Tyrone’s Conor McKenna has had a frustrating season with Brisbane, but could still end the year with a second Premiership medal while Derry’s Callum Brown has featured regularly for the GWS Giants
It’s crunch time for the 13 Irish players in the AFL with Kerry’s Mark O’Connor potentially just three victories away from making history.
Of those 13 former GAA players, five are regular starters for their sides and are still in contention to win the Premiership title.
They are Geelong duo O’Connor and Oisin Mullin (Mayo), Great Western Sydney’s Callum Brown (Derry), Hawthorn’s Conor Nash (Meath) and Adelaide’s Mark Keane (Cork).
O’Connor (28) is the only one who has already won a Premiership
The Dingle man landed the biggest prize in Australian Rules back in 2022, lining out alongside Zach Tuohy as they became just the second and third Irish men to go all the way after Kerry’s Tadhg Kennelly in 2005.
But no Irish player has ever won two Premiership titles.
O’Connor has once again been a regular this year for Geelong, as has double Young Footballer of the Year (2020/21), Mullin.
Geelong finished second in the ladder and are the 13/5 favourites to win the Premiership title with Brisbane (10/3), Adelaide (7/2), Collingwood (11/2) and Hawthorn (13/1).
Adelaide’s Mark Keane is the Irish player whose name is currently on everyone’s lips with 2025 a breakout season for the 25 year old Cork man.
His Adelaide side finished top of the ladder and have qualified for the finals, winning 18 out of 23 group games, the most in the club’s history.
Keane’s form saw him recently named in the provisional 44 man ‘All-Australian’ squad – effectively the AFL’s All Stars.
By the time of going to print the Mitchelstown man, who famously scored the last-gasp winning goal against Kerry in the 2020 Munster Final, could be an All- Australian, with the 22 man squad set to be named today.
It would be a remarkable achievement for the former Collingwood man, with Jim Stynes (1993) the last Irish ‘All-Australian’ but the number one goal is an AFL title.
Last year Tyrone All-Ireland winner Conor McKenna (28) became just the fourth Irish player to add a Premiership title to his CV, as a playing substitute with Brisbane Lions.
The former Essendon player has only featured five times this year and his two year contract runs out at the end of this season.
Making a sudden breakthrough in the finals looks unlikely, but McKenna has the type of x-factor that means it can’t entirely be ruled out with the Lions second favourites to defend their crown.
Callum Brown’s GWS made the finals series last year, but lost both their games, while Geelong made it to the last four, before losing to eventual winners Brisbane.
Derry man Brown and Meath’s Conor Nash are both in the Premiership hunt again with the star duo set to feature in the finals.
This is Nash’s ninth season with Hawthorn. He has played 117 games to date and has been a regular for the vast majority of the last four years.
His importance to the Hawks was demonstrated in the contract they offered him, which will take the big midfield man, who won a Meath Championship with Simonstown at 18, up until the end of the 2029 season.
Brown – a Limavady club man – has bounced back from a tricky 2024 to find a hot streak of form at the right time.
This is his eighth year in the AFL and he’s played 63 games, scoring 67 goals. 53 of those games and 61 of the goals have come in the last three years.
Brown is unique in terms of Irish imports for his goal scoring ability. He plays as a ‘medium forward’ with most former GAA players tending to be half backs.
The other eight Irish players are all in their first two years in the AFL, other than Brisbane’s Kilkenny man Darragh Joyce, who is 28.
Joyce hasn’t featured this year and his contract runs out at the end of this season.
Kerry’s Cillian Burke only signed for Carlton late last year, while Adelaide’s Karl Gallagher put pen to paper in early 2024.
Another Kerry man, Rob Monahan and Longford’s Matt Duffy are two years in, although Duffy’s first year was badly hampered by a ruptured cruciate knee ligament.
The only other Irish player to make some kind of an impact on a first team this year is St. Kilda’s Cork man Liam O’Connell.
Ballincollig man O’Connell played five senior games in 2025, but his team haven’t made the finals.
Keane’s Adelaide topped the league table, and were closely followed by Geelong, Brisbane Lions, Collingwood, Great Western Sydney (GWS), Fremantle and Hawthorn, who have all qualified for the final.
Western Bulldogs are eighth, level on points with Gold Coast but the latter have a game in hand against Essendon, and if they win it will take the last remaining spot in the finals.
Adelaide have home advantage against Collingwood in the ‘Qualifying and Elimination Finals,’ with that one set to take place this day week at the Adelaide Oval.
The next evening O’Connor and Mullin’s Geelong play Brisbane Lions at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), while Brown’s GWS and Fremantle are both at home but don’t know their opponents yet.
The semi-finals and preliminary finals take place in the following weeks, with the final fixed for September 27 at the MCG.
The AFL runs a similar system to the new GAA All-Ireland football format for 2026.
This sees the four winners of the first round skipping a round and going straight to the preliminary finals, with the four first round losers going into the semi-finals.
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