The Coleman Medal and the Art of Goalkicking
The Coleman Medal explained: home-and-away goals only, why finals never count, the 2001 retrospective awards and why nobody kicks 100 any more.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Awards18 min read
- Named after
- John Coleman of Essendon
- First awarded
- 1981 to Michael Roach
- Retrospective medals granted
- 2001 covering 1955 to 1980
- Do finals goals count
- No, home-and-away only
- Coleman's own career
- 537 goals in 98 games
- Highest tally under the award
- Peter Hudson with 150 in 1971
- Last century of goals
- Lance Franklin with 102 in 2008
- 2026 winner
- Charlie Curnow with 69 goals
The Coleman Medal goes to the player who kicks the most goals in the AFL home-and-away season. That is the whole rule. There is no panel, no umpire vote, no weighting for the quality of the goal or the strength of the opposition. Whoever has the highest number when the last minor-round siren sounds wins it, and if two players finish level they both get a medal.
The single detail that trips up most people is that finals do not count. The Coleman Medal is settled before September begins, so a forward who kicks six in a qualifying final adds nothing to his total. This is not an oversight. The award was built to measure a season of consistent goalkicking rather than a hot fortnight, and the league has never changed it. Adelaide's Tony Modra is the standing example: he finished the 1993 season as the competition's top goalkicker once finals were added in, and did not win the medal.
The award carries the name of John Coleman, an Essendon full-forward whose career lasted only 98 games and produced 537 goals. He is the reason the medal exists in its current form, and his career is also a decent argument about what the award actually measures — brilliance, availability and supply, in roughly that order. This guide covers where the medal came from, how it is decided, every winner of the AFL era, why the winning tally has halved since the 1990s, and what a Coleman is worth to a player who wins one.
What the Coleman Medal actually measures
It measures goals kicked in home-and-away matches by a player on an AFL list. Behinds are irrelevant. Accuracy is irrelevant. A forward who kicks 60 goals from 130 shots beats a forward who kicks 59 from 70, and neither the league nor the honour roll records the difference.
That bluntness is the point. Most Australian football awards are judgements — the Brownlow Medal is an umpire's opinion converted into votes, the All-Australian team is a panel's argument converted into a blazer. The Coleman is arithmetic. You can calculate it yourself from a scoreboard, which is why it is the award supporters follow week to week rather than waiting for a count.
John Coleman, the player behind the name
Coleman came to Essendon from Hawthorn in country Victoria in 1949 and kicked 12 goals in his first VFL match, scoring with his first kick. He finished that debut season on 100 goals, which no player before or since has done in a first year. Over six seasons he kicked 537 goals in 98 games, an average of about 5.5 a match — the second-highest career average in the competition's history behind Peter Hudson.
He led the league's goalkicking five seasons in a row from 1949 to 1953. He also served a four-week suspension at the end of 1951 for retaliating after being struck, which cost him the Grand Final that Essendon lost by 11 points, and which the tribunal chairman later conceded was harsh.
A dislocated knee in 1954 ended it. He was 25. He came back as Essendon's coach and won premierships in 1962 and 1965, and in 1996 he was elevated to Legend status in the Australian Football Hall of Fame — the only Legend with fewer than 100 senior games. A player whose career was that short and that overwhelming is a fitting name for an award about volume.
How the medal came to exist
The VFL had recognised a leading goalkicker informally for most of its existence, but there was no medal attached to it until 1981, when the league struck one and named it for Coleman. Richmond's Michael Roach was the first recipient.
That left eight decades of leading goalkickers with nothing. In September 2001 the AFL fixed it in two tiers. Every leading goalkicker from 1955 to 1980 was retrospectively awarded a Coleman Medal, and every leading goalkicker from 1897 to 1954 was awarded a Leading Goalkicker Medal instead. The cut-off is essentially Coleman's own career: the league did not want to award a medal named after Coleman to the men he was competing against.
