Position Forward Discussion

[THCLT]

The question I keep coming back to is apart from the 60k saved, what does he offer that a Heeney type doesnt? You can count Heeney as a banker IMO and I’m not sure the same can be said with Petracca.

You could pose the same question for Laird v Houston in DEF.

For me it all depends on whether a 'said' player was on your radar or not. If so, then you're looking for obvious indicators during these preseason games, whatever that may be. Then it's just a matter of them ticking or not ticking your boxes...that's pretty much all we have to go off. Different scenario if they were not on your watch list as you're solely reliant on observations/opinions from other coaches who may not think like you and/or not have a similar starting structure to yours...This is where it can get a bit 'messy'.

He was one of those 'low' on my watchlist, but is definitely at the top of that pile now. I wasn't aware that he has worked to change his body shape during the off season so that's another positive indicator for me.

 

[Professor]

I think he certainly has the talent to do it and these are the types of pick you need to chase year to year. He really does tick a lot of boxes. Age, games played, high draft pick, rarely misses a game, team presumably on the up and he certainly passed the all important eye test on the weekend.

The question I keep coming back to is apart from the 60k saved, what does he offer that a Heeney type doesnt? You can count Heeney as a banker IMO and I’m not sure the same can be said with Petracca.

Sorry Russ, but, Petracca doesn't have a broken thumb. ?

 

[aps1]

I think he certainly has the talent to do it and these are the types of pick you need to chase year to year. He really does tick a lot of boxes. Age, games played, high draft pick, rarely misses a game, team presumably on the up and he certainly passed the all important eye test on the weekend.

The question I keep coming back to is apart from the 60k saved, what does he offer that a Heeney type doesnt? You can count Heeney as a banker IMO and I’m not sure the same can be said with Petracca.

Petracca is definitely a risk/reward selection, but the downside isn’t awful. Worst case he goes similar to he last couple of years, best case he goes close to premium mid numbers.

Its also looking like we will need every dollar so the $60k could become important. Will definitely be a lot of eyes on the second hitout.

 

[Rowsus]

I just had a look at Petracca and found some clarity in looking at the Demons start to the season

WCE-Hutchings
GWS - De boer
Freo- ?
Saints - Steele
GC - Miller

As Matthew Knicks said in his presser, if Petracca is doing that much damage in a real game, he would have placed someone on him very quickly. All those teams the Demons play early have the ability to move that genuine stopper to him. IF - he has put up decent numbers in the first 5 weeks and has coped with a bit of attention then he surely one i will look at to bring in. I cant see him hurting me early.

I'm not sure that Petracca would be the first pick for those guys to start on. I think they're more likely going to go to Oliver.

 

[ScoringFreely]

I just had a look at Petracca and found some clarity in looking at the Demons start to the season

WCE-Hutchings
GWS - De boer
Freo- ?
Saints - Steele
GC - Miller

As Matthew Knicks said in his presser, if Petracca is doing that much damage in a real game, he would have placed someone on him very quickly. All those teams the Demons play early have the ability to move that genuine stopper to him. IF - he has put up decent numbers in the first 5 weeks and has coped with a bit of attention then he surely one i will look at to bring in. I cant see him hurting me early.

With Masten out of the team that lost to the cats in the final and Kelly in, Hutchings spot potentially at risk. He's not skillful enough to play HF and Eagles have a lot of developing small backmen. So if Brander performs over the Marsh cup rotating fwd/wing, Hutchings could be out. With Nicnat, Shuey, Yeo, Kelly I hope we take teams on h2h rather than tagging. Sheed and Redden I would assume are safe. Interesting viewing tomorrow night !

Still valid points re: trac either way. Just updating on Hutchings.

 

[Connoisseur]

Geez it doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence when you see the numbers laid bare like that. He needs to make such huge improvement to get that average up to the 95+ required. I suppose the question is if he can push his disposal average to 25.

How do you feel about him out of curiosity?

Refreshing and daunting to be asked for my opinion as I thoroughly enjoy placing/researching the above as a starting point for those interested to dig further.

To be honest I hadn’t considered/had an in-depth look at Petracca until you mentioned (eventually would have in the coming days/weeks).

Numerous encouraging signs as listed above and from my quick glance CPR% and possible improvement in disposals and tackles avg if he receives sufficient midfield minutes. Quite a nuisance with the lack of available free stats issued by AFL, Champion Data,etc in comparison to other professional sports (eg NBA, NFL) regarding time spent in mid or fwd, etc (Ask Prospectus owners whether it’s listed).

