Who is the greatest Australian Football player ever? We have a discussion on Topend Sports about this, aiming to find out once-and-for-all who is the greatest. Meanwhile, here is the results of something similar that was done in 2022.

An AFL GOAT tournament was recently conducted on the Facebook page AFL Banter, though only quite recent players were considered. A knockout competition was held with page visitors casting their votes on individual match-ups. While the result was very interesting, it should be clear that the tournament only included relatively recent players, and was voted by AFL fans who have mostly watched players of the current generation. See how it panned out below. It was won by Gary Abblett, but which one?

Tournament

Here are the initial 16 players included in the voting process (there was no indication of how these were selected). The winning percentage is the number of votes for the winner divided by the total votes for each match-up.

Round 1 quarter-finals Semi-Finals Final
Scott Pendlebury Leigh Matthews
(80%)		 Leigh Matthews
(74%)		 Gary Ablett Jnr
(71%)
Leigh Matthews
Wayne Carey Wayne Carey
(76%)
Nick Riewoldt
Gary Ablett Jnr Gary Ablett Jnr
(93%)		 Gary Ablett Jnr
(89%)
Nathan Buckley
Nat Fyfe Robert Harvey
(70%)
Robert Harvey
Tony "Plugger" Lockett Tony Locket
(69%)		 Tony Locket
(55%)		 Gary Ablett, Sr
(59%)
Jason Dunstall
Chris Judd Chris Judd
(66%)
Dustin Martin
Gary Ablett, Sr Gary Ablett Snr
(88%)		 Gary Ablett Snr
(70%)
Adam Goodes
Lance Franklin Lance Franklin
(77%)
James Hird

The Final

Gary Ablett versus Gary Ablett - who would have seen this coming? Father versus son. The winner was Gary Ablett junior, 1.4K votes to 349 votes, a winning percentage of 80%.