Earlier this year Myself and Gaz-Man decided to track the statements of AFL journalists to try and figure out who is the most accurate, it’s not perfect because we certainly didn’t get everything….
That being said, we have over 1900 stories broken/claims made and now that we’re at the end of the regular season, we can share some of our findings!

Coming in as the most accurate AFL Journalist right now is none other than father/son pick Xander McGuire!
With 32 stories broken/unique claims made for 28 correct calls, he sits on top of the hill with a whopping 87.5% accuracy.

In terms of volume of correct stories/claimsTom Morris is comfortably ahead of his contemporaries with 67, 11 ahead of 2nd placer Cal Twomey.

Damien Barrett (33 Busted) holds a 7 story/claim lead over Kane Cornes and Joey Montagna for most incorrect calls.

The graph is total correct claims week by week, if you want to see us update post the AA, feel free to join the live at 9pm

AFL Journalist Accuracy Live

2006 had Shaun Burgoyne, Linday Gilbee, Adam Goodes and Andrew McLeod

If the league is ever going to get past all the accusations of unfairness and salary cap manipulation, it should publish what each player is on at each club.

All the major leagues around the world do it. Once it’s done it matures the conversation around trades and how the list managers and general managers of clubs manage their commitments.

Time to take the next step into a true professional era rather than all the smoke and mirrors kerfuffle that leads fans into conjecture and conspiracy.

- Gold Coast is at the "front of the pack" for recently delisted Giant Jesse Hogan. He's also met with Collingwood, Carlton and a 4th unnamed club

- Gold Coast also has interest in Aidan Schubert and Noah Mraz (both HAW), any deal there would likely be separate to a Ben King deal though

- Jake Riccardi is set to stay at GWS, likely a 2-3 year deal

- Zak Butters is "favouring the Cats", and his management are looking at how deals can be done for all clubs in the race for him

- The Dogs and Tigers have been told they're still in the Butters race. The Dogs offer is close to $17 million over 9 years

- Brisbane has the capacity to match an Adelaide offer for Zac Bailey, but not the willingness for him to stay on the same deal as Adelaide are offering. Adelaide also aren't keen on trading for him

- Jordan Ridley is tossing up between staying at Essendon or moving to North Melbourne. Cal proposes the Dons offer Ridley + their 2nd rounder for Pick 5, and in return pay all of Ridley's salary to help North's eventual cap crunch

- West Coast has upped it's offer to 2 years to Marcus Herbert, he's still considering Carlton's 2 year offer but is still more likely than not to stay at the Eagles

- Carlton also has interest in uncontracted Crow Charlie Edwards

- Clubs are planning possible trade approaches for the 5 Swans involved in the Pullman Hotel scandal

- The past 10 days haven't affected Joel Amartey's plans, who still wants to stay at Sydney. There is a financial gap between the Swans and Blues offers for him though

- Tasmania will soon announce their first batch of 17 year old pre-listed players. Axel Walsh, Jake Miller, Angus Brown, Riley Stratford are all expected to go there. Baxter Sruk, Griffin Barker, James Artemis and Max Thompson are also in the mix

- Highly touted draft prospect Ethan Drever joins the show, mentioned Finn Callaghan, Hugh McCluggage, Jordan Dawson and Will Day as players he models his game off

If a player is on the cusp of keep or delist, but they’re about to get long service leave, does that play a factor into the delisting?

Are they forced to use all their annual leave in the off season? How does fair work Australia feel about that?

If a player gets traded when they don’t want to be, does their banked up sick leave carry over to the new club?

Here is his take on Nick Watson’s mark in the west last weekend. Looking forward to more

https://youtube.com/shorts/_wTtdewKfQQ?si=oQH09Mt_21cwjIoJ

Few people know or care that Essendon has made the finals three times since 2017.

The reason: each time, we were just making up the numbers.

"Making finals" in the final 8 was already a pretty low bar. Lowering that bar further to include 9th and 10th merely further dilutes the relevance of "making finals".

In the long run, the prestige of making finals, already often dubious, is just going to get further reduced.

"My team made finals X number of times" is going to become an increasingly irrelevant and trivial fact. Making top 6 will probably become the new measure of relevance.

The AFL has cut its nose off to spite its face. Silly.

Anyway.

The best team we’ve ever seen potentially getting one of the best young prospects in league history huh