This is why honour rolls disagree. Some lists credit Peter Hudson with four Coleman Medals, which is correct under the 2001 decision. Others credit Dick Lee with seven, which is correct only if you count Leading Goalkicker Medals as Colemans, which the AFL does not.
- 537Goals in 98 games
- 12Goals on debut
- 5Seasons as leading goalkicker
- 4Premierships as player and coach
Career VFL figures for Essendon from 1949 to 1954, plus his Essendon coaching record. Counts games and goals only, and does not adjust for the shorter seasons of the era.
Every AFL-era winner
The table below lists the winner of every Coleman Medal since 2000. Tallies are home-and-away goals only.
| Season | Player | Club | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Matthew Lloyd | Essendon | 94 |
| 2001 | Matthew Lloyd | Essendon | 96 |
| 2002 | David Neitz | Melbourne | 75 |
| 2003 | Matthew Lloyd | Essendon | 87 |
| 2004 | Fraser Gehrig | St Kilda | 90 |
| 2005 | Fraser Gehrig | St Kilda | 74 |
| 2006 | Brendan Fevola | Carlton | 84 |
| 2007 | Jonathan Brown | Brisbane Lions | 77 |
| 2008 | Lance Franklin | Hawthorn | 102 |
| 2009 | Brendan Fevola | Carlton | 86 |
| 2010 | Jack Riewoldt | Richmond | 78 |
| 2011 | Lance Franklin | Hawthorn | 71 |
| 2012 | Jack Riewoldt | Richmond | 65 |
| 2013 | Jarryd Roughead | Hawthorn | 68 |
| 2014 | Lance Franklin | Sydney | 67 |
| 2015 | Josh Kennedy | West Coast | 75 |
| 2016 | Josh Kennedy | West Coast | 80 |
| 2017 | Lance Franklin | Sydney | 69 |
| 2018 | Jack Riewoldt | Richmond | 65 |
| 2019 | Jeremy Cameron | Greater Western Sydney | 67 |
| 2020 | Tom Hawkins | Geelong | 42 |
| 2021 | Harry McKay | Carlton | 58 |
| 2022 | Charlie Curnow | Carlton | 64 |
| 2023 | Charlie Curnow | Carlton | 78 |
| 2024 | Jesse Hogan | Greater Western Sydney | 69 |
| 2025 | Jeremy Cameron | Geelong | 83 |
| 2026 | Charlie Curnow | Sydney | 69 |
The century that stopped happening
Lance Franklin kicked 102 goals for Hawthorn in 2008. Nobody has reached three figures since, and in the eighteen seasons that followed only one winner has passed 85.
Look at the decade before it. Tony Lockett kicked 118 in 1991 and 114 in 1996. Jason Dunstall kicked 139 in 1992. Gary Ablett senior kicked 124, 113 and 118 in three straight years from 1993. Those were not freak seasons — they were what a dominant full-forward was expected to do.
Home-and-away goals kicked by the Coleman Medal winner. The 2020 figure reflects a season shortened to 17 rounds of reduced-length matches, not a collapse in form.
Show the numbers
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 102 |
| 2010 | 78 |
| 2012 | 65 |
| 2014 | 67 |
| 2016 | 80 |
| 2018 | 65 |
| 2020 | 42 |
| 2022 | 64 |
| 2024 | 69 |
| 2026 | 69 |
Why the numbers fell
Several changes stacked on top of each other, and none of them were aimed at full-forwards.
Zone defence arrived in the 2000s and made the isolated one-on-one contest something a coach can simply refuse to allow. If the opposition will not leave a defender alone with a dangerous forward, the forward's best asset is neutralised without anyone laying a hand on him.
Interchange rotations then made defensive pressure sustainable across four quarters. A team that could not press for a full match in 1993 can now roll fresh runners through the middle all day, which cuts the number of clean, controlled entries reaching a forward's advantage. The interchange cap limits the volume but not the principle.
