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Max King

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I should've made this thread about the King bros instead of just Max, and I might not have copped as much flak

Of course, I'm a Saints fan so naturally I'm excited about Max

But Ben has achieved just as much- very few key forwards kick 47 goals in their 3rd year in the AFL.

In the past 20 years, I can only think of 3 that have done something similar within their first 3 years - Buddy Franklin kicked 73 in year 3, Jeremy Cameron kicked 62 in year 2, and Jesse Hogan kicked 44 in 20 games in his rookie year. There are probably others, but those are the only ones that come to mind.

Saints fans and Suns fans have lots to look forward to.

Much has been said about their footy skills and physical capabilities- height, athleticism, agility, ground ball skills, marking ability, read of the ball- this combination is what has people excited

But an important aspect of professional sports is mindset, professionalism and dedication. Some of the great prospects of the past decade let themselves down in this area- I'm thinking of J Patton, T Boyd and Jesse Hogan- all high draft picks with loads of hype on them. Big key forwards who were supposed to become the next Jonathon Brown or Tom Hawkins.

I'm also impressed with the maturity of the Kings- the way they speak to the media, their discipline on the field, their demeanour. It bodes very well for their futures. They appear to have the right mindset to make the most of their immense talent and gifts.
 
Meteoric Rise said:
LOL. Explain to us the difference then….between someone posting salient facts that at least partially explain exceptional looking performance on the one hand, and someone posting only to discredit the player who apparently performed exceptionally?

What signs do you look for to tell the difference between the two with so much certainty? 😁
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I have. What you said isn't constructive at all in any manner whatsoever and didn't offer any real substance to the conversation. You have also twice now failed to address the midfield issue that Richmond had which let King get off the leash. Did you notice how Noah Balta and Tom Lynch didn't do anything when the Saints were on top? Because of midfield pressure and contested work which allowed our defence to set up and shut them down. They are good forwards as well, especially Lynch but when the supply is cut then it makes it hard for tall forwards to make a huge difference.
 
FrogDude said:
I have. What you said isn't constructive at all in any manner whatsoever and didn't offer any real substance to the conversation. You have also twice now failed to address the midfield issue that Richmond had which let King get off the leash. Did you notice how Noah Balta and Tom Lynch didn't do anything when the Saints were on top? Because of midfield pressure and contested work which allowed our defence to set up and shut them down. They are good forwards as well, especially Lynch but when the supply is cut then it makes it hard for tall forwards to make a huge difference.
Click to expand...

Of course, but doesn’t that all go without saying?

I am not sure of the precise shuffle up the Grimes injury caused but part of it was that Broad had to be sent deeper and he may have been a big reason your midfield was not spreading as effectively earlier.

I feel like you are talking to me in a parallel logic universe. You are essentially saying all the things I am saying and then also saying I am both wrong and bitter for saying them. Strange.
 

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PJays said:
FrogDude Meteoric Ruse is just a little frustrated his team has some injuries and got beaten on the weekend
Click to expand...

To the contrary PJays, I am delighted for you guys. Main thing that worries me is you don’t know how to win finals and the Blues are lurking with devious intent around that area at present. If you lose finals to those campaigners I will be fuming. 😉
 
I don't think anyone will kick 100 again anytime soon unless the AFL brings in (more!) Rule changes

Last year Brisbane were the highest scoring team. They scored 2,131 points in the H&A season. The only team over 2,000.

In 2008, the last time someone kicked 100, there were 13 teams who kicked over 2,000. 13 out of 16!

80 is the new 100. Even that hasn't been done since 2016.
 
PJays said:
I don't think anyone will kick 100 again anytime soon unless the AFL brings in (more!) Rule changes

Last year Brisbane were the highest scoring team. They scored 2,131 points in the H&A season. The only team over 2,000.

In 2008, the last time someone kicked 100, there were 13 teams who kicked over 2,000. 13 out of 16!

80 is the new 100. Even that hasn't been done since 2016.
Click to expand...

