2025, the 12th year of FU was the last year we saw the Christmas Island Smugglers exist and a new team hoist the FU Premiership Cup – the Blanchetown Bunyips. Overall, the discrepancy between the average scores of the highest scoring team and lowest scoring team was 502 points. Not as high as what we saw in 2024, but still a good 80-90 points higher than what we saw in 2020 and 2021. This table shows the average points score by their rank. So Blanchetown was the highest scoring team in 2025 with an average score of 1,349. In 2024, the highest scoring team (Ararat) averaged 1,437 points. The average score of the highest scoring team (1,349) in 2025 was a 3 year low, but, we also saw the average score of the 3 lowest scoring teams under 1,000 points for the first time. Has equality improved? No. When looking at average team score by rank over our history, the gaps have definitely gotten wider than what we saw in the early days. Things have never really recovered from the pandemic year of 2020. Even the scores of the middle 10 teams (thin grey lines) are further apart than they were earlier on in our league. But we're not here to dwell too much on that. In 2025, we saw 3 teams jump up into the top 8 (Blanchetown 10th to 1st, Staghorn 14th to 5th, King Island 11th to 7th) and 3 drop out (Cow Bay 4th to 11th, Groote 3rd to 12th, Nuytsland 6th to 16th). Blanchetown traded in Gawn and Rowell which definitely helped their average team score jump 156 points whereas Ararat saw theirs drop 128 points but still remain in the top 4. Staghorn’s 167 point improvement was the largest in the league which also gave them an extra 7 wins for the H&A season. King Island’s 120 point improvement gave them 4 extra wins. That 11 win mark seems to guarantee a finals berth. On the flip side, Nuytsland had the biggest drop in their average score (291 points) which was primarily influenced by the coach’s decision to rebuild. Groote’s average dropped by 68 points and Cow Bay saw a drop of 28 points. Both resulted in 6 less wins for the H&A season but, looking at the average team scores, were probably unlucky and most likely should’ve had around 10 wins for the season. Where did each team’s improvement come from? It should be no surprise when looking at the ranking of scores by line for each team that Blanchetown’s improvement came from having the best mids, ruck and interchange lines. Mids and rucks improved by 6 positions from 7th to 1st, and interchange improved by 8 positions from 9th to 1st. Forwards and defence weren’t as strong but still in the top 8 in the league. Our runners up Staghorn were let down by their forward line, ranking 13th best, although improved by 3 positions from 2024. Oddly enough 2 of the teams who dropped out of the 8 saw strong scores in parts of their teams - Cow Bay had the best defence and forward lines, Groote had the 2nd best midfield and ruck lines. One the may have flown under the radar was Hughenden, a team which saw no improvement in where they ranked for average team scores but saw improvement in their defenders (+7 positions) and interchange (+3). Finally, when looking at score distributions across the H&A season for each team, there were 2 obvious standouts in Blanchetown and Ararat. While Serengeti had the 5th highest median score, they also had a huge range from a low of 954 to a high of 1,539. Staghorn, ranked 6th best when looking at median scores, was a fairly consistent scoring team which probably gave them an extra couple of wins against other teams. That red line going across is 1,200 points (roughly the average score we see in our league) and the red vertical line marks out the team with the 8th highest median weekly score. 2025’s grand final was the 2nd highest scoring ever with a total of 2,750 points scored between the two grand finalists: Blanchetown (1,390) and Staghorn (1,360). The 30 point margin was the 3rd lowest we’d seen. Four of our finals from 2025 made it into the top 10 highest scoring of all time. The grand final made it into 9th, but it was the qualifying final between Blanchetown and King Island (2,767 points scored) that was the highest and was the 5th highest scoring final ever. That final from the first week of finals was 1 of 3 that made it into the top 10. Christmas Island left with an 81-129 win loss record over the 12 seasons the team featured in our league. They appeared in one grand final (finishing runner up), featured in 3 finals series and only once finished bottom of the table. In other milestones, Blanchetown recorded their 100th overall win in the grand final and both Coolgardie and King Island crossed the 100 win and 100 loss marks.
In terms of head to head match ups, there are only a handful of records where one team has been unbeaten in their matchups. Exmouth has an 0-12 record when coming up against Ararat, and Horsham has a few 0-5 records against Ararat, Coolgardie, Korumburra and Pakenham. 3 of last years teams made it into the top 30 points scored in the H&A season. Blanchetown’s 22,937 points was the 7th best of all time, Ararat’s effort was 20th best and Pakenham’s was 23rd best. At the other end, Christmas Island’s 14,402 points was the 3rd lowest ever, Exmouth’s was the 4th lowest, Nuytsland’s 13th lowest and Hughenden’s 26th lowest. Just one match last year saw a team score enough points to make it into the top 30 scores of all time. In Serengeti’s FU round 13 match against Cow Bay, the team scored 1,539 points to make it to equal 14th best ever. A score of at least 1,500 points is needed to make it into this list. There were 4 matches last year where a team’s score was low enough to make it into the lowest 30 team scores of all time. In one match (FU round 11 between Nuytsland and Christmas Island), both team’s scores of under 700 points made it onto the list. Christmas Island’s effort in FY round 10 against Eden (544 points) was the lowest non bye affected score we’ve ever seen. When looking at match aggregates, 3 matches were high scoring affairs that made it into the list of top 30 scores of all time. Korumburra and Ararat had a 2,861 point shootout in FU round 11, Blanchetown and Cow Bay scored 2,842 points between them in FU round 14, and Serengeti and Groote pulled together 2,807 points in FU round 16. Remember that round 11 match between Nuytsland and Christmas Island that I mentioned just before? Well we saw just 1,331 points scored between these two teams, the lowest ever. Two other matches entered the list of 30 lowest scoring matches, both involved Eden. We also saw 4 matches where the margin was in the all time top 30. The bye affected match between Blanchetown and Nuytsland in FU round 12 had a margin of 850 points, the first time we’ve seen a margin of more than 800 points. Blanchetown now hold the record for all time biggest margin in a match, regardless of whether or not it was bye affected. In more good news for our 2025 premiers, they were sitting on 15 straight wins at the end of the grand final, just behind the all time longest streak of 17 wins. The Bunyips also hold the longest losing streak in the FU but weren’t lucky enough this year to beat the record and have the privilege of holding the record for longest losing and winning streak in the FU. Exmouth broke their 19 game losing streak in round 4 but then started up another losing streak in round 5, sitting on 13 straight losses at the end of the 2025 season.