A ruckman who’s tall and athletic and looks good with ball in hand can often end up being “rated” when his actual contribution to his team winning is minimal.
In my opinion a ruckman needs to be a leader. He needs to stand up when counted. That might be by taking a critical defensive mark, making a difference to a clearance or kicking a critical goal. When the big boys are leading their teams the whole side walls taller. When they’re being pushed around and bullied that translates to the rest of the team. There’s no point putting the ball down the throat of your teammates when you’re on top of when it comes to the key clearance for the day your opponent jumps all over you or outwrestles you and the opposition make an easy clearance leading to a goal.
Well a background in steeplechasing is apparently as good as a background in basketball, while a backgound in soccer rates pretty low, but not for long !
This thread reminds me of @Portable_Mink 's thread “Favourite ruckman to watch”. The opening post said “Who’s your favourite ruckman to watch?” and then had a picture of a dog wearing pants.
This season, Andrew Phillips has a better hit out to advantage % than Sam Draper, Max Gawn, Todd Goldstein… Phillips ranks 10th in the league on that metric. On a career basis, Phillips is 5th in the league.
On that stat alone, he is one of the best ruckmen in the AFL.
It’s interesting, as that’s the metric I’d think is most critical for ruckmen, and conceptually, if you offered people a ruck that was amazing at that and nothing else, I think most would be ok with it.
That’s a good set of metrics. I’d generally considered hitouts to advantage to be the major criteria, and everything else a bonus, but I think I’ve been guilty of oversimplifying the role.
You’ve mentioned Grundy, are their any other rucks in the league that you see as highly over/under rated?
Taking the easiest part of your brilliant post.
Agree, however, if we look at the list of Brownlow winners, there is a much stringer correlation to premierships. 21 of the past 32 Brownlows won by non rucks have been by players with premierships. (Not necessarily premierships in the year they won the Brownlow, I applied same logic with ruckmen above).
I’ll go back to these criteria in the light of a few specific names mentioned.
Madden- very very good at areas 1,3 & 4. Great ruckman
Nankervis- very good at areas 2 and 3. A good ruckman who’s often undervalued by people that only look at a single dimension eg taps to advantage. Check what happens to Richmond when Nankervis isn’t playing.
Keating for the Bears. Very good at 1 & 2. Agree he was fairly useless at 3 & 4, but have people really forgotten his thumps to advantage & his bulldozing of opposition mids in the Bears finals games. Gave the Brisbane mids an armchair ride. Underrated.
Dean Cox. Very good at 1,3&4. A great ruck.
And a couple of other examples for comparison;
Sandilands- good at 1. Average to poor in the other areas. A mediocre ruck.
Stanley- reasonable at 1. Average at 3 Pretty poor at 2 & 4. Bog average ruck.
Whereas Lycett is reasonable at 1, but very good at 2. Which is why Port got more value from him than Geelong did from Stanley last match.
It’s a bit mystifying why some people, including many commentators, only look at taps to advantage.
And not those other key aspects.
It’s as if you judged midfielders purely on the number of handballs they gave, irrespective of where they went, and disregarding kicks, tackles, and score assists. And if you did that then Tom Mitchell is 10% better than every other midfielder. Which he clearly isn’t.
This is a bit out of left field but…
When Bryan adds a bit more weight and shows he can be an option forward……I would love to see the result of using both Bryan and Draper as a shock tactic at a centre bounce. Bryan the tap/jump high ruckman and Draper as the bulldozer clearing a path for Merrit Parish etc. may not work but would be fun to watch. Both Draper and Bryan follow up their centre bounce work.
Any thoughts guys?
mmm, i think the opposition ruck would try and hit it into space and Draper’s opposite number would run onto the ball. I am interested thou, should try it when we’re 80 points up in the last quarter.
Exactly… and would we have been as dominant in 2000 with Somerville instead of Barnes? Matthew Allan gave Kouta and Ratten silver service in the 99 prelim.
Maybe rucks haven’t been the deciding factor in recent grand finals but a lot of teams have gotten a lot further than they might have otherwise on the back of ruck dominance.
Maybe I’m alone here, but I’m not seeing this great ruck dominance by Sam.
He may very well become a great ruckman, but he had his butt kicked by Gawn, Lycett and Mumford.
He still has a long way to go before he is considered one if the games premier ruckmen. I personally think people get caught up in the hype far too much. I would suggest that our midfield numbers with Phillips would be very similar to those with Draper.
Going to be hard to figure it out without rewatching every game if Draper’s game against Mumford was a buttkicking. 11 disposals, 1 tackle, 1 mark, 27 hit outs, 7 clearances from Draper vs 11 disposals, 2 tackles, 2 marks, 20 hit outs, 6 clearances, 1 goal from Mumford. Team wise, 8 centre clearances apiece, 19-22 stoppage clearances.
Very surface level, our clearance differential per starting ruck (which obviously is very dependent on who we played, etc) was:
Draper: 13 games, +20
Phillip: 6 games, -13
Bryan: 1 game, +1
Wright: 3 games, -21 (-23 of which came from one game against the swans which, damn)
I also don’t disagree, Draper to me is still much more potential than performance. That +20 differential is because he had more +10 games than -10 games, not because he was grinding out small wins every week.
This is a general thread on rucks, not the Big Sammy Draper Thread.
But since you ask, I’ll apply my own criteria re ruck performance to a few current and recent Essendon rucks.
Which as I’ve been saying is not just tap work.
Big Sammy. Very good at taps to advantage, and helping in ground ball, congested situations. A bit below average in terms of marks around the ground and as a forward line threat. But improving here.
So two out of four at least. Which is on track for good to very good. If he can improve in just one of the other areas legitimately claims to be a great ruck.
Phillips. Average to below average in taps to advantage. Good at helping in congestion/ ground balls. Average to below in marks around the ground & as a forward threat. Good in one area. Doubtful if there’s much improvement in him in the others. Average to below average ruck.
Bryan. Good, but not very good in taps to advantage. Note bounces are much better than boundary throw ins. Below average in helping out, marking around the ground, and no threat at all drifting forward. Needs to become much better in at least one other area, but time is on his side.
Belly. Late vs mid career. Good to very good at taps to advantage. Poor all career at congestion assistance. Mid career was average at marks around the ground, later below average. Mid career a definite threat forward. Late career not.
So mid career good in two areas of ruck work. Makes him a good ruckman.
Late career good in one area, poor or below average in three. Retirement.