Update - Individual honors for AFL player of the year...

After five weeks, it seems as though Fremantle Dockers' center Nat Fyfe, reigning AFLPA player of the year but never a Brownlow medalist, has a huge lead in the race for any and every version of the 2015 AFL "Player Of The Year" award you want to name, including the most prestigious - "Charlie", aka the Brownlow Medal, given by the league at a huge ceremony during finals (in Sept.)

Our scoring system uses two distinct elements: the AFLCA voting, which asks each head coach to rate the players on the ground after each game on a 5-4-3-2-1 basis (so a perfect score is 10, when both coaches give you a 5 for best on ground that day), and AFL.com.au's Team Of The Week, which names the 22 best players that particular week - fifteen at the five groups of positions cemented in, plus three "followers" and four in the "interchange" (bench) named regardless of position. Those are credited as 8 points for the fifteen positioned starters and 5 points for the remaining 7 candidates.

So, five weeks in, here's the scoreboard for the FOLLOWING FOOTBALL AFL PLAYER OF THE YEAR award - 

1. 71 points - Nat Fyfe (FRE)
2. 45 points - Dylan Shiel (GWS) and Dan Hannebury (SYD)
4. 37 points - Cale Hooker (ESS)
5. 34 points - David Armitage (STK), David Mundy (FRE), Scott Pendlebury (COL), and Rory Sloane (ADE)
9. 32 points - Patrick Dangerfield (ADE) and Michael Hurley (ESS)
11. 30 points - Todd Goldstein (NM), Stephen Hill (FRE), Bachar Houli (RCH), and Jay Schulz (PORT).

The first thing I notice is that it's easier to score points when your team wins. There are three Fremantle players on that list, and many more just below in the 20s and teens. Every player in the top fourteen listed plays on a team no worse than 2-3.

Secondly, it's not generally the big scorers up high on the list, but rather the swift ballhandlers in the middle of the field. Gary Ablett Jr., currently out with an injury but generally considered the best player in the game over the last half-decade or more, is not a big man - his nickname is "The Little General" - but he gets things done, like a quarterback. QBs don't usually score a lot themselves, but they create the plays that let everyone else score. That's what a great midfielder does, and most of the fourteen names on my list are great midfielders! 

We'll keep you updated on the leaderboard throughout the season...but it's week six of the AFL home-and-away season, and there are a few very interesting games on the docket we'll look at in our next post!