Downside is if he stays around his typical scoring range of high 70’s to low 80’s but with his contested style and being a likely recipient of extended midfield minutes then it should bode well for pushing his avg from anywhere to the high 80’s to the 90’s or even low 100’s thus potentially alleviating that concern. Not a noted high possession getter nor tackler but only needs roughly 22-24 and 4.5 to 5 range to likely reach the 90’s assuming he maintains his high CPR% which is another enticing factor. Also has amassed a large amount of games between the 70-95 SC range and the next step is to turn those into 90-115 whilst limiting his scores under 70.

Waiting on his performance in the 2nd game which will hopefully coincide with Brayshaw’s return to get a better grasp of the situation and the potential pecking order for CBA’s/midfield minutes. I’ve displayed a tendency in most of my iterations to favour the mid-priced forwards and dependent on Petracca’s upcoming performance in conjunction with the reports from Melbourne supporters,etc, he potentially could pip A Brayshaw/T Lynch for the F1 spot.

 

[Vicwood]

That may be so, but with his suppossed increased fitness level I'm feeling the intention from Melbourne is for Petracca to rotate between mid & fwd and not play soley midfield(or fwd). Final year of his contract and they probably want to give him a fair crack at reaching the heights of Dustin, Bont, & DeGoey to a degree, in that explosive FWD/MID role.

Also possibly works in the opposite as well, if one of the mids go down(many have a history of injuries)...then there is a possibly a spot for him. Either way he probably splits his time in between both positions throughout the season....barring any major crisis.

Who really knows, as he has teased us before, I guess the 2nd match will tell us more....

Remember sheed from last year.? Always one or two pre season surprises. It Pettraca throws up another big score it will be real temptation. Could take over jack viney role for the team. Yeap you read correct. He is better.

 

[Herbie66]

Based on last season's points , Petracca was 11th on aggregate of players available to be picked as a forward this year.

 

[Connoisseur]

@Connoisseur if I include Petracca, it will be at the expense of Parish. Could you please do a summary of Parish like Petracca above so that I can compare. (Apologies if you have already done it - I had better go back and check!)

Make sure no one is tracking their movements as you’ve got to keep it very discrete and the parish takes fondly (perhaps too fondly) to rookies.

 

[ScoringFreely]

Quite a nuisance with the lack of available free stats issued by AFL, Champion Data,etc in comparison to other professional sports (eg NBA, NFL) regarding time spent in mid or fwd, etc (Ask Prospectus owners whether it’s listed).

I've been playing around with stats/exploring websites today.

Started playing around with Google Sheets, I've justified the time investment as "learning how to use a new program". Surely will come in handy for other non SC endeavours.

Was thinking about buying prospectus if there was an online version, but there isn't

What else do people use ? Footywire, afltables, fanfooty. What does SupercoachStats get ya ?

 

[Toothless Tigers]

Could take over jack viney role for the team.

Sydney Stack would be disappointed!

 

[GrainFedBeef]

I just had a look at Petracca and found some clarity in looking at the Demons start to the season

WCE-Hutchings
GWS - De boer
Freo- ?
Saints - Steele
GC - Miller

As Matthew Knicks said in his presser, if Petracca is doing that much damage in a real game, he would have placed someone on him very quickly. All those teams the Demons play early have the ability to move that genuine stopper to him. IF - he has put up decent numbers in the first 5 weeks and has coped with a bit of attention then he surely one i will look at to bring in. I cant see him hurting me early.

If he is getting the tag, make are you start Olivier then. When Lachie Neale went to Brisbane he was the obvious tag yet teams started with Zorko who they were use to tagging.

 

[Professor]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1232782769404514304

 

[jones711]

I've been playing around with stats/exploring websites today.

What else do people use ? Footywire, afltables, fanfooty. What does SupercoachStats get ya ?

SuperCoachScores for #1 font of all knowledge
Fanfooty.com for in game scoring and tracking live matches
Footywire.com for everything stats
TooSerious.com for breakevens/bubble analysis etc
Supercoachtalk.com for the odd interesting article/analysis (although not so much)

Unfortunately the huge amount of reading/watching and research I do is never reflected in my SC results !

 

[BigRuss]

We've seen Dunkley & Worpel do it so it's not beyond him or impossible IF he maintains that midfield role.

Dunkley
2017 - 12 disposals - 60 SC
2018 - 22 disposals - 95 SC
2019 - 28 disposals - 117 SC

Worpel
2018 - 18 disposals - 73 SC
2019 - 27 disposals - 97 SC

While I do agree that it is doable, do you think these 2 are the rule or the exception? Without crunching the numbers I’d wager that for every player that does it, there would have to be 5 times as many that don’t.

As I said earlier, these types of player tend to be the ones I like to chase in my starting teams and I think the risk is outweighed by the reward in this case.

I think if the forward rookies end up being as underwhelming as they appear to be right now and I push a “premium” to F5, Trac is very likely to get a gig. Extremely unlikely to get any sort of attention with a fit Oliver running around, could very likely shoot up into a starting spot in their midfield rotation.

