Fremantle young gun Murphy Reid has claimed the first of what is set to be many accolades in his promising career after claiming the AFL Players’ Best First-Year Player.

Reid edged out Brisbane father-son prodigy Levi Ashcroft to claim the prestigious award, with Melbourne’s Harvey Langford finishing third at the awards ceremony in Melbourne on Thursday night.

The 19-year-old burst onto the scene with four goals on debut against Geelong and has gone on to play all 23 games for the Dockers this season — the first Fremantle player to do so since Stephen Hill and Nick Suban in 2009 — kicking 24 goals and averaging 14 disposals.

He has also ended the home-and-away season with 36 score assists — tying with Hawthorn great Cyril Rioli for the most in their first season.

Reid joins Paul Haselby (2000), Rhys Palmer (2008), Michael Barlow (2010) and Caleb Serong (2020) as previous winners from Fremantle of the award.

Drafted with pick No.17 out of Sandringham Dragons last year, Reid made an instant impact at the Dockers and has already re-signed at the club until the end of 2029.

It will also furthered Reid’s claims to win the Ron Evans Medal as the 2025 Rising Star, which he is overwhelming favourite at $1.08 ahead of Adelaide’s Daniel Curtin — who was ineligible for this award because it was his second season — and Ashcroft.

Reid said it was “surreal” to walk into the Dockers’ lockerroom for the first time late last year.

“There’s some big names there. I was lucky enough to move in with Andy Brayshaw at the start so I got to know him pretty well and grateful to be given the opportunity to play for the Dockers,” he said.

“No cooking from him (Brayshaw) we were on the tools. We were cleaning most of the time. His partner’s pretty good in the kitchen.”

Reid revealed he was “flat” after a quiet first half on debut before he exploded with four goals in the third term to stamp himself as a player to watch.

“I got that many people down the road to Geelong to come and watch me and I was like ‘how good’s this, I haven’t had a kick’,” he said.

“I was pretty lucky the boys started getting on top in the midfield and started getting it down my way.

“It’s a bit of a blur, but I’ve never done anything like that before. I was lucky enough to get on the end of a couple.”

Asked about their win over the Western Bulldogs at the weekend to make finals, Reid said: “It’s incredibly exciting. We’ve had the belief all year and we’ve been ticking along really nicely.

“We got written off a little bit last week and we just wanted to come out and make a statement and continue that next week (against Gold Coast).”

Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir was full of praise for his young forward who he said chased the big moments.

“He has been super. Like I said all along, he wants to learn, he wants to get better, he wants to evolve his game,” Longmuir told reporters on Wednesday.

“Probably most of all he just doesn’t shirk any of those bigger moments. He actually goes looking for them, maybe too much at times. We have to tell him to keep in role a bit more than he does.

“People forget, he came to the club as a midfielder and we were developing him as a midfielder, but we had injuries early in the season. Especially probably late in pre-season we started getting a lot of injuries so we put him forward and he flourished.

“He’s done a lot of work on his running patterns and his defensive work, but he just eats up the feedback and gets to work and improves. He’s putting out a good product, week-in, week-out so I’m really excited for what that’s going to look like in two- or three-year’s time.”

St Kilda defender Alix Tauru finished fourth, while North Melbourne’s Finn O’Sullivan and Western Bulldogs mature-age recruit Sam Davidson was equal fifth.