Finding Premo – Rucks

It wasn’t that many years ago that when it came time to pick our team, the first thing that we would do was lock in Cox and Sandi as your 2 rucks and then move on to the rest of your team. It was set and forget, you knew they would both smash it and every other ruckman was there to just make up the numbers.

How times have changed? Or have they?

Sandi has injured himself again, Nic Nat may or may not have OP, Cox seems like he will be running around for about his 80^th year.

What we do have this year is everybody’s favourite rucking snack… The Berger! Yep Matty Leuenberger has received a heft discount from the wonderful folk at Virtual Sports and priced @ 233k. He must be seriously considered by every DTer if not a Monty at R2.

For comparison sake I have included Bergers 2011 stats in this article just so that we can have a similar comparison to the rest of the bunch.

There are a few exclusions in this analysis, but I chose the guys that I thought were either most relevant or most people are picking. Apologies to Smith, Kreuzer, Jolly, Jamar, Hale, HMac, Lobbe and others.

Also this year we have the luxury of having 4 decent rucks named as DPP: Cox, Nic Nat, Ryder and Roughy. Giving us all some extra flexibility when coupled with a Rookie priced Rowe, McBean or Sinclair.

So enough of an Intro… let’s go Finding Premo’s

I will assign a points value based on how that player ranks. 1 point for 1^st, down to 15 points for 15^th rank. At the end of the article, I will rank players based on those points. Obviously this is subjective on the way that I have chosen to measure them, but you will get a guide.

As usual, consistency is first

 

Consistency

For the rucks I am using a benchmark of 90 points.

So how many times did they score 90 or over…and to be greedy.. % of time they score over 100

Next I will look at their Purple patch. The number of consecutive games that they score above 90

Now some of these players have had multiple spurts of consecutive games over 90, where that has happened, I have taken the higher average.

Here I introduce a new stat called “Beige Time”. This looks at how many times they score under 90 and what their average is when they score under 90.

This stat gives you an indication on what you can expect for when they aren’t firing. Clearly the higher the average the better.

Last measure of consistency is Standard Deviation… this is a fairly standard statistical measure, that in layman’s terms looks at the variance between highest and lowest scores (its more complex than that, but you get the gist).

For this the lower number is the better, however Std Dev can be deceiving as if a players floor (lowest score) is 100 and their ceiling (Highest Score) is 155 you would probably be happy with a high std dev, so I think it is important to also look at their % of time they score under 95.  I have then multiplied these 2 figures to get what I call an Acceptable Std Dev.

 

Ceiling

Now let’s look at ceiling… When they go BANG…. how BIG do they Bang!!

Whilst I rank consistently very high, it is also good to look at scores above 100 (this is purely me being greedy!)

 

Coming Home

Now let’s look at how these guys finished 2012.

Looking at the year in halves and going under the assumption that those that finished better than they started will continue that form in to this year.

 

Starting with a BANG!

How does there 2013 draw stack up?

Are they better to start with or to upgrade too?

I have looked at the teams they play prior to their bye and used their scores from 2012 to determine a rough average (this is obviously assuming they score the same, not allowing for any improvement or decline)

Lastly, whilst there is no ranking on the below, I think it is incredibly important to understand how ruckmen earn their points. Are they a Tall Midfielder?, A Lumbering Dinosaur? Or a Tackling machine?

This will all have a bearing with the new ruck rule… make of it what you will.

 

 

So there we are. All of the above does not take into account, role change in team, competition for the pill and a million other things but gives you a bit of a stat breakdown and a snapshot into more than an average.

How do they Rank?

 

Before I started researching this article I had McEvoy locked at R1 with Berger, but I can no longer deny the ageing legs of Big Cox.

I have a feeling that ruck strategy will be very pivotal this year.

I am sure that this will spark some conversation, let me know in the comments who you are starting with?

 

Cheers, @RainmanDT