Jy Simpkin – Deck of Dream Team 2023

Player	Jy Simpkin
Club	North Melbourne
Position	MID
Price	$846,000
Bye	13
2022 avg	95.5
2022 gms	21
Proj. avg	100-105
Draft range	4th-5th round

Click here for 2023 Fantasy Classic prices.

None of us will admit it, but there are times each year where we go for a guy or ignore him based on something other than good sense and reason.  I have a no dickheads policy in my outfit so guys get ignored on that basis alone.  Some guys just wear the jumper you hate.  I’ve wondered the last 2 seasons why Jy Simpkin doesn’t get more of a look in when breakout mids are looked at each season.  I reckon I landed on why he flies under the radar a bit when at a game watching North last year.  The bloke I was with said “Simpkin’s got a hittable head that smiles when it shouldn’t and he’s got dumpy duck arse and legs”.  Harsh I thought, and yet, hard to argue with.  Not only might that be true but he also plays for North so unfashionable is his entire brand for his career so far.

This pre-season I’ve been pleased to see and hear a bit more about Jy in Fantasy circles and it is for good reason.

Why should I pick him?

We’ve all been foaming at the crotch about Rozee and his finish to the season last year, rightly so too because he was super.  Well what if I told you that Simpkin finished the year averaging 108 over his last 9.  Interested?  What about 114 over his last 5?  Well this is ALMOST true.  Had the Hawks not tagged the hell out of Jy that’s exactly what we’d be saying.  The needle in the cushion here is a 52 when tagged against the Hawks which brings those numbers down and make him less attractive.

The rub here though is all we hear the Hat wearers talk about when putting their teams together is to look for value well here’s a guy who’s averaged 102 over half a season which INCLUDES a horrible 52.  If we Calvin that score out then he averaged 108 for the back end of last season.  That’s the very definition of value.

The next issue when considering Ducky Simpkin for your team is the issue I’ve just raised, that being the likelihood of future 52’s due to a tag.  Those scores hurt and you want to have some protection against them.  Jy gives you some protection in 2 forms.  First, he has big score ability.  Jy’s best ever score came in 2021 with a massive 142 against the same Hawks who tagged him last season (wonder why).  In 2022 he had 3 scores above 119 in amongst his 10 scores over 100.  He is showing he knows how to score.  Secondly,  of his 10 tonnes, he had 7 of them in the second half to the year.

Damn right there was a lightbulb for him.  Something clicked for Jy at the halfway-ish point of last year and he became a big-time scorer for the Roos.  And herein lies the biggest plus for Jy in my opinion.  Jy started to churn again last year when LDU came to the party and finally arrived as a consistent AFL midfielder.  LDU finished with 8/11 scores above 100, the same as Simpkin.  Simpkin got some help and finding the ball became easier for him.  Teams needed to worry about more than Just Jy and Simmo came to the party for North and was consistent the rest of the way.  This season, LDU will be joined by Phillips and Wardlaw and this will help in multiple ways.  Not only that, Ben Cunnington will be there as well (worth a look up front?) and I don’t think any of this hurts Jy, quite the contrary.  Wardlaw when ready is a big body that will help around the contest and neither he nor Phillips will take any CBA’s away from Simpkin.  It’s more likely they’ll help Jy get some more of the pill, not less.

Finally there’s Clarko.  Simpkin has always struck me as a poor man’s Tom Mitchell.  Maybe that was true because Jy lacked the support and structure around him to really bust out as an AFL player.  Well now he’s being coached by the guy that made Tom Mitchell.  There’s a big chance in my mind that Jy becomes a top shelf player under the new coach and maybe even surpasses Mitchell with a bit more speed to burn and less intent to knee people in the arse.  He’s shown he’s got the ability, with a solid system and some decent help around him beginning to build, I think this year is when he shows a full year of consistency.

Why shouldn’t I pick him?

Whilst his finish to last season provides hope, his start provides some caution.  He came out of the blocks strong with 116 and a 105 then a 110 a couple of weeks later but mixed in there was another 52 and the 110 was followed by a string of scores that had anyone who had him, hate him.  His next 7 games included no 100’s and a top score of 99.  He had 5 sub 90 scores in that stretch.  He was horrible and he was that way for a long time.

Then there’s the fact that Jy’s average last season was almost bang on his average for 2021, there’s been no growth after his mini-breakout.  More fuel for the few who think Jy is what he is.

His floor is also a bit scary. 2 scores of 52 plus a 65 and a 76 is nightmare fuel.  For every thought we have he might be about to break out again, this sort of scoring

The final and most pressing reason to avoid Jy is the tag issue.  Frankly this is why he’s a watch for me and not yet found his way into my team.  This issue looms large for me.  As North improves oppositions will need to put more work in to the prime movers they have.  Simpkin will clearly be one of those and will therefore get attention.  The extra help around him will help his game no doubt but the extra attention he may get a result could limit that improvement.  The Hawks, Saints and Gold Coast all tagged him last year and all beat North doing it.  They probably would have anyway but when teams begin to worry about North more, they’ll know Jy is a guy to tag.  Lots of discussion has centred around this in the Fantasy universe and the relative chances of Simpkin or LDU copping tags.  My view on this is Jy gets the tags and not LDU because Simpkin uses the ball better and that gives me pause when considering him.

Deck of DT Rating.

QUEEN

I chose Jy because there were so few worthy targets left to pick but also because I was bemused as to why, again, he wasn’t being considered by more.  He’s a very solid bet to take the next step and if you’re shopping around in this price range for value then you’re looking at Keays (maybe not after Tom Doedee appeared on the Silver Medal winning Traders podcast), Mitchell (I don’t buy the hype there, LDU (yep), Wines (Nup) and those types who might add meat to their current prices.  Just below that you have the Wagner, Serong, Newcombe types and none of those are certain to be better than Jy.  He’s the main man in a midfield that is getting help and getting better and I don’t see any reason why he’s couldn’t be averaging 105-110 by the end of season 2023.

Jy is not popular yet, but he soon may be, I’ve got him as a midfield Deck of DT Queen.

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