Forward lines also got crowded. When both teams flood the same half, a set shot from 45 metres is more likely to become a contested spoil than a mark. And clubs now manage the bodies of their key forwards, resting them through soft-tissue niggles rather than playing them at 80 per cent. A player who misses four matches has effectively removed 15 to 20 goals from his own ceiling.
The result is an award that is genuinely harder to win on raw numbers and no easier to win on ability. Sixty-nine goals in 2026 required roughly the same seasonal dominance that 110 goals required in 1993.
The 2026 race
Charlie Curnow won his third Coleman in 2026, his first season at Sydney after leaving Carlton, finishing on 69. He joined Gary Ablett senior, Jason Dunstall, Matthew Lloyd and Jack Riewoldt on three, and became the first player since Lance Franklin in 2014 to win the award in his first year at a new club. Franklin, by coincidence, made the same move to the same club.
The gap between first and fifth was 11 goals, which is a normal spread. In a typical modern season four or five forwards are still live in the race with three rounds to play, and one bad week against a good defence settles it.
What it actually takes to win one
Three things, roughly in this order.
Availability. The winner almost always plays 20 or more of the 22 or 23 home-and-away matches. Miss five and the arithmetic beats you regardless of form.
Supply. A forward cannot kick goals from balls that never arrive. Coleman winners tend to play for sides that win enough clearances and kick well going inside fifty. This is why the medal is only partly an individual award — the delivery is done by the midfield and the half-backs.
Conversion under pressure. Nobody wins a Coleman kicking 45 per cent. The winner does not have to be the most accurate player in the competition, but he has to be reliable enough that a routine set shot from 40 metres on a slight angle is a goal more often than not.
The full-forward as a position under pressure
For decades the number 15 on the back of a full-forward meant a specific job: stand in the goalsquare, lead at the ball, mark it, kick it. That job barely exists now. The modern key forward pushes up the ground to present as a target, competes in the ruck at stoppages, chases and tackles, and is measured on pressure acts as much as on scoreboard output.
This has a direct effect on the Coleman. A forward who spends time on a wing to get involved is not standing where the goals are. Coaches accept the trade because a forward who cannot get the ball is worth nothing at all, but it caps the ceiling on any individual tally.
It also means the award increasingly goes to players who are genuinely elite at one thing rather than good at several. Curnow, Cameron, Hogan and King are all specialists.
Accuracy, and the behinds nobody counts
The Coleman ignores behinds entirely, which produces one of the odder features of the award: a player can win it while being one of the least accurate forwards in the competition, and the honour roll will never say so.
In practice the winner is usually a good kick for goal, because a forward who sprays shots does not get the ball delivered to him for long. But volume beats precision when the two conflict. A forward taking 12 marks inside fifty a match at 55 per cent conversion will beat a forward taking seven marks at 75 per cent, every time.
Clubs read it differently to supporters. Internally, the number that matters is expected score against actual score — whether a forward is converting the chances he gets at the rate the position and distance suggest he should. A forward can lead the Coleman race and still be the subject of a hard conversation about set-shot routine, because the club is measuring the shots he missed and the medal is not.
The behinds do matter in one indirect way. Percentage decides ladder positions when clubs are level on points, and a forward who kicks 3.7 in a close loss has cost his side points-for it cannot recover. The ladder and percentage guide covers how that arithmetic works, and it is the one place where an inaccurate Coleman contender does visible damage.
The bag, and how one match can settle it
Most Coleman Medals are won steadily — three or four goals a week, twenty-two weeks running. But the award is decided often enough by a single afternoon that clubs plan for it.
A forward who kicks eight in a match has effectively banked two ordinary weeks. That is why the last month of the season produces so many strange scenes: a side already out of finals contention kicking long and early to a contender's full-forward, or a coach leaving a forward in the goalsquare for a full quarter against a beaten opponent when the match is already gone.
The league has never legislated against it, and there is no obvious way to. Nothing in the rules says a team must stop trying to score. But it does mean the final fortnight of a close race is worth watching for reasons that have nothing to do with the ladder, and it is a large part of why the award holds public attention through rounds that are otherwise dead.
