aussieviking
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I was reading this post on 2016 phantom draft Quigley's 2016 Draft Rankings Made me think our recruiters did very well with selections.Luke Darcy was not mentioned and may be the best of all. We might look back on 2016 draft and trading as being the best free has ever done.
12. Brennan Cox
People have been very negative about the key positions this year and whilst I am onboard with that for the key forwards, I think it is well off base for the key defenders. There is quality and depth this year and whilst there is not someone who is the quality of Weitering, there are 7 or 8 guys who could be critical pieces of their team's defence going forward. It is difficult to pick who is the best of those options and with only a little confidence I am going with Cox to take the title.
Cox is a big, powerful guy with reasonably good pace and neat skills. He measured short at the Combine (so did a great number of players which causes me to think that the AFL have cocked up the measures again) but to me he looks to have nice KP size. It is worth noting he did some rucking at SANFL Ressies level and did okay. He has a very good running jump (top 6%) and a good reach which combined with his height should allow him to compete with virtually anybody. He is already over 90kgs and he is going to be a big unit after he has finished growing and spent a couple of years in an AFL gym.
Cox has good agility and change of direction and combined with nice short burst speed allows him to go with most forwards operating in the forward 50. Where he can struggle a bit is sustaining that pace after about 30m. So if you can get someone who can get out on long leads he can get worked over a bit. So I could see him handling a Jack Reiwoldt type much more easily than a Nick Reiwoldt type.
Cox reads the ball in the air pretty well and is a reasonable mark of the ball. There are certainly better marks in this draft but he does position himself well to mark, uses his body and strength well and will take his fair share. He is a defender though who does not take chances. If in doubt he will spoil and he lead the champs in spoils at 3.5 per game. I like his discipline.
With the ball in hand Cox is one of the most relaxed key defenders you will see. He takes his time with the ball, doesn't panic and looks like the kind of guy you can rely on to make good decisions. Going forward his style is a bit like Heath Grundy. He has an easy kicking style and he does not overkick his passes. His vision and option taking are good for a key position but probably only average for a smaller player. Still he is a guy that can be relied on when they are moving the ball forward and I would have liked him to be more involved in the offense than he was at the Champs. 13 disposals a game is pretty decent for a KPD but there is scope for him to do better than that.
By hand Cox lacks a bit of power and can be a bit untidy. With that said he did produce one of the more memorable plays in the All Star game with a handball. At one stage he had his kick smothered, followed up and got a high handball receive and jumped to collect the ball with a man coming at him. Cox collected and brought the ball down and handballed around the opponent to his man. It was both very smart and very skilful.
Whilst I am promoting Cox as a defender it is also worth noting that he has played quite a bit of time up forward and he could be swung forward to good effect at the next level if there is a need. Overall I think he is a nice package that will play a lot of games in the AFL at a very high level. I would say Chip Frawley is a fair comparison for him.
13. Griffin Logue
Logue is the first KP coming off a lot of people's board now that Marshall has fallen down the list. I have dropped him below Cox mainly because I have a bit of positional uncertainty with Logue. Logue has played in defence, up forward, through the midfield and even some ruck. He was doing well in the midfield in the Colts and suddenly everyone thinks he is going to be another big bodied mid at the next level. Personally I think if he is going to make it, it is going to be as a defender. He played in defence in his WAFL games this year and I thought he looked best when in defence for WA at the Champs. The problem with him in defence is he is a bit of a tweener and he lacks the height you would like in a key position and when he is getting compared against some of the medium defensive options he doesn’t stand out not nearly as much. I do think he has the ability to play big and there could well be an opportunity for him to play as a specialist on one of the 190-195cm medium forwards who are becoming more prevalent e.g. Gunston, Mitch McGovern, Tom Lynch (Adelaide version), Darling, Bont.
What I really rate with Logue is his aggressiveness. A lot of the bigger guys you see at junior level just cruise through on their talent. When you see a big guy who attacks the ball and hunts the ball it really makes him stand out. Logue has a hyper competitive attitude that he brings to his football and he just does not want to lose a contest. Package that with decent size and elite athleticism and you get someone who you would back to succeed at the next level.
