First, the easy part, how does Goldy's Price change, depending on what he averages? I hate tables like this, that use the average score, week in, week out, to generate prices. So what I've done is assumed Goldy will score 15% higher in games in Victoria, than he does in games outside of Victoria, which is about what he did last season. ie in the first column where he averages 130, I have him scoring 139 in Victoria, and 118 interstate.
There are two hard parts to doing analysis like Blicavs. Firstly getting past your own preconceived ideas, and secondly knowing where to draw the line. Let's soldier on regardless.
First, let's try and tackle this from a Club point of view. Imagine you are part of the Geelong match committee, and you sat down to discuss things at the end of a largely disappointing 2015. Rucking and Stoppages would have been a large part of that conversation. Let's look at the main numbers:
Hitouts: Geelong 725, Opposition 1,008 - Geelong won only 41.8% of Hitouts.
There were only
2 games for the season where Geelong won the Hitouts.
Rnd 5 v Rich - Simpson 21, Blicavs 15, Walker 1, (total 37) beat Maric 25, Vickery 5 (total 30)
Rnd 11 v Port - Stanley 24, Blicavs 20, Walker 16, Others 3 (total 63) beat Lobbe 52, Others 7 (total 59)
There were 14 games where Geelong won less than 45% of the Hitouts, 6 games where they won between 45% and 55%, and 1 game where they won more than 55%, and that was only 55.2%!
They obviously need to do something, as it's not working right now. The recruiting of Z Smith was possibly the best they could get, given they were trying to get Dangerfield (to be covered in the next section of this analysis) as well.
This is about Blicavs, so let's isolate his Rucking performance. There were 8 games where you could say he was Rucking solo, or 1st Ruck. In Rounds 1 and 2 he seemed only to be Rucking "incidently", and all other games he either shared the duties, or was playing 2nd Ruck. To focus on his performance as a Ruck, let's look at how he went in those 8 games as a solo or 1st Ruck:
Blicavs 189 H/outs at 23.6/game, other Geelong H/outs 87 H/outs at 10.9/game - total 276 at 34.5/game
In those 8 games the opposition team won 407 H/outs at 50.9/game.
With Blicavs playing 1st Ruck or solo Ruck, Geelong won 40.4% of Hitouts, just below their seasons poor average.
Obviously, Blicavs isn't a credible option at 1st Ruck, if you are trying to improve your Rucking woes.
Stoppages. Selwood came 9th in average Clearances/game with 6.95. (Dangerfield came 7th with 7.17). No other Geelong players were in the top 20, with Caddy next best at 5.1/game and Guthrie/Blicavs tied next at 3.6/game.
Geelong lost the Clearances to the opposition in 2015 727 to 838 (34.6 to 39.9 per game).
They had 7 games where they won the Clearances and 14 games where they lost the Clearances.
There were 11 games where they got less than 45% of the Clearances, 8 games where they got between 45% and 55%, and 2 games where they got more than 55%.
It's pretty hard to lose first use of the ball in games consistently, and win more games than you lose. They needed to address that, and the recruiting of Dangerfield goes a long way to fixing that problem. Not that they specifically wanted him for this problem, just happy coincidence.
Where does Blicavs fit into this analysis of Clearances? You might think that 3.6 is pretty good for someone attending most Stoppages as a Ruck, rather than a Mid, but it's not that great. Looking at the top 8 Rucks, as far as Hitouts/game, and how many Clearances they averaged/game you get: Goldy 3.5, Sandi 2.5, Mummy 3.2, Jacobs 2.6, Gawn 2.8, NicNat 4.0, Martin S 4.8, Lobbe 1.8. So Blicavs Clearance numbers look fairly typical for an athletic Ruck, and there is nothing in them to suggest that he will be a fix to the Clearance problem.
So to summarize the "Club Point of View". Blicavs is servicable, good as an "incidental" weapon, but isn't the fix to either the Hitout or Clearance dilemma. He will attend his share of Stoppages in 2016, but if Geelong are to address these two problems, it would appear he will be at less stoppages in 2016. They've added Z Smith, and Dangerfield to the mix, so who is it you think Blicavs will replace at Stoppages to keep his Stoppage numbers high? Caddy? Guthrie? It seems very unlikely!
So let's look at this from a SC point of view.
Blicavs 8 games as solo or 1st Ruck saw him average 106.0 in SC, 16.8 Disp, 9.0 CP's, 23.6 H/outs, 3.8 Clearances.
Blicavs 13 games as 2nd Ruck, Shared Ruck or Incidental Ruck saw him average 103.2 SC, 19.1 Disp, 10.0 CP's, 11.1 H/outs, 3.5 Clearances.
There's a fair chunk of his score, in each of those sections, that comes from the points he got attending Stoppages. He averaged slightly less in the games where he attended less Stoppages. The question becomes, where do you see him making progress? It would seem certain, if Smith, Vardy and Stanley can hold fitness, that Blicavs will be attending less Stoppages, and the Stoppages he does attend as a Mid, he would seem even less likely to get the ball, with the introduction of Dangerfield. It seems a lot of his game will go back to being "Mr Stop Gap", and filling holes where needed. History says that is not a very SC friendly role. There seems to be have been some talk of him possibly playing more Mid this season. With the introduction of Dangerfield, we will see Selwood, Duncan, Caddy, Guthrie and Company getting a little less Mid time. Who is it that will give up even more of their Mid time to Blicavs? It's very hard to see how it will work! 110 averages in SC usually come to the top 12-15 Mids, a couple of Rucks and Forwards, and maybe one Def. The numbers above show that Blicavs fails to fall into anyone of those catagories.
He could well prove to be useful pick of sorts in SC, but it is hard to see him being anymore than a slightly underperforming R2/M8, but his DPP flexibility might save you some points along the way. To me, it really looks like a more realistic expectation of his 2016 season is something like 95 to 104.
