I have to admit I had a hard time figuring out what sort of player I should write about this week. I was thinking an underperforming premium might be a good idea – someone like Dean Cox to keep an eye on for a few weeks time, or an underpriced gun who performed well like Robert Murphy, but I don’t really want to be giving trade advice after Round 1.

Sure, Cox and Murphy are two guys to keep an eye on for different reasons if you don’t have them, but this week I just want to give props to a DT lord with only one game experience. Michael Barlow was amazing on debut and would be pretty stiff if he doesn’t poll three Brownlow votes from his first AFL match.

His ball winning capabilities were well known before the season started and his NAB Cup form indicated that he was going to find it at AFL level, so he was the most obvious rookie choice for me this year. I doubt there’d be many people who go to the extent of reading a site specifically for DT research that wouldn’t have him, so I’m sure we were all rejoicing each of his 33 touches as he cut up the Crows – I’m sure even the Crows fans were secretly psyched that he pumped out a 128 to pad their DT stats.

I’m sure I’m preaching to the wrong crowd here, because like I said, I’m sure pretty much everyone here would have him, but if you don’t, seriously, get around him! This massive score didn’t come from nowhere and for as much as I see scoring potential in Dustin Martin and Jack Trengove I was nervous watching them, because I wasn’t necessarily expecting them to chop straight away. I’m not just being a hindsight hero, but I was actually expecting Barlow to make a huge impression – though I must admit, not as much as he did!

His mature body and couple of years experience in the VFL has made the transition into AFL an easier one for him. Last year we saw how mature agers such as Greg Broughton and Liam Anthony came in and made a mockery of the competition. We can only hope that Barlow continues this form, because at what point would you upgrade him? All going well, you wouldn’t need to, but that’s obviously a very, very long way off. I mentioned before in the pre-season that you never bank on rookies being keepers, but if they do end up being that it’s to be considered a massive bonus that you hadn’t planning on.

OK, so we’ll basically all have him, so it kind of makes his scores redundant in a competitive sense, but at the very least he should make our scores look prettier. Generally for Player of the Week I’ll look for someone who could be a good trade in option (and oddly Barlow is only in 25% of teams). I really just wanted to give Barlow a hug after his score on the weekend, but I can’t do that, so I did the next best thing and wrote an article on his awesomeness.