Logue comes from a running and elite rower background. Given his background it should surprise no-one that he has elite endurance but his Combine results showed he has more strings to his athletic bow than that. He was in the very top few in the endurance tests at the Combine finishing with a 15.1 in the beep and going under 10 minutes in the 3km. Those are very good results from a guy who was carrying quite a bit of bulk (weighing in at 94kgs). I also liked that with that bulk he finished in the top 10% of the jumps and went under 3 seconds in the 20m. His agility test was also pretty good and he was just outside the top 10% in the repeat sprint. Overall it was hard not to be impressed with what he managed to do at the Combine.
Logue brings that athleticism to his game. He covers a lot of ground and does so at pace. When in defence he can get forward and provide nice, linking running. As mentioned above he does lack a little height but his jumping compensated for that at this level. Overall at the Champs he seemed to be able to go with his forward match up without too much drama. In addition to his athleticism he is a bit of a wide load that doesn't mind throwing his weight around. He is strong and he is hard to move once he has set himself.
Skills-wise Logue is solid. He is a left footer who has the typical easy left footer style. He does not bite off a heap with his kicks and for that reason his passes usually get where they are aimed at. Logue is getting some comparisons to Bontempelli which quite frankly I do not see apart from in one area. That one area is his handballing. When Bont was a junior his big weapon was not his kicking but his handpasses. His kicking was pretty average I thought but his handballing was elite. Logue's handballs are not of that level but they are very good and like Bontempelli at this age his handballs are usually more dangerous than his kicks. Logue has excellent penetration on his handballs and he can really set his teammates away.
As far as the way he plays football, I think he plays a lot like the McGoverns. He does not mark the ball as well as either of the brothers (although he is a pretty good mark) but he has that kind of loose confident way of going about things. He is the size of Mitch rather than Jeremy but he plays more physically like Jeremy does.
39. Taylin Duman
There are a few rangy outside types that are getting talked up in this draft and for the most part I would have Duman up with virtually any of them. He is still raw and has a long way to go but he is 192cm tall and has shown good development over the year. He has worked hard on things which needed work on and although he is still pretty raw there looks to be a lot to work with.
On the outside Duman moves nicely. He is a balanced, loose limbed runner who flows well. In stop and go situations he is not great with his change of directions but overall I thought his lateral movement looked good when he was in space on the wing. He did not test well in the agility test but I do think his functional positional agility is good and he is not a guy who I have noticed being tackled a lot. It is observable in the Combine results that Duman tested better in the straight line testing. Like Battle, Duman had noticeable better endurance testing in the 3km rather than the beep test. 10.48 in the 3km was solid but 13.3 in the beep test was on the poor side. The constant stopping and changing of direction I think caught up with Duman there. He needs to work on this and his endurance generally given that if he plays on a wing at AFL level he is going to need to cover a lot of ground and do so quickly.
One of the things Duman has worked on a lot this year has been his pace and all his work was rewarded with a very nice time at the Combine in the 20m. He ran a very nice 2.93 which put him in the top 10 of those tested. Where he has come from though I think was evident in his repeat sprint time. 26 for the repeat sprint put him in the 45th percentile which is lower than you would want to see, especially for someone capable of running a 2.93 and wants to play on a wing.
Skills wise, Duman lacks a bit zip in both his handballs and kicks at this stage and does need to work on improving his hurt factor. He almost invariably goes with little chip passes with his kicks and he needs to lift his eyes a bit and assess the whole field a bit more. He tends to concentrate on getting the ball to a target quickly rather than moving the ball in a way that furthers the aim of actually kicking goals. That is not to say that Duman does not bring out a very nice kick every now and then and those low drilled kicks do entice you with thoughts of what he could become if they became the norm rather than the exception.
Duman is a good mark on the wing. His vertical leaping is not great but with his height it doesn't really need to be. He watches the ball into his hands well and for a guy who is still very thin he is quite strong in the air. He will jump strongly at the ball although he is not a big flyer and if he cannot mark the ball he often does a good job of controlling the fall of the ball to allow himself or his teammates to have the best chance of recovering the spillage. His balance in the air is good and he keeps his feet well on landing.
Whilst he is pretty much only an outside player at this stage, Duman does on occasions do some nice work inside and has good awareness of where others are around him. He is prone to fumbling a bit in tight but I think this could be improved with work. I do like the way he works for others inside. He shepherds and generally creates space nicely for teammates to clear the ball. Bontempelli does a fair bit of this and whilst I am not seeing an inside game like Bont has it is encouraging to see him having this kind of awareness.
