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THIS YEAR’S AFL Grand Final promises a whole lot of narrative intrigue. As to be expected, a lot of banter is being thrown around the fact that, once again, the Grand Final’s host city and spiritual home doesn’t have a team in the game. But Brisbane and the Swans both have huge supporter bases, and what’s more, the two teams have never met in the Granny before. It is, both for longtime South Melbourne and Fitzroy devotees, as well as diehards in their modern locales, a game more than a century in the making.
But this year’s Grand Final represents a moment of ascendency for two young, talented teams whose journey to the game’s peak has been both fascinating to watch and fraught with heartbreak. Both sides have been here before, as recently as the last two years. Both left ashen faced and teary-eyed, victory having been mercilessly pulled from their grasp.
Many of the players involved in those defeats will return to the MCG with demons to conquer and redemption arcs to fulfil. For some, the spectres conjured during those fateful September days may prove too daunting to overcome. Others will find atonement on the ’G’s hallowed grass. This will all be decided once leather meets turf. As footy fans count down the minutes to the first bounce, we take a look at the players with the potential to carry their teams home.
Who will win the 2024 AFL Grand Final?
Isaac Heeney
Sydney’s most talismanic player since Buddy Franklin, Heeney is the name the red and white will be leaning on from the moment the opening siren sounds. Heeney was a cheat code in the preliminary final against Port, and will be a Norm Smith shoe-in should he replicate his performance to bring the Premiership back to Sydney. But having vanished during his side’s cataclysmic defeat two years ago, has a lot to atone for if he’s to cement himself as a Harbour City immortal.
Lachie Neale
Heeney’s counterpart across the ground will come, of course, in Lachie Neale, who, after a stellar 2024, led his side in Brownlow votes earlier in the week and remains one of the game’s undisputed titans. All that’s left for the dual-Brownlow Medalist is to put together a performance worthy of his CV in the Grand Final, having made a muted impact in Brisbane’s narrow loss to Collingwood last year.
Errol Gulden
The experience the then 20-year-old Errol Gulden had in 2022’s fateful Grand Final would be enough to scar many players permanently. The fledgling midfielder was one of Sydney’s biggest underperformers in that infamous thrashing against Geelong, but having bounced back by piecing together two Brownlow-calibre seasons in a row, he has the potential to prove the protagonist of his side’s most romantic redemption story.
Callum Ah Chee
One of the great bounceback stories of 2024, Ah Chee is yet another player with Grand Final demons to conquer, having been benched late on in last year’s GF only to return as one of his team’s most potent weapons in the season since. A late goal in last week’s preliminary would suggest he’s come to terms with performing under the brightest of lights, but it remains to be seen if he can come up clutch when it truly matters.
Kai Lohmann
A key member of the multi-year draft class that has turned Brisbane from perennial wooden-spoon contenders to premiership hopefuls, Lohmann may well emerge after an injury-racked start to his career to become Brisbane’s most impactful pick of the bunch. Lohmann has asserted himself as one of the Lions’ most dynamic attackers this season and shone for spells in the preliminary, but after missing last year’s GF through injury, he remains untested at the biggest game of all.
Tom Papley
Firebrand is the word that best describes Tom Papley, whose hard-nosed, all-scoring style will be crucial if Sydney is going to grasp the initiative from the outset. Few players boast Papley’s ability to ignite their own team-mates, and their adversaries in equal measure, and if sparks begin to fly between the two sides, you’d put money on the Swans forward being the first to charge into the fray.
Dayne Zorko
With almost 300 appearances for his beloved Brisbane, Dayne Zorko will go down as one of the league’s great one club men regardless of whether he ever brings a Premiership banner back to his home state. If he does, however, it’ll cap off one of this year’s great comeback stories – the 35-year-old recapturing a level of form that has seen him into an All-Australian blazer for the first time in seven years.
Cam Rayner
Few players will be entering the Big Dance with expectation weighing on them quite as heavy as Cam Rayner. The Lions’ longtime golden child arrived in Brisbane as the number one draft pick back in 2020, and has since been there for pretty much every kick of the Lions’ long march to the top. This is his best shot yet at reaching footballing nirvana, having hit a rich vein of form at exactly the right time late on in the season.
Brodie Grundy
There was, not too long ago, a time when Brodie Grundy would have been at the top of this list. That was then, however, and 2024 finds the former All-Australian ruckman on a comeback journey after his stint in Melbourne went down as one of the league’s most disastrous trades. He’s recaptured a good dose of his former million-dollar-a-year form since arriving in Sydney, and he’ll need to be at his domineering best if he’s to finally capture himself and his team a flag.
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