Hey Rowsus,
Just wondering if you might be able to follow up
post #399 in the
Ruck Discussion thread?
Would love to hear your thoughts
#TheBlitzTheory
EDIT: and post #407
To save people searching for it, here is the conversation t.t6 is referring to:
I'm going out on a limb here: Top 2 will be Goldy and Blicavs.
Basing that on I think the Blitz will see MUCH more midfield time than any other ruck on the list (as I reckon he'll be used as predominantly a midfielder that can go 3rd man up every now and then). Other than that it'll probably be out of Jacobs, Martin or Mummy (if he doesn't get injured).
My 2 cents
That's quite a bold prediction! I assume you'll be starting Blitz over Goldy based on that. I can see the upside in Blitz, his stats are pretty much like a midfielder and you would see him as you would say Wines/Fyfe/etc breaking out to a 110+ average. With the cats great draw I could see him scoring enough to justify his selection over Goldstein.
Worthwhile Gamble!
I think by mid season there will be a number of people in the top 100 who will not have started with Goldstein (assuming he averages 120) because their other gambles would have paid off (ie: like a Blitz gamble). I remember seeing some coaches without Fyfe last year still in the top 100!
Very interesting re: Blicavs... I'm of the complete opposite opinion; I think with Smith coming in he won't attend nearly as many ruck contests, he averaged 4.3 hit-outs to advantage (from 16), which equates to 20+ points per game? Also, 4 of his 6 120+ scores came in the 2nd half of the year when he was playing as their #1 ruck. I'm predicting him to remain at around the 100-mark which won't be good enough in my opinion.
I think the argument is; he'll break out to a 110+ average like any other midfielder would despite being classified as a RUC due to natural progression in development, etc. If that happens, with the cats better early draw it'd make sense to start him as his better scores would probably come in the first half of the year. I think it's a valid Gamble, but not one I'll be taking.
You gotta be bold to have a chance to win this thing
In saying that, I doubt I'll be starting with both as Blicavs price is relatively high to have that combo.
I've got Goldy sitting there at the moment...but, as much as I love the bloke (being a North man), I still think he'll drop in price. The question is: what is the best strategy, with the lowest risk, to bring him in?
This could involve either Lobbe (straight swap) or Crouch (having Blitz at R1, moving him into the mids, and then back when Lobbe is upgraded to a premium mid) - whomever appreciates at a higher rate. A similar move to say going with Buddy and Tippett in the rucks. Either way one of Tippett or Blitz will be seen as a keeper. In this instance, I'd see Blitz with the lower risk AND a big upside. Personally, at worst, I would see him maintaining last year's average..but he STILL has so much room for improvement.
Nice to hear that my mind is working (albeit somewhat outside the box) in the right way!
Would love to hear Rowsus' thoughts on this one
#outsidetheboxthinking
Blitz's unique R/M does bring great flexibility. If Blitz can make that 6 point jump and average 110, he could work as potentially an M7/M8 as well. As I said before, with his great draw, if he averages 110, his better scores will come early so you'd have to start him. I have two draft sides one with Goldy/Tippett and one now with Goldy/Blicavs (although the Goldy/Blicavs combo is stretching my budget big time!).
Exactly. If you watch his scoring he can either be an R2 or M7-8. Who knew that DPP status might be so handy huh?
Would anyone be able to notch up a table for Goldy that shows his projected price drop in incremental averages? Rowsus is that in your ballpark? Would be handy...
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.
