Jason Horne-Francis – Deck of DT 2025

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Why should I pick him?

I chose to write about Jason Horne-Francis for my Deck of DT article this season for two reasons:

1. F1 is one of the more interesting and diverse positions in our fantasy teams at time of writing. 
2. My Hat Chat co-host Nathan hates him as a long-suffering North fan. 

Now that I’ve cleared that up, let’s look at the positives of starting with JHF in 2025.

Horne-Francis comes in as the second most expensive forward in 2025 at an 89.5 average (919k), slotting in behind Dylan Moore.

Moore is a gun, but is he likely to improve much on his average in an evenly-spread Hawks team?

Sitting third is Brent Daniels; an excellent small forward but he had a career year in 2024 and his scoring seems unlikely to progress a lot more. 

The rest of the top 10 forwards include a few key position players, four players with an early bye (JHF avoids it) and importantly, no other player you would bet on having more midfield time than forward time. 

With so much of fantasy scoring being dictated by role, can you guarantee many forwards are going to have a more friendly role than the Hornet? Bazlenka and Macrae  look set to have mid roles and Caleb Daniel will be seagulling across half-back, but outside of those gimme starting options, it’s very slim pickings. At risk of agitating the “CBAs Suck” crowd (I still find them useful), the Hornet attended an average of 54% of centre-bounces in 2024. No other player available as a forward in 2025 had more than that. Shai Bolton had the same percentage and Jy Simpkin had 53%. It’s easy to construct a narrative as to why both of their percentages will reduce too.

Much of the negative chat I’ve seen about picking JHF this season has been something along the lines of  “he’s not value though”, but let’s actually think about that rationally. He is a former number 1 draft pick who is just coming into his prime at 21 years of age. Do we really think his fantasy output is going to cap out at under a 90 average?

Jason has improved his disposals, time-on-ground, marks, and goals each year across his first three seasons in the AFL. Last year was his largest improvement but I personally think he still has another level to go to. His TOG was still under 80% and his disposals still under 22 per game in 2024. Surely a player of his talent improves that considerably further? He’s already spoken up his improved running capacity this pre-season. I’d be betting on another bump over any sort of regression in 2025.

Finally, the draw should be fairly favourable to JHF early. Port don’t play a top 8 team until the Hawks during Gather Round and have a delicious match-up against Richmond at home in round 2. It’s easy to predict Jase monstering the Tiger Cubs in that one and hurting all the coaches early that fade him.

So to summarise:

• One of the few forwards with a locked-in midfield role
• Very high chance of being a top 6 forward
• 21 years of age and more development likely
• No early bye
• High ownership – safety in numbers

Why shouldn’t I pick him?

Jason Horne-Francis had a great AFL season in 2024, finishing with 19 Brownlow votes and a 2nd placing in Port’s Best and Fairest. 

In amongst all that though, he also had 11 games with 20 disposals or less. That’s just under half of his games (including finals). He also only had one game with over 30 disposals. 

Neither of those stats are really what we’re after. In fantasy vernacular, JHF has a floor and we also don’t see his ceiling very often.

He’s clearly a quality over quantity type of player at the moment.

In fact, he only managed 6 tons last year and had 7 games of 75 or less, including a 49 and a 56. If you cop one of those stinkers early in the season, then his price will plummet and he’s probably a failed starting pick. And as one of the most damaging players in the Power line-up, there is a real possibility that his scoring might be disrupted by a tag from time-to-time. 

The other major risk I can see with JHF is that he spends a significant amount of time in the forward line, which then hurts his scoring. Charlie Dixon has hung up the boots and and Todd Marshall has unfortunately ruptured his achilles. The pair contributed 45 goals last season. Could Horne-Francis be part of the solution to that problem? He did kick 27 goals himself. Maybe the Port coaches see him as being more damaging in the forward 50? 

Most of the talk this pre-season, including from Jason himself, is about him playing more midfield. But will that really happen if they start struggling to find the big sticks as a team?

Deck of DT Rating.

QUEEN

Jason Horne-Francis is one of the best young players in the AFL. He’s going to play a lot of midfield for the Power and is available to us as a forward in fantasy. Already 40% of the comp are on-board, but there are many naysayers as well. The “not value” argument seems a bit knee-jerk to me, but he also seems unlikely to jump to a 110 average and hurt everyone who fades him. Hence, he’s a queen rating for me. A highly relevant player but one who seems unlikely to make or break the season for you.

DC

DC is one-quarter of Hat Chat, a podcast that focuses on helping coaches get to the top of the AFL Fantasy rankings. He has four top-500 finishes since 2018, including a 71st overall finish in 2021. Twitter: @DCCaterpillars Hat Chat Twitter: @HatChatAFL