The Errol Gulden Model: Why the AFL’s Midfield Is About to Change

The centre bounce has long been a battleground for the AFL’s strongest midfielders. The next evolution might belong to its quickest.

The early rounds of a new AFL season are always full of overreactions from fans and media alike. We see teams touted as premiers, coaches called to be sacked and players set up as the next big thing after one handy performance.

Now obviously everyone needs to hold onto their horses with those, but sometimes those early performances reveal something bigger about where the game itself is heading.

During Thursday Night’s season opener, Errol Gulden dominated, and there were plenty of reasons why, but the more I looked into it, a different reason began to come to the forefront.

Errol Gulden, dual All-Australian and 2023 Best and Fairest.

Obviously, Errol’s running power, his tank and his ball use are undeniable, and were key facets of his incredible performance. But Fox Footy analyst and the widely regarded best analyst in footy, David King, spoke pregame about Dean Cox and Sydney’s desire to use Gulden more at centre bounce.

But that begs the question, why wasn’t their best ball user and best runner being used in that position already?

Well I think it comes back to the same reason the AFL changed its rules to force ruckmen to revert to jumping at centre bounce contests.

Adam Simpson, last year, did some great work on AFL 360 explaining how the centre bounce had quietly become more of a 1v1 contest, essentially four separate 1v1 battles confined in a small area surrounding the centre circle. Former ruckman, Jeff White, added to this explaining how that was, at least in part, because rucks were wrestling so often that they were actively cutting off their potential hit-to zones due to the lack of ability to get a clean hand on the ball whilst wrestling, and trying to locate the somewhat random nature of the bounce.

Adam Simpson, 2018 Premiership coach and Fox Footy expert analyst.

This got me thinking, and forced me to watch hundreds and hundreds of centre bounce contests from the past couple of seasons.

They were right, and the vision proves it. The ball was being hit into a smaller area, and it essentially became hell for leather contested footy, a race to see who could win that initial 1v1 contest.

Which, with all due respect, probably isn’t where a player like Errol Gulden is going to be most impactful. The risk and reward of having him in there was skewed more toward risk because the state of that specific contest placed such a heavy emphasis on winning that first physical collision.

When the ball is dropping into a tight chaotic contest coaches prioritise one thing above all else, who is most likely to win that first moment of contact, to win first possession. If you send a lighter, outside-oriented player into that situation and they lose that initial contest the opposition can clear the ball immediately and you have exposed your structure. The risk is high and the reward is relatively small, with the only reward being that on the off chance the ball spills out, or your team wins first possession you have an outside runner.

Historically that cautious approach made sense. For years the AFL midfield prototype was built around big bodied contested beasts. Midfield groups were stacked with players who could absorb contact, win the ball in tight and muscle their way through stoppages. Think about the great midfields of the past couple of decades and the common theme was always power and physicality.

The centre bounce was essentially a battlefield and the players selected to stand in that square were the ones most capable of surviving it.

But something has clearly shifted.

Gulden’s career centre bounce attendance percentage sat at 36 percent in 2022, 36 percent again in 2024, then dropped to just 19 percent in 2025. But in his one game so far in 2026 that number jumped all the way to 59 percent. A one-game sample size for sure, but given the rhetoric around his position and the clear results, I expect it to stay around that mark for the entirety of the season.

However, it’s not just Sydney’s coaching panel making this change randomly, it’s a necessary and deliberate change in response to the AFL’s new rules.

Many others and I flagged during the preseason that centre bounce clearances were going to be more creative and efficient because rucks are no longer allowed to wrestle, opening a larger amount of potential hit-to zones, and rucks would now know exactly where the ball will be, not having to guess the trajectory of a bounce. Most people predicted this would end up with more ball being directed into space rather than simply dropping at the feet of a 1v1 contest.

What I didn’t follow that thought through to though, was the type of midfielders that now become more useful and impactful in that environment.

The Errol Gulden model.

The more the ruck rule evolves how centre bounces operate, the more we are going to see the risk and reward of playing lighter more agile midfielders shift toward the reward side rather than the risk side. If the ball is hitting space rather than bodies, the punishment for losing a physical contest becomes smaller, while the upside of having speed, agility and elite ball use in that contest suddenly becomes much greater. Players who can attack space will become more valuable than those who simply win their contest through strength and physicality.

And we are already seeing hints of it.

Take the comparison between Nick Daicos and Jagga Smith. Both entered the league as the next big superstar midfielders, and both were elite ball winners throughout their junior careers. But Daicos only attended 3.8 percent of Collingwood’s centre bounces in his first season while Smith attended 53 percent in his very first game.

Jagga Smith, Carlton’s 2024 draft pick no.3

Now, there is context to that. Smith has technically had a full year in an AFL system after recovering from the ACL injury he suffered before debuting, but visually he doesn’t look bigger than Daicos did in his first year and if anything, he looks slightly smaller. Collingwood also were not exactly stacked with dominant clearance players in Daicos’ first season either, they finished the year ranked second last in centre clearances. So, it is not as if Daicos was being kept out of the middle because the players ahead of him were clearly superior options.

The environment itself was different.

But it is not just about how often these players are attending centre bounces, it’s about how dangerous they look when they’re in there. For example, in Hawthorn’s season-opener vs GWS, Nick Watson looked like Hawthorn’s most dangerous midfielder at times despite only attending 17 percent of their centre bounces. His speed and agility immediately made him a threat when the ball hit the ground, one of which he broke past Clayton Oliver, out the front of the stoppage and almost kicked an incredible goal.

Nick Watson & Connor MacDonald may be the answer to Hawthorn’s midfield struggles

We’ve already seen what players like Izak Rankine and Kysaiah Pickett can do when they’ve rotated through the centre bounce over the last couple of seasons. Both quick, agile and extremely explosive players who attack the space around the contest rather than simply wrestle for it.

Even the players who were already elite contested midfielders have had to evolve in this direction. Take Matt Rowell for example, he was always a contested ball monster and one of the most dominant inside players we had seen coming through the early stages of his career, but what pushed him from a great player to a Brownlow Medal winner was what he began doing in space, rather than in contest.

Damaging teams on the outside with speed and agility rather than simply feeding the ball out to teammates. He began using his athleticism to break out of stoppage, to accelerate past opponents and defensive systems.

In other words, even the most brutal inside midfielders in the league have had to add a layer of explosiveness to become the most dangerous players in the league.

Matt Rowell - 2025 Brownlow Medallist.

But I think all of this is about to go to another level. Because if the new ruck rule truly opens up more hit zones, forces teams to utilise more space and reduces the reliance on pure 1v1 strength contests... then centre bounce strategy across the league is going to change.

And when centre bounce strategy changes, then inevitably the types of midfielders you put in there will change too.

Which means the next evolution of the AFL midfield might not be built around the biggest, most physcial, players anymore. It might be built around the fastest minds and the quickest feet.

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