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Nick Lower – Fremantle

Height: 187cm

Weight: 86kg

Fantasy position: DEF

Price: $92,500 DT, $103,600 SC

Role: Tough as nails half back

Ah, the good ol’ mature aged rookie. So much joy has it brought to fantasy coaches over the last few years – Greg Broughton and Robin Nahas a couple of years ago and just last year Michael Barlow, Cam Hitchcock, Brodie Moles, Alex Silvagni, James Podsiadly, Andrew Strijk, Ben Howlett and Relton Roberts…well… scrap that last one.

Obviously it’s a bit more in vogue these days with the rules about rookie listing players being a lot more relaxed. A quick scan through this year’s rookie draft and there’s a few handy looking names. One that I really like, and who hasn’t received as much press as he deserves in the fantasy world is former Port Adelaide player Nick Lower.

The twin brother of North Melbourne’s Ed, Nick was delisted by Port after four years where he never really got going. His delisting at the end of the 2009 AFL season didn’t deter him and he stuck with Norwood Footy Club, where he played his junior footy and was also spending a bit of time playing at while on Port’s list, then in 2010 he won the Redlegs Best & Fairest in a Grand Final year.

While Lower never set the world on fire in his 20 AFL games with the Power – high score of 67 in DT and 80 in SC and a season high average of 48 in DT and 60 in SC – he has shown career best form at state league level and was recruited specifically to add hardness to Fremantle’s half back line and possibly midfield. He played a fair bit of footy around the stoppages at SANFL level, and while he’s perhaps capable of doing this as a rugged inside midfielder at AFL level, I feel he’ll be used across the half back line.

His pre-season so far has been fantastic, with two DT scores of 34 in those shortened NAB Cup games and a 94 and 95 in his two NAB Challenge matches against Adelaide  and Western Bulldogs. The only SC score of his I could find was a 96 against the Bulldogs from the weekend.

His SANFL form last year screamed fantasy star. Even though he’s not the cleanest user of the ball for our SC fans, he wins a lot of his possessions in contested situations to make up for this and still be a good SC option. Unfortunately I can’t calculate his SC scores just by looking at his stats, but he averaged 101.75 in DT for Norwood last year, including a seven week run where he cracked the ton. He scored over 100 on 14 occasions, including three of their four finals.

The main feature of his game is his fierce tackling. I know I used the term in describing his role at the top of the page, but he really is tough as nails! He had 30 tackles in his four finals games and in one home & away game managed 10. That’s 40 points before you even start counting his possessions! He finds the ball very well too, and because of his strength he is a good stoppage player. Norwood used him as third man up in the ruck a fair bit too, so he picked up a few points that way now and then…mind you, I reckon Sandilands might not need too much help.

With Lower being on the rookie list, it’s important to note that Freo do have the space to upgrade him. They have Antoni Grover as a veteran and also Anthony Morabito on the long term injury list. With his pre-season form, it’ll be hard for the Dockers to ignore him. Lower and Mzungu will be good additions to their team and hopefully they continue the Dockers great tradition of providing us with mature aged fantasy gems.