Winners and losers from All Australian team, biggest selection snubs ranked 1 to 23, analysis, latest news

The 2026 All-Australian team has been confirmed, with some incredible stories behind the 23 players selected.

But the 23 who made the squad and weren’t selected have their own stories; and some of them were far stronger than the last men into the side. We run through the winners and losers from All-Australian selection!

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WINNERS

Jordan Dawson

There was no bigger winner on Tuesday night than the inspirational Adelaide skipper, who captured the hearts and minds of those at Centrepiece and watching on TV with his Most Courageous Player acceptance speech.

Very few in the footballing sphere have had to endure a tougher year than Dawson, who suffered the shattering loss of his brother in April.

After sitting out two games, he persisted through the rest of the season while still grieving the tragedy with his family. There was no expectation on him to do so, but such is his stature as a revered leader in the competition, he pushed through and led his teammates by example with no fuss.

And now, he’s reaping his just rewards; claiming not only the Robert Rose Most Courageous Player honour, but also the AFLPA Best Captain and a third All-Australian blazer.

And while he was initially named the vice-captain of the AFL’s best side on Tuesday night, in a touching gesture, Melbourne’s nine-time All-Australian Max Gawn offered to relinquish the title to Dawson after his peer’s crucially important words about mental health awareness.

Ollie Dempsey

What a win for wingers.

It’s very rare that the All-Australian selectors remember the wing is an actual position on the field, and not just somewhere to stash an extra running midfielder – like Bailey Smith, who’s been picked out there two years in a row.

It was a step forwards when Hugh McCluggage was picked there in 2025, but Dempsey is a true out-and-out wingman, and a genuine weapon at that.

The 23-year-old’s ability to sneak forward and kick crucial goals for Chris Scott’s side has finally gotten the attention it deserves in 2026; Dempsey bagged 35 majors in 26 games last year, and has another 30 through 23 matches this season.

His best game of the season came in a crucial Round 21 showdown with Collingwood, when they and the Cats were duelling for a top-six spot. Dempsey earned a perfect 10 coaches votes after earning a career-best 29 disposals plus two goals and six score involvements.

Nick Watson

It was easy to understand why Nick Watson fell to Pick 5 in the 2023 Draft; it’s extremely hard for players standing just 170 centimetres tall to dominate in the modern AFL.

If you do a re-draft of that strong class right now, though, Watson might go first ahead of the likes of Harley Reid and Logan Morris. That’s how good he has been.

The nickname helps, obviously. But Watson is also the game’s most watchable player and remarkably threatened to win the Coleman Medal – you know, the big blokes award – finishing with 55 goals in 21 matches.

Hawks fans are lucky to have him, and aged just 21, at this rate he could put together one of the all-time careers for a small forward.

Jarman Impey

It’s not often an AFL star dons his maiden All-Australian jacket at 31 years of age, but Impey became the latest late-bloomer to earn justified recognition — after 242 games and 13 seasons.

And he’s a deserved inclusion, too, as one of the best defensively-accountable rebounding backmen in the competition.

He’s a threatening link in Hawthorn’s transition chains — also capable of hitting the scoreboard — and an exceedingly tough assignment for opposition forwards. This year, he’s averaged 23.6 disposals and 7.0 marks per game, while his 3.3 inside-50s are considered elite among fellow general defenders.

He’s also posting a career-high 6.0 intercepts and 4.3 score involvements per game.

And it’s always nice when great footy people get their just rewards, and Impey is one of those great, good-spirited people.

LOSERS

Clearly, the players who weren’t named at all were the biggest losers of the night.

We know it’s a tough job being a selector. But some of these snubs were absolutely baffling; and below, we rank all 23…

1. Ed Richards

The third-highest rated player in the comp, No.2 since mid-season behind only Nick Daicos, and he saved some of the greatest games of his career for the Bulldogs’ most important games of the year (Opening Round vs Brisbane, both wins over Melbourne, and the draw against Carlton when Bont was absent). There are snubs, and then there are genuine mistakes by the All-Australian panel – this is the latter. Richards had a higher-rated full season than all of Daicos, Zak Butters, Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera, Jordan Dawson and Bailey Smith, who earned All-Australian selection. Is there a single AFL coach who would pick all of the mid-forward hybrid types flooding this side over one of the game’s best players, period? He was a no-doubt pick and this is one of the biggest blunders in recent memory.