Judging by their record so far, if the AFL bring in any more rules to promote higher scoring, we will be down to soccer type scorelines. 😩
 
GWT6 said:
Sydney will be rubbing their hands together reading that. They love St Kilda developing key position players for them.
Click to expand...
His family live down the road from morrabbin don’t think his going anywhere
Meteoric Rise said:
It’s good to know we have a member of he King family posting on this thread. Hi Max King’s mum. 😂
Click to expand...
What’s even more crazy is that his really two years behind in development then all the other key forwards his age he missed his whole draft year and ninety percent of his first season through an acl injury imagine if he didn’t miss that football 👌
 
It's way too early to be comparing King to all time great forwards, even if in their first 40 games he's tracking just as well if not better. Around the 40-50 game mark is when those blokes took off and became superstars of the game. It's probably best to wait until he's at the 60-70 game range.
 
Tasmanian saint said:
His family live down the road from morrabbin don’t think his going anywhere
Click to expand...
I've seen players move clubs or stay with clubs for hundreds of reasons over the last few decades. Not once has a player ever made a decision based on his parent's proximity to their training ground.

I remember reading all the Melbourne nuffies on Demonland with the same argument when it was clear that Tom Scully was leaving. Not saying King is anything like Scully, and I hope he plays out his career with St Kilda, but there is no way the address of his parent's house will have any part in the decision.
 
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Many people in this thread have said things like "let his footy do the talking" or "it's too early".

Yeah, fair enough.

But it's worth recognising his recent body of work is already elite. As in, he's already there.

If he plays out the rest of this season like the last 12 games, he'll have his first All Australian jersey at year end.

I crunched some numbers to put King's last 12 games into perspective.

Data set- goals and contested marks over the past 10 seasons (ignoring 2020 with short games)

Averaging the AFL leader from each season

Goals
  • Average leader 74.5 goals from 23.7 games, average 3.1 per game
Contested marks
  • Average leader 64.4 contested marks from 23.6 games, Average 2.7 per game
King's last 12 games
  • 33 goals, Average 2.8 per game.
  • 37 contested marks, Average 3.1 per game
In other words, King's last 12 games were at elite, AFL leading level on two of the main KPI's for key forwards.

eg, 2.8 goals per game, when the average AFL season leader averages 3.1, and 3.1 contested marks when the Average AFL season leader Averages 2.7.

So, this is not a matter of "maybe, if, when, potential", he's already there. He's already played half a season at elite level.

Given his age, it's hard to expect he'll keep up his recent vein of form for the whole year. But, regardless what happens over the next 12, or 24 games, the fact he's put this elite half- season together at the age of 21 is pretty impressive. Very few others have put together an equivalent stretch of 10 or 15 games like that at age 21, with under 45 games under their belt.

Personally I think the biggest risk to King is injury. Consider Joe Daniher- had become an elite KPF, making all Australian as a 23 year old. Proceeded to have his career derailed by a run of injuries, playing 15 games over the next 3 years. Hasn't reached those heights again. Or, Paddy McCartin, who Saints fans are too familiar with.

Those things are unfortunate and happen commonly.

But, King is already playing at elite KPF level. He's just gotta stay healthy, and keep working hard, and if those two things happen (of which only one is in his control) he'll eventually develop full season consistency and become an absolute superstar. Whether that's this year, next year or the year after.
 
emblurr said:
aha yes i knew we had to do this..

"We need to talk about Max King" Jake

because the billboard on the Nepean highway train bridge at Brighton said we have to.
Click to expand...

That was Can we talk about Rowan Marshall, but anyway.


Sent from my iPhone using BigFooty.com
 
Plenty of people will read my above post about King's last 12 games and say "so what, plenty of people put together 10 or 15 good games and don't continue on"

Yes, true.

There are even recent examples of St Kilda forwards who played similarly impressively for a time, eg Membrey (Middle Stages of 2016 season), Butler (early 2020) or Josh Bruce after going to the Dogs (early 2021).

But I think it depends on why they're succeeding. It also depends on their age.

As a general rule, the younger someone is, the more a good stretch bodes well for their future. If an established 26 year old 150 gamer has a great run and better than usual, you'd generally think "they're in great form" but you wouldn't necessarily expect that increase above baseline to continue. If a 19 year old with 20 games plays amazingly for a while, you'd think "we might be into something here".

