Holmes vs Newcombe

[SSSSSS]

Both having great seasons and hitting new levels but I think Newcombe is closing the gap.

You'd almost pick them purely on needs now. If you needed someone to drive the ball forward and take territory it's Holmes. If you need someone to win the ball at the coalface it's Newcombe.

 

[BringFevBack2021]

Newcombe better at clearance
Holmes better on the spread

Both would slot into any midfield, both provide huge benefits

The only reason they could be compared is they debuted the same year, otherwise they are too different to be compared

 

[STPer18]

Holmes flying under the radar again, had an ultra consistent start to the year. Top 5 in the coaches' votes with Smith and him constantly taking votes off each other.

 

[Dewyyyyy]

I’m picking Newcombe and think he only gets better. I can’t wait to see him play with Day as he’ll probably jump even more, and more ability to spend time in the forward half and use his damage and forward craft.

Holmes is just a completely different player, if he can work on his kicking whilst continuing to play as a HB, mid and even HF then he could be that genuine play me in whatever half and I’ll provide you run, toughness and find the footy. A Mr fix it of sorts. Not many have his athletic attributes.

Again tho different types

Holmes - athletic off the charts, speed, endurance and explosiveness. Wins the footy in both halves, damaging and high metres gained. Inside/outside, kicks inside 50, rebounds. Will go back to it but his athletic profile is seriously good.

Newcombe - clearance and contest beast, with the ability to use strength, power and explosiveness out of stoppage and contest. Good above head, good skills hand and foot. Finds it in transition and link play, ability to play forward with good craft. Inside/outside

Think Newcombe only due to a nudge in performance for me this year, with more to go till he reaches his ceiling. Whilst I believe Holmes is closer to his. Both very good players, and could be wrong. It’s still a bit of an odd comparison however. Besides the old “Geelong and Hawthorn rivalry”.

 

[Mr Meow]

I’m picking Newcombe and think he only gets better. I can’t wait to see him play with Day as he’ll probably jump even more, and more ability to spend time in the forward half and use his damage and forward craft.

Holmes is just a completely different player, if he can work on his kicking whilst continuing to play as a HB, mid and even HF then he could be that genuine play me in whatever half and I’ll provide you run, toughness and find the footy. A Mr fix it of sorts. Not many have his athletic attributes.

Again tho different types

Holmes - athletic off the charts, speed, endurance and explosiveness. Wins the footy in both halves, damaging and high metres gained. Inside/outside, kicks inside 50, rebounds. Will go back to it but his athletic profile is seriously good.

Newcombe - clearance and contest beast, with the ability to use strength, power and explosiveness out of stoppage and contest. Good above head, good skills hand and foot. Finds it in transition and link play, ability to play forward with good craft. Inside/outside

Think Newcombe only due to a nudge in performance for me this year, with more to go till he reaches his ceiling. Whilst I believe Holmes is closer to his. Both very good players, and could be wrong. It’s still a bit of an odd comparison however. Besides the old “Geelong and Hawthorn rivalry”.

I think for Newcombe to beat Holmes on coaches votes he'll need Holmes to keep playing predominantly at half back like in 2024. Even with Smith dominating coaches votes in midfield as a "vote stealer", Holmes tends to average more votes than Newcombe from the games where they play as midfielders.

As far as improvement left, Holmes is younger and has learned to play 3 different positions (wing, stoppage midfielder, halfback) to a high level. Perfecting any one of them can take his game to a higher level and on pretty much all performance metrics he has lifted from 2023 -> 2024 -> 2025 -> 2026. Newcombe is quite stable with 2023 and 2024 similar, 2025 a tiny dip and then 2026 back to that 2023/2024 area.

Also, Holmes kicking for this season has largely been good. Turnover and clanger rate has come down, goal assists with a huge spike, kicking efficiency way up.

 

[Dewyyyyy]

I think for Newcombe to beat Holmes on coaches votes he'll need Holmes to keep playing predominantly at half back like in 2024. Even with Smith dominating coaches votes in midfield as a "vote stealer", Holmes tends to average more votes than Newcombe from the games where they play as midfielders.