2. Brodie Grundy

Our hopes of a three-ruck All-Australian team were dashed on Tuesday night. It was always going to be hard to fit three into the team, though many had called for the historic first. In the end, it was just a matter of who the unlucky omission was. The ninth-highest rated player in the competition this year, Grundy can consider himself extremely unfortunate to miss out on selection behind Max Gawn and Luke Jackson. While playing two fewer games than Jackson, Grundy averaged more disposals and clearances and was more highly rated than the Dockers’ athletic beast by Champion Data.

3. Alex Pearce

Is it a bit strange that Fremantle has so many players in the All-Australian team but NOT their inspirational captain? Jordan Clark does a wonderful job as a dashing defender and all that, but the All-Aus backline only has two talls, so surely the theoretical coach of this team would be picking Pearce over his Dockers teammate? So often Pearce stands tallest when his club needs him, most notably sealing an early-season win over Adelaide with a desperate smother. It felt like some of the Fremantle picks followed the logic of the Dockers being the season’s best team, and thus needing lots of representation. Well, then given Fremantle has by far the game’s best defence, surely their superstar stopper should be in there too? And this isn’t just an argument about the narrative – Pearce is an incredible player on his own merits.

4. Izak Rankine

Perhaps he left his charge a bit too late after an up-and-down start to the season, but over the past six weeks he’s arguably the best player in the competition – averaging an absurd 36 disposals and two goals over the past three games. He saved Adelaide in a major upset bid against Richmond a few weeks back and was utterly unstoppable against GWS in Round 24, as the Crows sealed a crucial top-six spot. This is the point in the snub rankings where we can at least see the argument for keeping the player out; for Rankine it was a matter of consistency. But there’s every chance he leads Adelaide to a prelim and the selectors are sitting there in a few weeks’ time looking very, very silly.

5. Aliir Aliir

If it wasn’t going to be Pearce as the third tall in the All-Australian backline, it had to be Aliir, who has probably gone a bit unheralded because Port Adelaide has gone off-Broadway during a competitive but still bottom-four season. The 2021 All-Australian was arguably even better this year.

6. Jack Gunston

We wonder if Logan Morris played his way into Gunston’s spot up forward with his huge haul of goals in Round 24? It’s probably Gunston’s lower totals (17 games, 59 goals) that cost him a fairytale spot in the side… but those numbers actually make his case better than anything. Gunston kicked just four fewer goals than Morris in five fewer games and from fewer shots on goal (94 to 105); the Hawks veteran kicked 3.47 goals per game, the most of any AFL player since Josh Kennedy in 2017 (19 games, 69 goals). On game-by-game value he was the best forward in the comp.

7. Charlie Cameron

Are we sure we needed midfielders on the half-forward flanks? It’s always the way but Cameron, as a pure small forward, was the unluckiest to miss out on selection. He kicked 50 goals from 23 games, continuing his excellent Grand Final form (which itself was a bounce-back from an indifferent 2025 campaign to that point).

8. Lachie Neale

9. Patrick Cripps

10. Will Ashcroft

It’s always hard to break into the All-Australian midfield – especially when one of the wing spots goes to an actual wingman, Ollie Dempsey, and not a midfielder – but these three are the next-most unlucky. Neale and Ashcroft each had excellent cases, with Neale being the 16th-highest rated player in the comp and Ashcroft arguably ascending to No.1 status in the Brisbane machine room, while Cripps was spectacular while leading his side from near the bottom of the ladder to the finals. (Though Ashcroft complaining about missing out on his Instagram story by posting NBA memes doesn’t help his case.)

11. Jason Horne-Francis

12. Connor O’Sullivan

13. Ben King

14. Jai Newcombe

15. Jye Amiss

16. Mitch Georgiades

17. Max Holmes

18. Caleb Serong

19. Bodhi Uwland

20. Josh Daicos

21. Clayton Oliver

22. Luke Davies-Uniacke

23. James Sicily