Might be an unpopular opinion but outside of Oliver I think the Dees are screaming for quality midfielders.

 

[THCLT]

While I do agree that it is doable, do you think these 2 are the rule or the exception? Without crunching the numbers I’d wager that for every player that does it, there would have to be 5 times as many that don’t.

As I said earlier, these types of player tend to be the ones I like to chase in my starting teams and I think the risk is outweighed by the reward in this case.

I think if the forward rookies end up being as underwhelming as they appear to be right now and I push a “premium” to F5, Trac is very likely to get a gig. Extremely unlikely to get any sort of attention with a fit Oliver running around, could very likely shoot up into a starting spot in their midfield rotation.

Might be an unpopular opinion but outside of Oliver I think the Dees are screaming for quality midfielders.

It all depends on how permanent that change to the midfield is which will determine whether a prospect has a genuine chance to increase his scoring output. Both Dunkley & Worpel demonstrated that it can be done with a permanent move, I'm sure that there are others who didn't quite reach the same peaks (Billings 2018), but we could mostly attribute that to their midfield role being temporary as opposed to permanent.

I took away 2 positive indicators from his performance over the weekend:
1. He looks to have trimmed down quite a bit over the off season and looks fit as he ran out the full game
2. He looks more dynamic in the role and adds a different look to their core midfield group

 

[Hondo]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1232782769404514304

That's a bit misleading in that it combines total points and averages in one conclusion. By using total points you filter out Whitfield who, because of the 6 games he missed, only accumulated 1,780 points. However he averaged 111.3 over the games he did play.

That said, Whitfield is an outlier at the top of the averages. If you sort by 2019 averages only then JZ ranks no 8. Whitfield (16 games), Greene (16 games) and Cameron (20 games) push him down to 8th on average.

It's also worth noting that on last year's available FWDs, 90.9 is a way off Dunks, Boak, Danger and Kelly. It only looks better (8th best average) when judged against the 2020 FWDs some of whom with more mid opportunities could make 90.9 rank lower in the end than 5th. I expect JZ was more like the 12-15th best averaging FWD last year?

I feel if my F6 only got 90 that would be a slight fail so I don't totally agree with the article's conclusion.

 

[Herbie66]

That's a bit misleading in that it combines total points and averages in one conclusion. By using total points you filter out Whitfield who, because of the 6 games he missed, only accumulated 1,780 points. However he averaged 111.3 over the games he did play.

That said, Whitfield is an outlier at the top of the averages. If you sort by 2019 averages only then JZ ranks no 8. Whitfield (16 games), Greene (16 games) and Cameron (20 games) push him down to 8th on average.

It's also worth noting that on last year's available FWDs, 90.9 is a way off Dunks, Boak, Danger and Kelly. It only looks better (8th best average) when judged against the 2020 FWDs some of whom with more mid opportunities could make 90.9 rank lower in the end than 5th. I expect JZ was more like the 12-15th best averaging FWD last year?

I feel if my F6 only got 90 that would be a slight fail so I don't totally agree with the article's conclusion.

Ziebell was 11th on aggregate and 16th on average according to TooSerious

 

[ScoringFreely]

SuperCoachScores for #1 font of all knowledge
Fanfooty.com for in game scoring and tracking live matches
Footywire.com for everything stats
TooSerious.com for breakevens/bubble analysis etc
Supercoachtalk.com for the odd interesting article/analysis (although not so much)

Unfortunately the huge amount of reading/watching and research I do is never reflected in my SC results !

Thanks mate ! Yeah I can't say I had a lot of success playing AFL fantasy back in the day (first year of SC coming up). Normally won real life leagues though which was some consolation for the effort

I definitely remember it was the mid price shocker picks which ruined many seasons. Trying to stick to gnr but its haaard

 

[freowho]

That's a bit misleading in that it combines total points and averages in one conclusion. By using total points you filter out Whitfield who, because of the 6 games he missed, only accumulated 1,780 points. However he averaged 111.3 over the games he did play.

That said, Whitfield is an outlier at the top of the averages. If you sort by 2019 averages only then JZ ranks no 8. Whitfield (16 games), Greene (16 games) and Cameron (20 games) push him down to 8th on average.

It's also worth noting that on last year's available FWDs, 90.9 is a way off Dunks, Boak, Danger and Kelly. It only looks better (8th best average) when judged against the 2020 FWDs some of whom with more mid opportunities could make 90.9 rank lower in the end than 5th. I expect JZ was more like the 12-15th best averaging FWD last year?

I feel if my F6 only got 90 that would be a slight fail so I don't totally agree with the article's conclusion.

As you said in a previous post Hondo, the forward line is a shifting space with breakout candidates and past stars. Ziebell's score last year is unlikely to cut it this year.