As far as improvement left, Holmes is younger and has learned to play 3 different positions (wing, stoppage midfielder, halfback) to a high level. Perfecting any one of them can take his game to a higher level and on pretty much all performance metrics he has lifted from 2023 -> 2024 -> 2025 -> 2026. Newcombe is quite stable with 2023 and 2024 similar, 2025 a tiny dip and then 2026 back to that 2023/2024 area.

Also, Holmes kicking for this season has largely been good. Turnover and clanger rate has come down, goal assists with a huge spike, kicking efficiency way up.

Yeah Holmes has impressed me this year he’d be close to AA if not there as a HB or winger (extra mid).

I do think talent wise Newcombe has more growth and think they’re pretty hard to split currently in regards to performances. Different players as I said.

Also think Newcombe gets better with Day returning, Holmes probably continues to rise with Geelong now that they’ve found their mojo it seems. Which is good for football.

Interesting debate

 

[rye]

im surprised newcombe is leading this.

his ceiling is a very good player, around aa squad level. i dont see him ever being one of the elite midfielders of the competition.

holmes is already elite as a midfielder, and arguably also elite as a half back. was very, very unfortunate to not make the all australian team last year (he had a clearly better year than serong and in my opinion daicos who both made it) and rightfully won the b&f for geelong in a season they finished runner up. better athletic traits, higher ceiling and greater positional versatility makes him the clear standout for mine.

 

[TimCahillsForehead]

It's Holmes and then daylight

 

[My Tilly]

It's Holmes and then daylight

During home & away maybe but not when it comes to finals time.

Swap both players around and Geelong would be up there with Brisbane as premiership favourite. Newcombe + Smith would be a tantalizing one-two punch combination. Perfectly ready to deploy in slow contested footy.

 

[Mr Meow]

During home & away maybe but not when it comes to finals time.

Swap both players around and Geelong would be up there with Brisbane as premiership favourite. Newcombe + Smith would be a tantalizing one-two punch combination. Perfectly ready to deploy in slow contested footy.

Holmes has only performed to a less than elite standard in 1 final (the 2025 GF) and that was because he had the worst day of kicking in his career - which hurts when you get the ball 30+ times.

He's had no problems thriving in finals otherwise: the 2022 QF, 2022 PF (pre-injury), 2024 QF, 2024 PF (pre-injury), 2025 QF and 2025 PF.

Newcombe has done very well in elimination and semi finals, then completely went to water in the one prelim he's played. Qualifying finals, prelims and grand finals are the biggest stage.

 

[STPer18]

Newcombe got spanked in the Prelim against Geelong last year. I think it was Atkins who put him in the bin.

 

[My Tilly]

Holmes has only performed to a less than elite standard in 1 final (the 2025 GF) and that was because he had the worst day of kicking in his career - which hurts when you get the ball 30+ times.

He's had no problems thriving in finals otherwise: the 2022 QF, 2022 PF (pre-injury), 2024 QF, 2024 PF (pre-injury), 2025 QF and 2025 PF.

Newcombe has done very well in elimination and semi finals, then completely went to water in the one prelim he's played. Qualifying finals, prelims and grand finals are the biggest stage.

Thing is though, Newcombe is really their only genuine gun midfielder in last years finals.

He desperately needs Will Day back in the squad. Day is not going to return as he did but it still means Newcombe finally gets much needed support and can go do his thing.

 

[Mr Meow]

Thing is though, Newcombe is really their only genuine gun midfielder in last years finals.

He desperately needs Will Day back in the squad. Day is not going to return as he did but it still means Newcombe finally gets much needed support and can go do his thing.

True. Day will help a lot. I do highly rate Newcombe and what he's doing. It's true that he's stepped up in those elimination and semi finals. But Holmes has delivered in the big QF + PFs too. He needs to rectify that wayward GF effort and hopefully he gets the chance to. I'd trust either in a final played tomorrow though. They just have different strengths. Could you imagine Holmes in that 2016-2020 era Cats side that was crying out for pacy runners? We had some great players but our lack of leg speed hurt in finals.

 

[STPer18]

Holmes back in the middle today against the best team in it and was the pick of the bunch again. Some handy names out there too.

 

[Mr Meow]

Holmes back in the middle today against the best team in it and was the pick of the bunch again. Some handy names out there too.

The way things are going Holmes genuinely could be tracking towards the most BOG or near-BOG performances in multiple positions. Not a player who is in midfield and rotates forward or back, but someone who is having a full midfield game and dominating, then half back the next weekend and doing the same. Then the games where it's 50/50.