I am seeing a lot of upside with Duman and would be picking him a lot on size and potential at the moment. Teams will be looking at what he could become rather than what he is now and with the love affair of tall mids going on he is well positioned to get taken higher than his production strictly warrants.
28. Luke Ryan
If you were betting on the first mature aged prospect off the Board, Ryan would be very short odds to be him. Ryan was cut by the Essendon VFL side and was playing in the development league at the beginning of the year before breaking into the VFL for Coburg on the back of some excellent form. Over the year he had ankle and then shoulder problems which restricted him to only 10 VFL games for the year but despite that the 20 year old had done enough to win the Fothergill Medal for the best under 23 player in the VFL. This from a guy who no-one who had heard of at the beginning of the year.
Ryan is a medium defender who plays above his 186cm height. I had actually thought he would measure 190cm after I saw him play. He is a long limbed type who I don't think is a big jumper but he is good on the stretch and he plays like a third tall. He was given quite a lot of freedom in his role for Coburg and this played into his strengths allowing him to take a lot of intercept marks. He backs himself to mark the ball against opponents and he comes away with the mark most often. He is a good read of the ball in the air and sometimes he looks excellent. At others he looks only okay with an ability to adjust well late. He protects the drop zone well when he is marking the ball.
The other real strength of Ryan is his kicking. In his VFL games this year he had a kicking efficiency percentage of 86.4 which is elite by any standard. When he gets the ball he does a good job at keeping his head up and scanning the field. He tends to play within his capabilities a lot and goes short more often than not. He is a safe user of the ball who does not take a lot of risks.
Ryan is not a running defender. He is one of those types who will receive the ball and stop and assess and then look to set up play with his kicking. He does a good job of that but I am not seeing him as a zone breaker at AFL level. He is a good kick and will help a team pick their way through a zone rather than run or kick over it.
With his shoulder surgery, Ryan did not test at the Combine and I am not sure how many teams would actually have a lot of data on his athletic capabilities given his lack exposure at the top level. To me he looks to only be a moderate athlete and I am not expecting him to be an under 3 or over 14 beep test runner.
Ryan has come a long way in a short period and it is fair to assume there is a fair bit more development in him. I don’t see him as a can’t miss prospect or a real difference maker at the next level but I can see him being a valuable piece of an effective defensive unit.
12. Brennan Cox
People have been very negative about the key positions this year and whilst I am onboard with that for the key forwards, I think it is well off base for the key defenders. There is quality and depth this year and whilst there is not someone who is the quality of Weitering, there are 7 or 8 guys who could be critical pieces of their team's defence going forward. It is difficult to pick who is the best of those options and with only a little confidence I am going with Cox to take the title.
Cox is a big, powerful guy with reasonably good pace and neat skills. He measured short at the Combine (so did a great number of players which causes me to think that the AFL have cocked up the measures again) but to me he looks to have nice KP size. It is worth noting he did some rucking at SANFL Ressies level and did okay. He has a very good running jump (top 6%) and a good reach which combined with his height should allow him to compete with virtually anybody. He is already over 90kgs and he is going to be a big unit after he has finished growing and spent a couple of years in an AFL gym.
Cox has good agility and change of direction and combined with nice short burst speed allows him to go with most forwards operating in the forward 50. Where he can struggle a bit is sustaining that pace after about 30m. So if you can get someone who can get out on long leads he can get worked over a bit. So I could see him handling a Jack Reiwoldt type much more easily than a Nick Reiwoldt type.
Cox reads the ball in the air pretty well and is a reasonable mark of the ball. There are certainly better marks in this draft but he does position himself well to mark, uses his body and strength well and will take his fair share. He is a defender though who does not take chances. If in doubt he will spoil and he lead the champs in spoils at 3.5 per game. I like his discipline.
With the ball in hand Cox is one of the most relaxed key defenders you will see. He takes his time with the ball, doesn't panic and looks like the kind of guy you can rely on to make good decisions. Going forward his style is a bit like Heath Grundy. He has an easy kicking style and he does not overkick his passes. His vision and option taking are good for a key position but probably only average for a smaller player. Still he is a guy that can be relied on when they are moving the ball forward and I would have liked him to be more involved in the offense than he was at the Champs. 13 disposals a game is pretty decent for a KPD but there is scope for him to do better than that.
