23 down, 1 to go!

Thank god this season is almost over. Fittingly, fantasy teams have been ravaged by suspensions, injuries and rested players ahead fo Grand Final weekend and I’m sure all of us are ready to see the back of the 2026 campaign. With so much fluctuation and chaos hitting fantasy sides in Classic, Draft and Keeper leagues, opportunity presents itself. Hopefully as you read this you’re able to patch the holes in your side and achieve glory by the time Sunday arvo arrives. To take your mind off the carnage that is unfolding, it’s time to make the final votes for the most successful cash cows from this season. There are seven different awards to vote in, giving you a chance to acknowledge the rookies who supported us all throughout a testing fantasy campaign. I’ll be back next week to announce all the winners and recap the season that was, but good luck to all the coaches out there vying for Grand Final glory!

Rookies/cash cows are typically defined as players priced at $400,000 or lower to commence the season

Cash Cow King – Round 23

As a Sam Swadling truther, it’s great to see him exceeding on the big stage. I watched him gather 5-7 disposals in a one-minute stretch in a WAFL Colts game last season and the moment he was drafted I added him to my watchlist as a future cash cow. He was the only rook to top triple-figures last round, but the other three nominees in Dyson Sharp, Lachlan McAndrew and Jagga Smith continued to enhance their already impressive resumes with strong showing in Round 23.

The last ‘official’ votes for the CCK award are here – and it’s fitting that the lead contenders for this award are once again amongst the nominees…

Who gets your vote as the most important cash cow in Round 23? 🤔 #AFLFantasy

— SportsbyFry (@sportsbyfry) August 18, 2026

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It’s very possible that fantasy coaches reading this missed out on every single one of the monster scores that rookies produced throughout the season. McAndrew’s beastly 128 was the only one I managed to cash in on, with the other 120+ scores coming from cash cows who didn’t boast high ownership numbers. Zeke Uwland was a popular buzz name during the preseason, but most of us chose to avoid him after he dropped three sub-50 scores before Gold Coast’s early bye. He put all of that behind him against Collingwood in Round 17, racking up a whopping 32 disposals and 16 marks on his way to 146 points – the highest rookie score of the season. That type of ridiculous stat-stuffing gives me confidence that Zeke can be a handy contributor in 2027 if Dimma keeps him on the halfback line.

GWS forward Phoenix Gothard posted the next-highest rookie score of 2026, producing a 130-point outing that included 29 disposals, 10 tackles and two goals back in Round 11. That effort came at an opportune time for his owners just before the mid-season byes, with almost 1,000 coaches opting to trade Gothard in for the best-18 rounds. Marcus Herbert wasn’t far behind, producing 118 points in Round 20 after racking up a whopping 36 disposals in just the sixth AFL game of his career. The Eagles’ mature-ager has put up consistent numbers since making his debut, while Jai Serong also gets a nod after producing a 119-point effort just a fortnight ago. The highest score may seem like the obvious winner, but I’m assuming voters will side with the rookie whose monster outing actually helped their fantasy side.

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Cash Cow Coach of the Year

Historically, I tend to side with the AFL coaches who have given us a large number of debutants throughout the season. However, despite Hawthorn giving us the most first-gamers, with eight players gracing an AFL field for the first time, a large number of those rookies were irrelevant in terms of fantasy production. For me, Andrew McQualter and the West Coast Eagles were a cash cow factory this season, with a perfect blend of highly touted draftees (Duursma and Lindsay), pre-season signings (Murdock), off-season recruits (Robertson) and, to top it all off, mid-season draftees (Herbert and Francou). The Crows were also a happy hunting ground for rookie picks, with Brayden Cook, Lachlan McAndrew and Hugo Hall-Kahan doing a lot of the heavy lifting for coaches in 2026. Vic powerhouses Essendon (Dyson Sharp, Jacob Farrow and Sullivan Robey) and Richmond (Sam Cumming, Patrick Retschko and Sam Grlj) also gave us reliable rooks throughout the season, but there’s only one viable winner in my humble opinion.

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Defender of the Year

I fully expect this vote to be a tight one, with all three of these defensive cash cows assisting the fantasy community at various points of the season. After 23 rounds, Jacob Farrow and Hugo Hall-Kahan own EXACTLY the same average of 72.8 points per game, while Jai Serong is a fraction behind them with a 71 AVG. In terms of total points, Serong holds a narrow lead thanks to his consistency and his ability to play in every game bar one. He became the rookie staple for most coaches straight out of the gates, although Farrow wasn’t far behind with back-to-back 100+ scores in Rounds 4 and 5. They both proved to be reliable on-field options until most coaches moved them on during the mid-season byes, around the same time HHK entered the fray. The Crows recruit proceeded to assist coaches with seven 70+ scores from 10 games as premiums crumbled around us. Thanks to the success of this trio, I’m predicting the race for Defender of the Year honours to go down to the wire.