The other aspect is why they're succeeding. Why are they kicking goals or winning the ball? How sustainable is their method?

Take Butler. He was the main beneficiary of the Saints swarming pressure style in 2020. He was running ahead of the ball and kicking fast break goals off opposition turnovers after the Saints pushed the pace in transition. It was great to watch, but it was somebody benefiting off one specific team system and working out how to piggy back off it, moreso than individual brilliance. Butler got a All Australian squad selection (squad of 40) as a result. But I wasn't convinced Butler would become a consistent top 40 player.

Now why is King succeeding?

  • 200cm tall with long arms
  • Athletic
  • Great pack marker and overhead marker
  • Very hard to stop in a 1 on 1 when he gets a run at the ball, without giving away a free kick
  • Agile enough to pick up ground balls and get boot to ball quickly
  • Reads the ball well
  • Uses leading patterns that lose his opponent

That's a sustainable set of skills. He's not getting any shorter, and he won't lose his elite overhead marking ability. That marking ability has been obvious since day 1 and he's only kept doing it more regularly.

This is why King has potential- because his skills are sustainable. And he's very young.

That's why I'm predicting King becomes a superstar (if he stays healthy), but I wouldn't have predicted that with similar confidence about Dan Butler or Tim Membrey when they put together quality 10 or 15 game stretches.
 
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PJays said:
Many people in this thread have said things like "let his footy do the talking" or "it's too early".

Yeah, fair enough.

But it's worth recognising his recent body of work is already elite. As in, he's already there.

If he plays out the rest of this season like the last 12 games, he'll have his first All Australian jersey at year end.

I crunched some numbers to put King's last 12 games into perspective.

Data set- goals and contested marks over the past 10 seasons (ignoring 2020 with short games)

Averaging the AFL leader from each season

Goals
  • Average leader 74.5 goals from 23.7 games, average 3.1 per game
Contested marks
  • Average leader 64.4 contested marks from 23.6 games, Average 2.7 per game
King's last 12 games
  • 33 goals, Average 2.8 per game.
  • 37 contested marks, Average 3.1 per game
In other words, King's last 12 games were at elite, AFL leading level on two of the main KPI's for key forwards.

eg, 2.8 goals per game, when the average AFL season leader averages 3.1, and 3.1 contested marks when the Average AFL season leader Averages 2.7.

So, this is not a matter of "maybe, if, when, potential", he's already there. He's already played half a season at elite level.

Given his age, it's hard to expect he'll keep up his recent vein of form for the whole year. But, regardless what happens over the next 12, or 24 games, the fact he's put this elite half- season together at the age of 21 is pretty impressive. Very few others have put together an equivalent stretch of 10 or 15 games like that at age 21, with under 45 games under their belt.

Personally I think the biggest risk to King is injury. Consider Joe Daniher- had become an elite KPF, making all Australian as a 23 year old. Proceeded to have his career derailed by a run of injuries, playing 15 games over the next 3 years. Hasn't reached those heights again. Or, Paddy McCartin, who Saints fans are too familiar with.

Those things are unfortunate and happen commonly.

But, King is already playing at elite KPF level. He's just gotta stay healthy, and keep working hard, and if those two things happen (of which only one is in his control) he'll eventually develop full season consistency and become an absolute superstar. Whether that's this year, next year or the year after.
Click to expand...

When you say King is already playing at elite AFL level, you are talking about a relatively small sample size, with him playing his first run of consistently threatening football. Teams will go to school on him and also as a key forward he will eventually have to deal with playing sore and so on. Then he will put to the test along the way in big games v strong opponents, both teams and individuals. If he comes through all those trials well, then I think we can say he is a genuinely elite AFL key forward.

Playing key forward is really tough, especially for a player in his first few seasons at AFL level, so he is tracking beautifully, and no reason to think he won’t be a very strong player when put to the test, but he will have tougher tests than a Fremantle backline that dropped two tall players and a severely disrupted Richmond defence with essentially only two long established players on the ground during the period he dominated, Short and Broad. Tarrant and Gibcus were in their 3rd games for the club, Ralphsmith in about his 3rd game in defence, and Rioli has been played back for maybe a dozen games now. Grimes was off the park of course.