By hand Cox lacks a bit of power and can be a bit untidy. With that said he did produce one of the more memorable plays in the All Star game with a handball. At one stage he had his kick smothered, followed up and got a high handball receive and jumped to collect the ball with a man coming at him. Cox collected and brought the ball down and handballed around the opponent to his man. It was both very smart and very skilful.
Whilst I am promoting Cox as a defender it is also worth noting that he has played quite a bit of time up forward and he could be swung forward to good effect at the next level if there is a need. Overall I think he is a nice package that will play a lot of games in the AFL at a very high level. I would say Chip Frawley is a fair comparison for him.
13. Griffin Logue
Logue is the first KP coming off a lot of people's board now that Marshall has fallen down the list. I have dropped him below Cox mainly because I have a bit of positional uncertainty with Logue. Logue has played in defence, up forward, through the midfield and even some ruck. He was doing well in the midfield in the Colts and suddenly everyone thinks he is going to be another big bodied mid at the next level. Personally I think if he is going to make it, it is going to be as a defender. He played in defence in his WAFL games this year and I thought he looked best when in defence for WA at the Champs. The problem with him in defence is he is a bit of a tweener and he lacks the height you would like in a key position and when he is getting compared against some of the medium defensive options he doesn’t stand out not nearly as much. I do think he has the ability to play big and there could well be an opportunity for him to play as a specialist on one of the 190-195cm medium forwards who are becoming more prevalent e.g. Gunston, Mitch McGovern, Tom Lynch (Adelaide version), Darling, Bont.
What I really rate with Logue is his aggressiveness. A lot of the bigger guys you see at junior level just cruise through on their talent. When you see a big guy who attacks the ball and hunts the ball it really makes him stand out. Logue has a hyper competitive attitude that he brings to his football and he just does not want to lose a contest. Package that with decent size and elite athleticism and you get someone who you would back to succeed at the next level.
Logue comes from a running and elite rower background. Given his background it should surprise no-one that he has elite endurance but his Combine results showed he has more strings to his athletic bow than that. He was in the very top few in the endurance tests at the Combine finishing with a 15.1 in the beep and going under 10 minutes in the 3km. Those are very good results from a guy who was carrying quite a bit of bulk (weighing in at 94kgs). I also liked that with that bulk he finished in the top 10% of the jumps and went under 3 seconds in the 20m. His agility test was also pretty good and he was just outside the top 10% in the repeat sprint. Overall it was hard not to be impressed with what he managed to do at the Combine.
Logue brings that athleticism to his game. He covers a lot of ground and does so at pace. When in defence he can get forward and provide nice, linking running. As mentioned above he does lack a little height but his jumping compensated for that at this level. Overall at the Champs he seemed to be able to go with his forward match up without too much drama. In addition to his athleticism he is a bit of a wide load that doesn't mind throwing his weight around. He is strong and he is hard to move once he has set himself.
Skills-wise Logue is solid. He is a left footer who has the typical easy left footer style. He does not bite off a heap with his kicks and for that reason his passes usually get where they are aimed at. Logue is getting some comparisons to Bontempelli which quite frankly I do not see apart from in one area. That one area is his handballing. When Bont was a junior his big weapon was not his kicking but his handpasses. His kicking was pretty average I thought but his handballing was elite. Logue's handballs are not of that level but they are very good and like Bontempelli at this age his handballs are usually more dangerous than his kicks. Logue has excellent penetration on his handballs and he can really set his teammates away.
As far as the way he plays football, I think he plays a lot like the McGoverns. He does not mark the ball as well as either of the brothers (although he is a pretty good mark) but he has that kind of loose confident way of going about things. He is the size of Mitch rather than Jeremy but he plays more physically like Jeremy does.
39. Taylin Duman
There are a few rangy outside types that are getting talked up in this draft and for the most part I would have Duman up with virtually any of them. He is still raw and has a long way to go but he is 192cm tall and has shown good development over the year. He has worked hard on things which needed work on and although he is still pretty raw there looks to be a lot to work with.
On the outside Duman moves nicely. He is a balanced, loose limbed runner who flows well. In stop and go situations he is not great with his change of directions but overall I thought his lateral movement looked good when he was in space on the wing. He did not test well in the agility test but I do think his functional positional agility is good and he is not a guy who I have noticed being tackled a lot. It is observable in the Combine results that Duman tested better in the straight line testing. Like Battle, Duman had noticeable better endurance testing in the 3km rather than the beep test. 10.48 in the 3km was solid but 13.3 in the beep test was on the poor side. The constant stopping and changing of direction I think caught up with Duman there. He needs to work on this and his endurance generally given that if he plays on a wing at AFL level he is going to need to cover a lot of ground and do so quickly.
