1. Sam Draper will be in the All-Australian conversation next year
This year we have seen Fremantle big man Sean Darcy emerge as a contender for the Therabody AFL All Australian Team in the ruck and next year we might have another member of the young ruck brigade pushing up. Draper is big, strong, athletic and physical, and on Sunday he put all of those characteristics together to have a dominant game in Essendon’s shock win over the Western Bulldogs. The 22-year-old, in only his 18th career game, had 39 hitouts, four clearances, 11 disposals and a goal, but his influence on the result was through his aggression, competitiveness and dominant tap work. Injuries have curtailed his development so far in his career but if Draper can have a good run at it next season expect him to rise very quickly into the discussion about the best ruckmen in the game. - Callum Twomey
We had 21 less inside 50’s, 50 less disposals, less contested disposals, but hung in there after the first quarter and took our opportunities when they came. They were treating us with disdain early, shrugging tackles with ease and dominating possession. Good to see we worked through that.
2MP obviously BOG.
Francis at least provided a target which is what we needed.
Zerrett was awesome and Parish contributed despite not quite being at his best.
Draper was excellent and kudos to Snelling for a 10 tackle game; he’s having an excellent year.
Stringer won’t look good on the stats sheet but his clearance work was beautiful, drew multiple Dogs players to him trying to tackle which freed the rest up.
Clarke and Cutler both had their best games for years at the club.
Backline held up very well, credit to Laverde, Ridley and Stewart who had to deal with 60 inside 50’s.
Make no doubt the umpires will give Bont 3 votes, they tried their best to win them the game late and protect their sweetheart.
I love Clarke in this group. He fits in well. Genuinely liked by the players and is a natural ball magnet. His kick shape looks a whole lot better lot better too
Absolutely love how united our backline looks. Also it’s really great to see we replace like for like players to ensure consistency week to week. I can’t recall us having such a settled back 6 for a long long time.
I’ve been working for a data science company since 2017 and, in AFL-land, we provide tools for clubs to analyse match data, fitness (Vald), GPS data and match day feeds. Champion put together some really useful metrics from the raw data, but they also cobble together some stupid metrics and there’s nothing dumber than that “expected vs actual” thing they do. I mean - “here’s your score if your goal kicking was on par” makes as much sense as “here’s your score if you hadn’t missed 14 tackles in Q3 or “here’s your score if Bontempelli got pinged for HTB when he should’ve been”.
