Slightly risky this week, but I’m going to profile a guy who looked like a shadow of his former self for the first few rounds this season. After the news that he wanted a trade back to Melbourne and that a deal couldn’t be done I’m sure I wasn’t alone in thinking that ROK just wasn’t interested in playing for Sydney anymore.

It looks like his slow start to the season was merely misleading. Having played all of his career as a deceptively tall medium forward ROK trained this pre season with the midfield group. There was no evidence of an actual move to the midfield until the last few weeks.

Ryan With Michael O’Loughlin and Barry Hall having interrupted starts to their seasons ROK had to plug a hole in the forward line until they got back to fitness (http://www.foxsports.com.au/story/0,8659,25497353-5015864,00.html). With those two back in action O’Keefe has started seeing some of that midfield time and it looks good from a DT point of view.

MOL, BBBH and ROK have been in the same team from Round 6-8. I must admit, I didn’t see the Round 6 game, but from what I read it sounded like he saw a bit of midfield time and only scored 79. Nothing to slit your wrists over, but not quite fantastic. However, against Geelong on a day where Sydney got dominated he snagged a respectable 92 and followed it up last week against West Coast with a 110.

Now ROK has always been a consistently good DT scorer, averaging around 85-90 a season, which you’d take for your 6th or 7th forward. I like the sound of his move to the midfield and think it could at least see him average those sort of points for the rest of the season. The thing that makes his move particularly appealing is his tackle numbers over the past few weeks. In fact, the trend this season has been that his tackle numbers are way up and his goal and disposal numbers have been down.

The last few weeks have seen those disposal numbers go up again, but with all these tackles it should supplement his lack of goals (mind you, I’m sure the Swans wouldn’t be adverse to swinging him inside 50 for bursts). He only managed three tackles in his first two games, but since then he’s averaged 6.3 per game (or 25.3 DT points per game). 25 points on tackles means he only needs another 60 points from all the other stuff for a respectable score and I’m pretty confident he can more often than not manage 10 kicks, 10 handballs and a few marks. He’s a very, very smart player and this goes a long way to him just being able to find the right spots to get the ball.

OK, so you could’ve got him $15K cheaper before this week, but you really need to see a couple of good games in a row. And let’s face it, he’s not exactly breaking the bank at $327,700. Hindsight is a beautiful thing, but he was only $12K more expensive than Krakouer last week – would’ve been a lovely sideways trade! That’s the move I’m looking at this week though because Krakouer looks well and truly done with a break even score of 138 (while ROK is set to go way up with a break even of only 33).