What the honour roll says about eras
Read the winners list end to end and it works as a rough history of how Australian football has been played.
The 1990s column is full of specialists standing deep in a forward line with room to move — Lockett, Dunstall, Ablett senior, Modra — and tallies in the 110s and 120s. The early 2000s show the first squeeze, with winning totals in the 70s and 80s and clubs beginning to put an extra number behind the ball. The 2010s settle into the 60s, with the same handful of names recurring because the number of forwards capable of that output at all had shrunk.
The 2020s look different again. Winning tallies have crept back up — 78 in 2023, 83 in 2025 — which suggests the game has found some attacking balance after the most congested years. Whether that holds is one of the more interesting questions in the sport. The rule changes of recent seasons, including the removal of the centre bounce for the 2026 season, were aimed at cleaner ball movement, and a leading goalkicker's total is a reasonable proxy for whether that worked.
None of this is visible in a single season's number. It is only visible when you line the numbers up.
How this compares with the other Australian codes
The AFL's leading goalkicker award is unusual in Australian sport for being purely a count with a medal attached.
Rugby league's equivalents are split — the NRL recognises leading try-scorers and leading point-scorers, but its headline individual honour is the Dally M Medal, a judged award closer in character to the Brownlow. Cricket has no equivalent at all: a leading run-scorer in a Sheffield Shield season is recorded in the averages but not medalled, and a leading wicket-taker in the Big Bash gets a mention on a broadcast graphic rather than a trophy.
The closest parallel anywhere in Australian sport is the golden boot in football, which the A-League awards on the same home-and-away basis. That the AFL treats its top goalkicker as worth a named medal, presented in the same conversation as the Brownlow and the All-Australian blazer, reflects how central the act of kicking a goal is to how the sport talks about itself.
The Coleman and the Brownlow almost never meet
The Brownlow rewards ball-winning judged by the field umpires. Midfielders touch the ball 30 times a match and forwards touch it a dozen, so the vote gap is structural rather than a matter of opinion.
The last full-forward to win a Brownlow is a long way back, and no Coleman winner in recent memory has been near the top of a count in the same season. This is one reason the two awards sit comfortably alongside each other: they are not competing to name the same player. A club can produce a Coleman winner and a Brownlow winner in the same year and neither honour dilutes the other.
The All-Australian team is the award that reconciles them. Because it must be picked in positions, it has to name key forwards whatever the vote counts say, and a Coleman winner is close to an automatic selection.
Modra 1993, and the finals argument in practice
The single most quoted piece of Coleman trivia is Tony Modra's 1993 season. He finished the year as the competition's top goalkicker on 129 goals once finals were included, and he did not win the medal, because the count had already closed.
Supporters raise this most years and the argument does not move. Including finals would advantage players at the four or five clubs that reach September and would let a fortnight outweigh six months. It would also change what the award is. A leading goalkicker award that counts finals measures who ended up in the best team. The Coleman as it stands measures who kicked the most goals over the longest continuous stretch of football, and that is a cleaner question.
What the medal is worth
Contractually, not much on its own. Player deals commonly carry bonuses tied to award selection, and a Coleman is the kind of clause that gets written in, but the sums are modest against a base salary.
Reputationally, it is one of the two or three most durable lines on a forward's record. Games and career goals measure longevity. A Coleman is a claim to have been the best at the job in a specific season, and it is the number that gets cited whenever a player's name comes up in a Hall of Fame argument. Clubs and managers use it accordingly, and it feeds directly into the leverage available inside the salary cap.
Small forwards and why they are locked out
A crumbing forward who kicks 40 goals in a season has probably had a superb year. He will not be within 25 goals of the medal.
The reason is variance. Small-forward goals come from turnovers, ground-level scraps and pressure, which arrive in bursts. Three in one quarter, then two quiet weeks. Key-forward goals come from marks inside fifty, which are far more predictable across a season because the delivery is deliberate.
