3rd year breakout year? Or is it the 6th, 7th or 8th…??

I agree to an extent that a players 3rd year can be their breakout year, but I would lean more towards saying that the 3rd year is when they start playing consistent footy in a team, they have cemented their spot and are pumping out a consistent 85 – 100 per game.

It is around the 5th, 6th and 7th + years that players will really go BANG and turn in to super-premiums eg Ablett, Swan, Montagna, Bartel and Boyd and will start to average 110 + per game.

Lets take a look at those 5 players…

(yr)            (av)

Ablett

1st             36.9
2nd             68
3rd             68.3
4th             76
5th             77
6th             98.5
7th             111.7

Swan

1st             30
2nd             52.6
3rd             65.2
4th             101.9
5th             101.5
6th             102.5
7th             119.1

Montagna

1st             28
2nd             45.5
3rd             54
4th             71
5th             80.8
6th             95.7
7th             87.5
8th             115.8

Bartel

1st             49.2
2nd             49.8
3rd             92.9
4th             82.7
5th             98.2
6th             114.4
7th             113.2

Boyd

1st             28
2nd             56.7
3rd             54.1
4th             82.5
5th             96.6
6th             91.9
7th             103.8
8th             115.1

Now there are always anomalies like Barlow last year and Selwood but there are a host of other players who go bang between their 5 – 8th years, I thought that this article could be a good point of discussion to analyse players who are following this trend and about to explode. What made me think of this was a discussion in a previous post about Shaun Higgins which got me thinking that EVENTUALLY he will become a premium… hopefully!!

One problem about trying to predict the next ‘Swanny’ is the awkward price range that the potential super-premium will be in. If you look at the stats above you can see that all 5 players pretty much averaged between 90 – 100 before they made the leap to averaging 110 +

Anyway, start throwing some stats and players around…