The next 6 games he will face some decent assignments, and a couple of games you would expect him to do well in. This will give us a better indication as to where he is at the moment. But even if he is quieter through this period it wouldn’t necessarily mean he is not tracking well.

How many goals + goal assists are you projecting for him in the next 6 matches?

V

Hawks - moderate difficulty
Suns - moderate difficulty
Giants - tougher than average difficulty but no Davis may make it easier
Power - moderate to easy difficulty, even with Aliir squared back
Demons - very tough
Cats - moderate difficulty, with their new high scoring brand

All being equal, an elite key forward with a relatively easy run like that should not be returning less than 2 in any one game, and should have one day of 5+ at least and overall average close to 4 goals + goal assists in that period? What do you think?


Perhaps we can compare Max with some other young key forwards over that time? Larkey, Weideman, Balta(if he stays there) Naughton, Ugle-Hagan, Lewis, McKay, Curnow, T. Marshall.

Let’s see where he fits into that group over these next 6 rounds shall we? Not sure if any of those would be considered truly elite key forward players at this point. So if King is playing at an elite level he should be very close to, if not the top of that list, all things being equal.
 
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Meteoric Rise said:
When you say King is already playing at elite AFL level, you are talking about a relatively small sample size, with him playing his first run of consistently threatening football. Teams will go to school on him and also as a key forward he will eventually have to deal with playing sore and so on. Then he will put to the test along the way in big games v strong opponents, both teams and individuals. If he comes through all those trials well, then I think we can say he is a genuinely elite AFL key forward.

Playing key forward is really tough, especially for a player in his first few seasons at AFL level, so he is tracking beautifully, and no reason to think he won’t be a very strong player when put to the test, but he will have tougher tests than a Fremantle backline that dropped two tall players and a severely disrupted Richmond defence with essentially only two long established players on the ground during the period he dominated, Short and Broad. Tarrant and Gibcus were in their 3rd games for the club, Ralphsmith in about his 3rd game in defence, and Rioli has been played back for maybe a dozen games now. Grimes was off the park of course.

The next 6 games he will face some decent assignments, and a couple of games you would expect him to do well in. This will give us a better indication as to where he is at the moment. But even if he is quieter through this period it wouldn’t necessarily mean he is not tracking well.

How many goals + goal assists are you projecting for him in the next 6 matches?

V

Hawks - moderate difficulty
Suns - moderate difficulty
Giants - tougher than average difficulty but no Davis may make it easier
Power - moderate to easy difficulty, even with Aliir squared back
Demons - very tough
Cats - moderate difficulty, with their new high scoring brand

All being equal, an elite key forward with a relatively easy run like that should not be returning less than 2 in any one game, and should have one day of 5+ at least and overall average close to 4 goals + goal assists in that period? What do you think?


Perhaps we can compare Max with some other young key forwards over that time? Larkey, Weideman, Balta(if he stays there) Naughton, Ugle-Hagan, Lewis, McKay, Curnow, T. Marshall.

Let’s see where he fits into that group over these next 6 rounds shall we? Not sure if any of those would be considered truly elite key forward players at this point. So if King is playing at an elite level he should be very close to, if not the top of that list, all things being equal.
Click to expand...
He's already proven himself against quality back lines, eg last year vs Brisbane, Geelong and West Coast

(I include Geelong because although he kicked 1.5, he won enough contests and generated enough opportunities that night to kick a bag against good opposition).

He also had a real impact in the 2020 finals win over the Dogs.

Individual form is really difficult to predict, and depends on individual confidence levels and intangibles. So I'm not making any predictions about the next 6 weeks specifically. In my view King has already shown he's got elite capability. Of course I'd like to see a full elite season this year, but that might or might not happen. What's key for me is that he's already shown enough to give me great confidence he'll do it eventually.
 
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PJays said:
He's already proven himself against quality back lines, eg last year vs Brisbane, Geelong and West Coast

(I include Geelong because although he kicked 1.5, he won enough contests and generated enough opportunities that night to kick a bag against good opposition).

