Nic Naitanui – Deck of DT 2018

Name: Nic Naitanui
Team: West Coast Eagles
Position: Ruck
AFL Fantasy: $417,000
Bye Round: 12
2016 Average: 85
2017 Games Played: 0
Predicted Average: 75
Draft Range: 150 – 200

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Why should I pick him?

A fit Nic Nat is an absolute walk up selection in any AFL side and while his career fantasy numbers have never been the highest out of his fellow ruckman, he still scores adequately.

This is down to the fact that a fit Nic Nat is absolutely crucial to the West Coast Eagles line up, so much so that he tends to spend 80 – 90 percent of games rucking, even when another ruck is playing. Add to this the knowledge that when he ‘rests’ it generally involves standing in the goal square while proving a nightmare to opposition defenders and Nic Nat has every chance available to keep those fantasy numbers ticking over.

After missing the entire 2017 campaign Nic Nat comes into 2018 very underpriced. At $417,000 he is $340k cheaper than the top priced Ruckman and about $200k cheaper than if he’d averaged 85 last year.

If Nic Nat is fit and firing again then you can expect around that 85 average with occasional high scores around the 110 mark when he is given the chance to feast on a team with an inexperienced ruckman.

In the end, that is the biggest reason to pick him, he is very underpriced and could be serviceable if he can hold it together.

Why shouldn’t I pick him?

Ok… Now that we’ve got that first section over with, feel free to read back over it and check just how many times I added the caveat ‘fit’ because that is the first issue.

Reports out of West Coast are saying that Nic is currently doing less that last year, his workload has been limited to the point where he isn’t even jumping. While Eagles official media is denying any setbacks and saying Nic is on track for the last game of the JLT series, it doesn’t make sense to have scaled down his workload from before christmas leading into the season unless something has gone wrong.

The next issue we have is the injury itself. An ACL is a horrific injury to any player. We’ve seen many players come back from it though within the 12 month ideal timeframe and play well but generally these are smaller players. History tells us that most ruckman/big guys struggle to recover their best form that soon or sometimes at all. Fellow ruckmen (and All-Australians) Matthew Primus, Shaun Rehn and Luke Darcy were shadows of their former selves after their ACL surgeries.

Closer to home and more recently, Nic Nat’s team mate Eric McKenzie went from winning his team’s fairest and best to struggling to find a spot in their best 22.

As I highlighted above, a fit Nic Nat is absolutely crucial to West Coast’s chances. However with so many retirees last year and young players coming through this season, I honestly believe West Coast have jumped into rebuild mode and wont be taking a chance on Nic Nat if he pulls up sore during or after a game. You can guarantee if this happens he’ll be wrapped in ice and either riding the bench and/or missing the next week.

Even if we believe that everything is going absolutely fine for Nic’s recovery and he’s on track to play the last round of JLT and then Round 1, that means Nic will be stepping into Round 1 with a limited preseason preparation and 1 preseason game under his belt in 19 months! If we were to say that for any other player who hasn’t even had an injury of that magnitude, would you still be considering him? Just look at the ‘cheap’ players we’re considering this year in Parker, Heeney ect. Generally they’re cheap because they had interrupted preseasons last year and took awhile to get going so their average is lower than we’d normally expect. So even with that information, we certainly can’t expect Nic to just jump straight back to his scoring average from before.

Which brings me to the next point, while his scoring average isn’t terrible for a ruckman at 85, his standard deviation of scores can absolutely burn you. When he’s on fire you can get around the 90 – 110 mark and be very happy with that but when he’s struggling you’ll be served up scores in the 50 – 60 range and be absolutely cursing his name during head to head match ups.

For a quick snapshot of this we’ll take his best season in 2015. That is the season West Coast made the Grand Final and Nic averaged 88 points per game. He played 23 games that season (including finals) and had 6 scores over 100 (with a ceiling of 114) 4 scores in the 90’s, 1 score in the 80’s, 7 scores in the 70’s, 2 scores in the 60’s and 2 scores in the 50’s.

Once again lets keep in mind, those scores were from a fully fit Nic Nat so perhaps expect this year to be a scaled down version of those scores.

Deck of DT Rating.

JACK – I’m giving Nic Nat a Jack rating because while I doubt he’ll be a set and forget premium ruckman this year, there’s a chance he can still serviceable.

Even after that lengthy ‘why you shouldn’t pick him’ tirade above, I’ll be completely honest and say that if Nic gets through that last JLT game unscathed I will 100% be rolling into round 1 with him as he is still far too cheap to ignore.

I will plan however to only ride the Nic Nat rollercoaster of scoring until the dpp changes in round 6, hoping that he can generate enough cash to trade him out, have the newly minted Ruckman Rory Lobb switch into the rucks and then use that cash elsewhere.

If he somehow defies all odds and has returned as the Nic Nat of old he could even be held till West Coast’s round 12 bye!

That plan does however rely heavily on a lot different factors going right and definitely has the potential of just being a recipe for disaster but that does pretty much sum up my approach to every fantasy season so why stop now?

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