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Midfielder of the Year

I didn’t expect a trio of Eagles to be contending with a Carlton phenom for this award, but here we are! The three West Coast guns vying for the Midfielder of the Year honours all own very different stories, and yet, their fantasy numbers speak for themselves. At the halfway point of the season, Willem Duursma and Milan Murdock were averaging 80+, while Marcus Herbert was pulling off the same feat until he dished up a 60-point game last weekend against GWS. At the start of the season, most of the fantasy faithful expected Jagga Smith to lap the field in terms of fantasy production, and the Eagles cash cows deserve a ton of credit for making this award race an interesting one.

With that said, I still think Smith performed at a different level to that trio. The addition of FWD status meant that a lot of coaches kept plugging Jagga into their lineups, and he didn’t let us down. Seven times he posted a 90+ score, including three in the last five rounds, while generating a whopping $604K at the peak of his cash gen powers. Don’t get me wrong, there will still be votes going towards the likes of Herbert, Murdock and Duursma and rightly so. But they face a near-impossible task by trying to dethrone Jagga as the MOTY.

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Ruckman of the Year

I should write a really comprehensive summary here of the rookie rucks and how tall timber such as Cooper Duff-Tytler and Mitch Edwards were helpful cash cows throughout 2026. Simply put, they can’t compare to Lachlan McAndrew and if you didn’t own the Adelaide RUC this season, you likely didn’t succeed. By the time the first lockout rolled around, 37.6% of coaches were starting McAndrew and R2 and he rewarded us with an incredibly consistent stretch that still hasn’t finished. There were only two occasions in 21 AFL games where Adelaide’s lead ruck scored below 70, and at his peak, McAndrew generated more than $550K. One final stat to hammer home his dominance in this field – there were 110 votes in last week’s articles for the best rookie ruckman, and 109 of them voted for McAndrew as a finalist.

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Forward of the Year

In an area where trustworthy rookies were hard to find this season, a few cash cows stood out ahead of the rest. Brayden Cook probably deserves the crown as the best of the bunch, giving coaches a genuine F6 option for a long stretch of the season. Cook produced nine scores of 90+ from his 21 games and while we saw his production dip after the bye rounds, he was exactly the type of rookie we wanted to have on field when Cookie was firing on all cylinders. Leo Lombard was a different proposition, spending most of the season as a valuable heartbeat on our benches. After averaging just 38 points during Rounds 2-6, Lombard found his mojo and only dipped below 50 once after that point.

He has gone on to average a healthy 61 points since then – establishing himself as a crucial green dot in a forward line where reliable cover was hard to come by. Then there’s Deven Robertson, who somehow cracked the list of nominees despite playing just four games. His first two outings saw him produce epic scores of 104 and 90 before a knee injury brought his season to a premature end. Even then, Dev Rob managed 59 points from just 61% game time in his final game, giving us another glimpse of the ceiling that could have made him a serious contender had he stayed healthy.

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Cash Cow MVP

The five finalists have had their tyres pumped up in the positional sections of this article, but comparing them head-to-head for MVP honours is another task entirely. This award isn’t simply about the rookie who made the most money or scored the most points – it’s about the player who helped you the most throughout the 2026 fantasy season. For me, that player is Lachlan McAndrew. I held the Adelaide tall through the bye rounds, and the scores that he produced helped me patch other holes in my team during the best-18 rounds, ultimately propelling me to a career-best ranking.

If I didn’t trade Jagga Smith out in Round 9 and instead, I benefited from his FWD status and consistent scoring, then perhaps he would be the rookie I’d side with for MVP honours. Michael Voss’ firing allowed Jagga to thrive in the midfield and produce regular 90+ scores for his owners, with some of those coaches still fielding the talented Blue in the fantasy Grand Finals this weekend. Ironically, another finalist in Jai Serong was also part of my Round 9 trades, while I completely missed the boat on Brayden Cook. Willem Duursma survived until West Coast’s bye round for me as well, which probably moves him further up my personal rankings for this award.

Ultimately, that’s what makes this award so difficult to judge. The rookie that mattered the most in 2026 will look different for every coach, depending on who you started with, who you held through the byes, and who you traded out too soon. One of these standout cash cows will join previous winners such as Nick Daicos, Colby McKercher, Caleb Serong and Tom McCarthy in rarefied air, and I’m looking forward to seeing which way the fantasy community sides.

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Fry

Australian coffee/burrito enthusiast and the frustrated owner of 16 fantasy teams. Writer for SportsbyFry and DT Talk 🤙