He also had a real impact in the 2020 finals win over the Dogs.

Individual form is really difficult to predict, and depends on individual confidence levels and intangibles. So I'm not making any predictions about the next 6 weeks specifically. In my view King has already shown he's got elite capability. Of course I'd like to see a full elite season this year, but that might or might not happen. What's key for me is that he's already shown enough to give me great confidence he'll do it eventually.
Click to expand...

Hmmmm.

So you start this thread saying Max King has arrived etc. Then you make posts detailing why you think he has been performing at an elite level for a certain significant amount of matches. You say in this very post he had a real impact in a final - he had 2 goals and 2 goal assists in his 2 finals combined - but it was just his second season.

But without reason you will not project his performance over the next 6 rounds where he looks to have every chance of doing well. Why? Why start the thread if you are not confident he will do well and extend his current good form? If he has arrived and is performing at an elite level, why would we not expect him to perform at an elite level over the next 6 weeks? Why would we not expect him to do well when compared to a basket of players who play a similar role but are not proven elite players?

Just stand up mate and say I am PJays, and I believe Max King is an elite AFL key forward and I expect him to perform at an elite level over the next 6 weeks, barring catastrophes. So what if it turns out wrong, it is a reasonable projection isn’t it? He has only missed getting at least 2 x goals + goal assists in one of his last 12 matches. He has 39 goals + goal assists in his last 12 matches, you say including proving he can do it against quality opposition.

How many goals + goal assists are you projecting for him in the next 6 matches, and where is his par expected finishing position over that time within the group of 10 I nominated based on average goals + goal assists over that period: (King,) Larkey, Weideman, Balta(if he stays there) Naughton, Ugle-Hagan, Lewis, McKay, Curnow, T. Marshall.

Don’t resile while others are forced to put their necks on the lines with projections PJays, it is your thread your stage, your claim that King is elite.

For the record I will give him the following as par(across the 6 rounds):

1. 16.5 goals
2. 9.5 behinds
3. 4.5 goal assists
4. 0.5 games where he goes below 2 goals + goal assists
5. 3rd on the list of 10 for average goals + goal assists over the 6 rounds

Are you backing over or under for each of those?
 
Meteoric Rise said:
Hmmmm.

So you start this thread saying Max King has arrived etc. Then you make posts detailing why you think he has been performing at an elite level for a certain significant amount of matches. You say in this very post he had a real impact in a final - he had 2 goals and 2 goal assists in his 2 finals combined - but it was just his second season.

But without reason you will not project his performance over the next 6 rounds where he looks to have every chance of doing well. Why? Why start the thread if you are not confident he will do well and extend his current good form? If he has arrived and is performing at an elite level, why would we not expect him to perform at an elite level over the next 6 weeks? Why would we not expect him to do well when compared to a basket of players who play a similar role but are not proven elite players?

Just stand up mate and say I am PJays, and I believe Max King is an elite AFL key forward and I expect him to perform at an elite level over the next 6 weeks, barring catastrophes. So what if it turns out wrong, it is a reasonable projection isn’t it? He has only missed getting at least 2 x goals + goal assists in one of his last 12 matches. He has 39 goals + goal assists in his last 12 matches, you say including proving he can do it against quality opposition.

How many goals + goal assists are you projecting for him in the next 6 matches, and where is his par expected finishing position over that time within the group of 10 I nominated based on average goals + goal assists over that period: (King,) Larkey, Weideman, Balta(if he stays there) Naughton, Ugle-Hagan, Lewis, McKay, Curnow, T. Marshall.

Don’t resile while others are forced to put their necks on the lines with projections PJays, it is your thread your stage, your claim that King is elite.

For the record I will give him the following as par(across the 6 rounds):

1. 16.5 goals
2. 9.5 behinds
3. 4.5 goal assists
4. 0.5 games where he goes below 2 goals + goal assists
5. 3rd on the list of 10 for average goals + goal assists over the 6 rounds

Are you backing over or under for each of those?
Click to expand...
For someone you types a lot of words you really don’t say much. No one cares what you think ‘par’ is for the next 6 weeks.
 

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