One of the things Duman has worked on a lot this year has been his pace and all his work was rewarded with a very nice time at the Combine in the 20m. He ran a very nice 2.93 which put him in the top 10 of those tested. Where he has come from though I think was evident in his repeat sprint time. 26 for the repeat sprint put him in the 45th percentile which is lower than you would want to see, especially for someone capable of running a 2.93 and wants to play on a wing.
Skills wise, Duman lacks a bit zip in both his handballs and kicks at this stage and does need to work on improving his hurt factor. He almost invariably goes with little chip passes with his kicks and he needs to lift his eyes a bit and assess the whole field a bit more. He tends to concentrate on getting the ball to a target quickly rather than moving the ball in a way that furthers the aim of actually kicking goals. That is not to say that Duman does not bring out a very nice kick every now and then and those low drilled kicks do entice you with thoughts of what he could become if they became the norm rather than the exception.
Duman is a good mark on the wing. His vertical leaping is not great but with his height it doesn't really need to be. He watches the ball into his hands well and for a guy who is still very thin he is quite strong in the air. He will jump strongly at the ball although he is not a big flyer and if he cannot mark the ball he often does a good job of controlling the fall of the ball to allow himself or his teammates to have the best chance of recovering the spillage. His balance in the air is good and he keeps his feet well on landing.
Whilst he is pretty much only an outside player at this stage, Duman does on occasions do some nice work inside and has good awareness of where others are around him. He is prone to fumbling a bit in tight but I think this could be improved with work. I do like the way he works for others inside. He shepherds and generally creates space nicely for teammates to clear the ball. Bontempelli does a fair bit of this and whilst I am not seeing an inside game like Bont has it is encouraging to see him having this kind of awareness.
I am seeing a lot of upside with Duman and would be picking him a lot on size and potential at the moment. Teams will be looking at what he could become rather than what he is now and with the love affair of tall mids going on he is well positioned to get taken higher than his production strictly warrants.
28. Luke Ryan
If you were betting on the first mature aged prospect off the Board, Ryan would be very short odds to be him. Ryan was cut by the Essendon VFL side and was playing in the development league at the beginning of the year before breaking into the VFL for Coburg on the back of some excellent form. Over the year he had ankle and then shoulder problems which restricted him to only 10 VFL games for the year but despite that the 20 year old had done enough to win the Fothergill Medal for the best under 23 player in the VFL. This from a guy who no-one who had heard of at the beginning of the year.
Ryan is a medium defender who plays above his 186cm height. I had actually thought he would measure 190cm after I saw him play. He is a long limbed type who I don't think is a big jumper but he is good on the stretch and he plays like a third tall. He was given quite a lot of freedom in his role for Coburg and this played into his strengths allowing him to take a lot of intercept marks. He backs himself to mark the ball against opponents and he comes away with the mark most often. He is a good read of the ball in the air and sometimes he looks excellent. At others he looks only okay with an ability to adjust well late. He protects the drop zone well when he is marking the ball.
The other real strength of Ryan is his kicking. In his VFL games this year he had a kicking efficiency percentage of 86.4 which is elite by any standard. When he gets the ball he does a good job at keeping his head up and scanning the field. He tends to play within his capabilities a lot and goes short more often than not. He is a safe user of the ball who does not take a lot of risks.
Ryan is not a running defender. He is one of those types who will receive the ball and stop and assess and then look to set up play with his kicking. He does a good job of that but I am not seeing him as a zone breaker at AFL level. He is a good kick and will help a team pick their way through a zone rather than run or kick over it.
With his shoulder surgery, Ryan did not test at the Combine and I am not sure how many teams would actually have a lot of data on his athletic capabilities given his lack exposure at the top level. To me he looks to only be a moderate athlete and I am not expecting him to be an under 3 or over 14 beep test runner.
Ryan has come a long way in a short period and it is fair to assume there is a fair bit more development in him. I don’t see him as a can’t miss prospect or a real difference maker at the next level but I can see him being a valuable piece of an effective defensive unit.
