Footy Tragic

This week I am going to look at two similarly priced defenders; with players such as Hunt, Maguire, Nason and Ladson seeming to have reached their highest prices, now is the time to consider upgrading them. The question is, do you pounce on a premium player who has had a rough start to the season and is now dirt-cheap compared to his starting price, or do you look at a younger player who looks on the verge of a breakout season? The two players I will look at are Ryan Hargrave and Paul Bower – hopefully by the end of this article the answer can appear more clearly…

Paul Bower:

Bower is still a very young player – at 22 years old, he has only played 47 career games. He has always been a player whom Carlton saw plenty of promise in, so they have spent plenty of time teaching him both the art of stopping a forward, but also running off his man. In his first three years, Bower was given somewhat of an “apprenticeship” by Carlton, being given big tasks on some of the games most dominating forwards, such as Riewoldt and Franklin. The idea of this apprenticeship is to teach him defence before teaching him attack – essentially, attack is easy for a player (such as Bower) who has always played attacking football as a junior, but it is important to teach him from early in his career how to defend. St.Kilda gave the same type of apprenticeship to Sam Gilbert over the first few years of his career and we saw the results last year when he was finally allowed to combine his two crafts – defensive and attacking football.

Last year saw Bower given some rebounding responsibilities in the absence of Waite (who went down mid-season with a knee injury), and he managed to finish the season ranked second at the club for rebound-50s and as proof he is capable of reading the play well, he was also second at the club for marks from opposition kicks. Across the year he averaged 19.5 disposals per game, 5.8 marks and 2 tackles.

So far this year, Bower has only played in two games, and this is what makes his form slightly hard to read – whilst he has been fantastic in those two games, it is a much larger risk picking up a player such as him who has no real form history to base the selection on – essentially you are basing your selection on two good games and some high potential. That potential is very high though – his form graph from previous seasons shows an average of 45 in 2006, 52 in 2007, 56 in 2008, 71 in 2009, and already he is averaging 112 in 2010.

His two early high scores are certainly not unwarranted though – whilst there are plenty of players who can have an ‘out of the box’ game, and then some really rare cases where they have two in a row, a player with as much potential, promise and expected DT rise such as Bower should not be taken simply as chance. Like he became in the second half of last year, Bower is a key rebounding target for Carlton – he still takes key forwards, but Carlton have given him a licence to run off his man, a fact that made him the second leakiest defender at Carlton last year, but I believe his high quality rebounding will mean Coach Ratten won’t get too concerned. Also, with the inevitable return of Thornton and Waite, Bower is likely to get put on less dangerous forwards, allowing for more ventures upfield.

To sum up, I think Bower is a really positive choice – he has already proven this year that he is capable of some high scores, and whilst I doubt his average will stay at 112, I think he could still comfortably average around 90 points a game – a healthy return for a player of his price. His rise in stats and form are not total surprises either – he is a nominated rebounder for Carlton and his quality is recognized by Ratten, meaning he will regularly be put in ball-winning positions. As with any defender, you must expect some bad with the good, but I feel that 2010 is a year likely to filled with plenty more good than bad for Bower and his owners.

Key Stats 2010:

Kick : handball ratio – 0.8 : 1

Average Marks per game: 11

Average Tackles per game: 2.5

Average Disposals per game: 28

Breakeven: 8

Average Dream Team Points: 111.5

Price: $313,100

Key Stats 2009:

Kick : handball ratio – 0.8 : 1

Average Marks per game: 5.8

Average Tackles per game: 1.9

Average Disposals per game: 19.5

Average Dream Team Points: 71

Ryan Hargrave:

Hargrave is a very interesting trade target – he came into the season as the second most expensive defender (behind only Goddard), but has shown his owners absolutely nothing of his 2009 form, which saw him earn this hefty starting price-tag! Now I know I often make a case for players each week, telling you why they scored poorly – I blame taggers, heavy bumps, or being played out of position, however there is no player with a bigger and easier to find reason for poor scoring than Hargrave – and that is what now makes him such a bargain! In round one he scored a poor 49 points (it was later admitted he shouldn’t have played due to suffering from a head cold), round two was 69 points (and the cold excuse was given again), then in round three he injured his ankle only a few minutes into the game, finishing him on 9 points. Round four he was eased in, given very little game time, meaning he finished with only 65 points. He then missed round five with the injury and was back on the weekend, scoring himself 108 points. Get the idea?

So it hasn’t been the most ideal start to the season for Hargrave (or his owners!), but by the looks of his game on the weekend, things may be on the improve… His 108 points did get a bit lost in the other massive Bulldogs scores from the same game, however his role was more what stood out to me than how many times he got it. Whilst Hargrave spent the first quarter manning Zac Dawson, the rest of the game he was given the role of a loose defender, meaning he was free to do as he pleased. Unlike the likes of Gia and Gilbee who got most of their disposals from backwards kicking, Hargrave won most of his ball from legitimate rebounding (plus a few cheapies which this role always comes with!) – this to me says that his scoring could become somewhat consistent again. It was positive to see Hargrave back to the role that won him plenty of the ball in the past two years – the week off seems to have done his body a deal of good and this role is always going to be one he will score well in.

Clearly we are not basing Hargrave’s future scoring predictions in one good game, but on plenty of games prior to this season – it was only in the second half of 2008 that we really saw a rise out of Hargrave’s scoring; from rounds 1 – 9 in 2008, he averaged 51 points, but from rounds 10 – 22 he was averaging a much more respectable 87 as he was given more license to attack out of the backline and was often played as a lose man. His average and price rose again in 2009, and he averaged 93 points for the year – this shows that he is capable of consistently high scoring and further proves the point that his first few weeks were just aberrations caused by injury.

I don’t think there is much doubting Hargrave’s expected turn around from this point on – he is a proven scorer and in once again being played in the position that has won him so many points in the past. Whilst it may be a bit over-zealous to expect a 90-something average, his current price is still way too low to ignore; he has so far dropped $117,000 and won’t be dropping any further with a low breakeven this week. Some may want to wait another week to see if he can replicate Friday’s score against Melbourne, but personally I think that the key ingredients are there to make him a worthwhile pick; he is now injury free, he is dirt cheap, he has previously exposed good form, and is coming off a very good game. I therefore don’t see the need to hesitate.

Key Stats 2010:

Kick : handball ratio – 1.5 : 1

Average Marks per game: 4.4

Average Tackles per game: 2.2

Average Disposals per game: 15.4

Breakeven: 42

Average Dream Team Points: 60

Price: $292,100 (-$117,400)

Key Stats 2009:

Kick : handball ratio – 1.9 : 1

Average Marks per game: 7

Average Tackles per game: 2

Average Disposals per game: 24.2

Average Dream Team Points: 93