227 of 558 AFL players changed boots, and one boot lost nobody
Of the 558 AFL players we track, 227 changed boots since the 2025 season. The Puma Future 7 lost all 59 of its wearers, and one Asics boot lost none.
Evidence227 of the 558 AFL players on our lists are in a different boot to the one we recorded for them in 2025. The other 331 did not move.
Two snapshots, a season apart. We only get those two looks, so a switch is recorded as having happened somewhere in between, never on a particular Saturday. Players who left the AFL hold no row here, which keeps the comparison honest and costs a few names along the way.
The quieter half is the 331 who stayed put. A boot nobody leaves is doing something marketing copy cannot put on a poster.
The how we count page covers how players are matched to a pair and why the count only runs across the players still on a list. For the whole field rather than just the movers, the census holds every boot and every wearer in one place.
Where the 227 went
The Puma Future 9 Ultimate FG took on 61 new wearers since the 2025 season, the biggest intake of any boot in the census. Fifty-seven of them came over from the Future 7 Ultimate, which is less a transfer market than a queue at one door.
That shape repeats down the list. The gains sit at the top, and mostly they are players moving one generation forward in something they already trusted. The Future 9 is the extreme case.
Asics ran the same play with the Menace 5 Hybrid, up 30, with 28 arriving from the Menace 4.
Adidas went two ways. The Predator Elite FG Football Boots picked up 28, with 26 of those straight out of the Predator Accuracy.1. The Copa Pure 4 Elite FG Football Boots added 26, gathered from both the Copa Pure 2 Elite, at 13, and the Copa Pure 2 League, at 9. Two price tiers of the same silo, landing on one boot. That is either good product design or very good retail distribution, and we cannot tell which from here.
Nike's Phantom 6 Low Elite FG sits on 21 new pairs, split between the Phantom Luna 2 Elite at 12 and the Phantom GX 2 Elite at 9. Two separate Phantom lines, one low-cut boot at the end of them.
The rest of the movers work in smaller numbers. The Asics Lethal Testimonial 4 IT Football Boots added 15, five of those from the Nike Tiempo Legend 10 Pro Elite. The Puma King 20 Ultimate FG/AG added 13, with 11 out of the King Ultimate. The Nike Mercurial Vapor 16 Elite added 10, all 10 from the Zoom Mercurial Vapor 15: the cleanest straight swap on the board.
Ten is where this list stops. Below it the ledger runs the other way, and the losses are a much shorter story than the queue at the Future 9.
The boots that emptied out
Zero of 59. That is the retention figure for the Puma Future 7 Ultimate among the players who had it going into the 2025 season. Fifty-nine is too big a group for zero to be a rounding error. Every one of them is in something else.
The Asics Menace 4 ran the same result at smaller scale. Zero of 29.
Census work usually turns up drift. A boot loses a third of its wearers, picks up a few strays, settles somewhere new. A boot that keeps nobody is a different event. There is no residual group and no loyalist hanging on out of habit or superstition; the whole population moved.
Both moved one generation forward inside the same silo, same brand, newer box. The player stayed true to the name and the brand kept the customer, and neither party had to think about it very hard.
The data does not carry the why. Nobody in these records told us whether the Future 7 fell apart at the seam, disappeared from shelves, or simply lost an argument with the newer shape on the shelf beside it. If you moved out of a Future 7, we would like to hear the reason.
The boot nobody leaves
The Asics Lethal Testimonial 4 IT Football Boots had 151 wearers going into the 2025 season. Nobody has left. We checked it twice.
That is the other end of the story, and it belongs to the same brand. Asics lost every Menace wearer and kept every Lethal Testimonial wearer in the same window. Whatever is doing the work here is doing it in the boot rather than on the tag.
The spec sheet helps too. Kangaroo leather upper, Solyte cushioning, HG10mm heel. Plain materials, described plainly, on a boot that has been around long enough to have settled. It is still picking up wearers from other silos, holding its own group and adding to it, the only combination in this census that looks anything like comfort.
The trick is working out whether that is devotion or inertia, and from here the two look identical.
What the AFLW list is wearing
The AFLW list has a house boot. The Asics Menace 5 is on 117 AFLW players, more than anything else in the women's count and enough that it reads as a default rather than a decision. Behind it sits the Asics Lethal Tigreor on 89 and the Asics Lethal Flash IT FF 3 on 29. Then comes the first boot that is not an Asics at all, the Nike Mercurial Vapor 16 Pro AG on 27.
Asics built its women's presence the slow way, one comfortable leather boot at a time, and the census has arrived at the point where the safe pick and the popular pick are the same object.
The Menace 5 earns that plainly enough. Synthetic leather upper, a knit mono-sock collar doing the ankle support, Flytefoam underfoot. The copy also mentions a sockliner dyeing process that saves water and carbon, which is admirable and has never once changed how a boot feels on a Tuesday night. Nothing else on the sheet is exotic or trying to be, which is roughly how a boot ends up on that many feet in one competition.
Leather runs through the rest of it. The Tigreor is a kangaroo leather vamp on a Solyte sockliner with the raised HG10mm heel. The Lethal Flash IT FF 3 is a leather vamp over synthetic side panels. The men's count is drifting the other way, into knit uppers and sock collars, so the women's list is the one still buying leather in bulk.
The Mercurial is the exception and the AG plate is the detail worth knowing if you are shopping off this list. Full Flyknit, an Air Zoom unit in the heel, a tacky skin finish for keeping the ball at speed. It is a speed boot built for harder, sandier surfaces.
Individual pages carry what a list cannot. Richmond's Ellie McKenzie is a name you can follow from the count down to a single boot, and that is where I would start.
See you out there, from the What's Worn crew.
Boot details and availability change; check with the retailer before buying.
Start with these
Evidence plates - the boots this entry is about
Recorded by Bryn & Steve
Subject boot: Puma Future 9 Ultimate FG - 89 mapped players
Counts: the What's Worn census