The medal is therefore a positional award in everything but name. Every winner in the AFL era has been a tall or medium forward who marks the ball.
There is a second reason, and it is about how coaches use small forwards. A crumbing forward's value is measured in tackles inside fifty, repeat pressure and forcing turnovers, and a coach will happily move him to a wing or through the midfield for a quarter to change a match. Nobody moves the number one target away from goal to solve a stoppage problem. The specialist stays where the goals are because that is the entire reason he is on the list, and staying there is most of what the Coleman rewards.
Goalkicking awards elsewhere in Australian football
The AFLW does not have a Coleman. Its equivalent is called the AFL Women's leading goalkicker award and it runs on the same home-and-away-only principle. Port Adelaide's Indy Tahau set the record in 2025 with 25 goals, and Carlton's Darcy Vescio remains the only two-time winner. The much smaller numbers reflect a 12-round season of 17-minute quarters — the full picture is in the guide to AFLW format and growth.
The state leagues run their own goalkicking medals, and every club at every level of country and suburban football keeps a leading goalkicker board. In an Australian football club, the goalkicking honour board is usually the one hanging next to the best-and-fairest board, which says something about how the game ranks the two.
Common misconceptions
"He won the Coleman because he kicked the most goals including finals." No. The count closes at the end of the home-and-away season.
"The Coleman Medal has been around since the 1950s." The medal dates from 1981. Earlier winners were awarded theirs retrospectively in 2001.
"Nobody kicks 100 any more because forwards are worse." The evidence points the other way. The best key forwards of the past decade are technically superior kickers than most of their predecessors. What changed is the number of clean opportunities each of them receives.
"A tie means a countback." There is no countback. Both players receive a medal.
"The Coleman is announced on Brownlow night." It is settled at the end of the home-and-away season and is usually confirmed on the field, not at a ceremony.
Following the race through a season
The AFL publishes a live leading-goalkicker table that updates as matches finish, and every broadcast graphic in the last month of the season will show the top five. The useful thing to track is not the raw total but goals per match against remaining fixtures. A forward two behind the leader with a match against a bottom-four defence still to come is in front in every sense that matters.
Watch the venues too. Forwards who play home games in the closed roof at Marvel Stadium get more still, dry nights than those kicking into a westerly at Optus Stadium, and a wet August at the MCG has ended more than one Coleman campaign. Curnow's 2026 half-season at the SCG, on a narrower ground with tight forward pockets, was a different proposition to the Marvel Stadium half of his Carlton career.
A short chronology
1897 — The VFL's first season produces a shared leading goalkicker in Jack Leith and Eddy James on 22 goals each.
1949 — John Coleman debuts for Essendon with 12 goals and finishes the season on 100.
1954 — A dislocated knee ends Coleman's career at 25.
1971 — Peter Hudson kicks 150 goals for Hawthorn, equalling Bob Pratt's 1934 season record and setting the highest tally ever recognised under the Coleman name.
1981 — The medal is struck and named for Coleman. Michael Roach wins the first.
1992 — Jason Dunstall kicks 139, the highest AFL-era total.
2001 — The AFL awards retrospective Coleman Medals for 1955 to 1980 and Leading Goalkicker Medals for 1897 to 1954.
2008 — Lance Franklin kicks 102 for Hawthorn, the last century to date.
2020 — Tom Hawkins wins with 42 in a season shortened by the pandemic.
2026 — Charlie Curnow wins his third with 69 in his first season at Sydney.
Where to check the current position
The league's own statistics pages carry the live table, and club sites publish their own goalkicking ladders. For the wider Australian sporting calendar and where the AFL season sits against cricket, tennis and motorsport, the Australia hub and the broader sports section are the places to start. If you are following the AFLW race rather than the men's, the entry points are the AFLW guide and the AFLW draft and pathways guide, which explains where the goalkickers come from in the first place.