I guess Hodge at times was like this. Dusty in 2019/2020 as he genuinely had a lot of games as a permanent forward. There aren't too many others though. Pavlich? Although his position tended to change season by season more than game by game.

 

[Dewyyyyy]

The way things are going Holmes genuinely could be tracking towards the most BOG or near-BOG performances in multiple positions. Not a player who is in midfield and rotates forward or back, but someone who is having a full midfield game and dominating, then half back the next weekend and doing the same. Then the games where it's 50/50.

I guess Hodge at times was like this. Dusty in 2019/2020 as he genuinely had a lot of games as a permanent forward. There aren't too many others though. Pavlich? Although his position tended to change season by season more than game by game.

Surely someone like Burgoyne over a season?

Goodes? Plenty can do it as mid-fwds or hb and mid but doing three is pretty well unheard of.

 

[Mr Meow]

Surely someone like Burgoyne over a season?

Goodes? Plenty can do it as mid-fwds or hb and mid but doing three is pretty well unheard of.

Burgoyne as a Hawk never topped 25 coaches votes in a season. Holmes will be close to 50 at the halfway mark. At Port he was more of a one position per season with minor rotations. Holmes is literally dominating half back for 3 weeks and then doing the same as a full time midfielder.

Mid-forwards rotate within games. That's different to what I'm describing. In very recent history Dusty was the closest - dominate as a permanent forward for a couple of weeks and then move to midfield to do the same. Possibly Goodes before that but again, he still tended to have a primary position each season or he had ones where he rotated freely between multiple positions each game. With Holmes he's being instructed "okay you're a half back this week" and then "okay this time you're permanently in midfield". We know he can do it on the wing too, but we already have 4 or 5 good options for the wings.

 

[Dewyyyyy]

Burgoyne as a Hawk never topped 25 coaches votes in a season. Holmes will be close to 50 at the halfway mark. At Port he was more of a one position per season with minor rotations. Holmes is literally dominating half back for 3 weeks and then doing the same as a full time midfielder.

Mid-forwards rotate within games. That's different to what I'm describing. In very recent history Dusty was the closest - dominate as a permanent forward for a couple of weeks and then move to midfield to do the same. Possibly Goodes before that but again, he still tended to have a primary position each season or he had ones where he rotated freely between multiple positions each game. With Holmes he's being instructed "okay you're a half back this week" and then "okay this time you're permanently in midfield". We know he can do it on the wing too, but we already have 4 or 5 good options for the wings.

Yeah I didn’t mean him as someone who was a “top line player in every position” more so that he was one that genuinely covered most positions and could change within games and within weeks from HB, mid to forward.

There aren’t many at all who do it more than 2 different positions. 3 is just unheard outside of a few exceptions. I get your point but also think there’s a lot of players who dominate over two genuine positions (namely hb mids and fwd mids) say NAS for example now.

NAS can and has spent massive chunks of games as a mid then hb not weeks gone by. Again get your point.

Still impressive, his skill set is perfect for that role. Has the run and dash required to play HB and he’s a running machine through the middle. He’s also a no fuss operator so the change in role and positioning doesn’t seem to bother him much.

 

[Mr Meow]

Yeah I didn’t mean him as someone who was a “top line player in every position” more so that he was one that genuinely covered most positions and could change within games and within weeks from HB, mid to forward.

There aren’t many at all who do it more than 2 different positions. 3 is just unheard outside of a few exceptions. I get your point but also think there’s a lot of players who dominate over two genuine positions (namely hb mids and fwd mids) say NAS for example now.

NAS can and has spent massive chunks of games as a mid then hb not weeks gone by. Again get your point.

Still impressive, his skill set is perfect for that role. Has the run and dash required to play HB and he’s a running machine through the middle. He’s also a no fuss operator so the change in role and positioning doesn’t seem to bother him much.

Yeah actually NWM is the other current player who does it. Heeney, Bont and Petracca are more 70/30 or 80/20 forward/mids within games as opposed to the game by game complete role shift.

Martin, Hodge, Goodes, Pavlich, Kouta, Hird, McLeod are modern day players that come to mind as far as dominating a position 1 week or part of a season and then the next week doing the same in a different role. It's a great trait to have.