Cale Hooker has been selected by the AFL Coaches Association in their 2015 All Australian team.

Although he spent half his season kicking goals, Hooker was selected as a tall defender in the coaches' best 22.

The team has been selected using the votes in the AFLCA’s 2015 Champion Player Award to select players in a team representing football’s “state-of-the-art” structure.

AFLCA Chief Executive Officer, Mark Brayshaw outlined the process that gave rise to the team’s structure. 

“Early in the year, we asked a handful of our members who are Opposition Analysts to settle upon the ideal structure of an AFL team in 2015. This was an important first step because we wanted our team to represent where the game has evolved, not what it looked like 100 years ago. 

“The 2015 AFLCA’s All-Australian team is an illustration of what Best Practice looks like this season. We’ve included a new position of High Half Forward, plus 5 Inside/Outside midfielders, 4 Inside Midfielders, a Tall/Medium Marking Forward, a Tall/Medium Marking Defender and two Ruckmen.”

The final team was selected based on a two-step process after the 23 Home & Away rounds. The first step classified the season’s best players into one of the positions in the team structure. Then, each player was ranked in diminishing order of the number of AFLCA Champion Player Award votes earned in the 2015 Season. 

To illustrate, Goldstein, Naitanui, Sandilands and Mumford were all classified as Ruckmen. Goldstein (73 votes) and Naitanui (53) were the highest vote earners amongst all the Ruckmen. Therefore, Goldstein is starting Ruckman and Naitanui is on Interchange. 

Mr Brayshaw advised that the AFL Coaches Association All-Australian team is a “pure” team. 

“The season’s best performing players are not always selected. For instance, Sam Mitchell came 8^th in the AFLCA’s 2015 Champion Player Award with 69 votes, however, he is not selected in because he is the 5^th ranked Inside Midfielder and the team only needs 4 in this Position. On the other hand, Zach Tuohy came equal 100^th in the Award with 22 votes. Zach was selected because he’s the highest rated small Defender.”

“The Coaches Association’s All-Australian team highlights the AFL Coaches’ unique perspective on the game. For instance, Bernie Vince, Cale Hooker and Zach Tuohy weren’t short-listed in the AFL’s All-Australian squad of 40 but made our team. On the other hand, we haven’t selected 6 of the 20 top place-getters the AFLCA’s 2015 Champion Player Award.”

Hooker was unlucky to reclaim his spot in the backline for the Virgin Australia AFL All Australian team for the second year in a row after another stellar year which saw him take out the Crichton Medal last week. 

Essendon defender Michael Hurley will find out tonight whether he will receive his first All Australian selection.