{"id":758329,"date":"2026-06-25T01:35:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T01:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/758329\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T01:35:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T01:35:24","slug":"defensive-player-of-the-year-round-15-and-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/758329\/","title":{"rendered":"Defensive Player of the Year – Round 15 and Leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just when it seems someone is about to make a run at the top, the injury bug strikes. As a result, we have a wide open field heading into the last nine games of the 2026 AFL season.<\/p>\n

Key defenders have dropped like flies all season, leaving the struggle for an All-Australian selection right up in the air, and<\/p>\n

The Mongrel Punt Defensive Player of the Year is now in Year Seven. That\u2019s right, we\u2019ve graduated to high school. We fill a hole in the AFL landscape that is sorely neglected by both the league, and the AFL Media as a whole. As such, this is now our hole\u2026. so no touching!<\/p>\n

With so much attention lavished on the midfielders and forwards, I found that outside of the All-Australian team, there was no real recognition for the best defenders in the game. It was the same for wingmen, and we now cover those players in our Robbie Flower Wingman of the Year Award.<\/p>\n

The Defensive Player of the Year does not have the name of a great player attached to it (yet) but what it does have is seven years of data analysing the best defenders in the game, ranking them on a weekly basis, and compiling that data into a leaderboard for each season.<\/p>\n

We started this in 2020, with Fremantle\u2019s interceptor\/defender making the most of the shortened season to win the inaugural award. This accompanied his initial All-Australian selection, however, since then only none of our DPOY selections have worn the blazer \u2013 how they missed out is genuinely concerning when you look at who did make it in those seasons.<\/p>\n

Previous winners listed below.<\/p>\n

2020 \u2013 LUKE RYAN<\/p>\n

2021 \u2013 JACOB WEITERING<\/p>\n

2022 \u2013 JAMES SICILY<\/p>\n

2023 \u2013 HARRIS ANDREWS<\/p>\n

2024 \u2013 SAM COLLINS\/LACHIE WHITFIELD (TIED)<\/p>\n

2025 \u2013 HARRIS ANDREWS<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

How does it work?<\/p>\n

Each week, defenders are ranked in a range of categories pertinent to their roles as defenders. These include disposals combined with efficiency, one-percenters, contest wins, intercepts, rebound 50s, metres gained, tackles, as well as votes from a range of sources.<\/p>\n

There is particular focus on the purest of the defensive art \u2013 the spoils, and players who excel in that area tend to score consistently throughout the season, as evidenced by Andrews, Weitering, and Collins winning the award.<\/p>\n

That said, the man who shared the award with Collins in 2024, Lachie Whitfield, proved that there is definitely scope for a running, rebounding defender to take the award home, too. We are as close to an equal-opportunity DPOY award as you\u2019ll find.<\/p>\n

15 Rounds in, we\u2019re now starting to sort the wheat from the chaff.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yep, that\u2019s it for non Inner-Circle members. Sorry people \u2013 see below.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, I know some of you will ask \u2013 I am a member; why can\u2019t I see this? This is for the Inner Circle Member tier \u2013 always has been. This is what these people generously pay a bit extra for, so I am more than happy to dive deep for them when it comes to this content. If you\u2019re a Mongrel Member and you\u2019d like to upgrade, go right ahead. If not, that\u2019s cool, as well. But this is not a new thing \u2013 has been that way for over three years now.\u00a0 Wanna join them?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 Just when it seems someone is about to make a run at the top, the injury bug…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":758330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,15132,85],"class_list":["post-758329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-dpoy","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}