvious statement number one: the Pies have a heck of a lot of talent on their list.

Obvious statement number two: Pendlebury remains one of the best. 

Sure, some may suggest Collingwood’s future lays at the feet of the Daicos brothers, or with the controversial Jordan De Goey… but Pendlebury’s irresistible moves on-field remain the core of the Pies’ premiership-winning DNA, which brought them the ultimate success in 2023.

Now entering his 18th AFL season, while his on-field skills are still stupidly good, it’s his footy mind that will remain even more valuable to Craig McRae.

It’s genuinely insane I didn’t have him on my list – a fact I expect to be reminded of as he ticks down to his 400th game – and then, in all likelihood, beyond.

41. Josh Kelly

GWS Giants | Midfielder 

As Kelly joins – barring an injury or first-game suspension – the 200-game club in the Giants’ encounter with North in Round 1 (yes, after they play Collingwood in the ridiculous ‘Opening Round’), he’ll have cemented himself as a GWS legend.

Only of us experts had him on our top-50 list this time last year, meaning he missed the cut; but his fine 2023 season, averaging 27 disposals, five clearances, four tackles and boot a handy 15 goals, has seen him take his rightful place among the game’s best and brightest.

Kelly is a vintage midfielder, doing a little bit of everything to an elite level, all the while while – and this is a theme in this part of the list – going unnoticed by a lot of the general public.

Right on cue, Kelly scandalously -like Pendlebury – didn’t make my list.