The Demons and Dockers are learning a lesson that Darryl Kerrigan tried to teach us back in 1997: you can overcapitalise. Darryl outlined that lesson when he was chatting it up with the valuer, in the context of that (big) aerial of his. His point was basically, after accounting for the value of the land, the house, the plastic lace which gave the place a Victoriana feel, and the fake chimney which doubtlessly added a bit of charm, the size of the aerial probably wasn’t adding that much value to the property despite having its own intrinsic value
Turns out the lessons from Ideas Man Darryl Kerrigan can also apply in the AFL.
I think that there is a similar lesson to be learnt for AFL teams and ruckmen. Put simply, you can overcapitalise at the position. At some point, pouring too many resources into a dependant, symbiotic position that does not significantly impact winning on its own is not good process
At the risk of sounding like Dermott Brereton (making a simple point appear far more difficult to grasp than it truly is: “if you go AROOOUND the wing, it’s slower to get the ball forward than it would be THROUGH THE CORRIDOOOOOOOR”), the main job of a ruckman is to play in the ruck. There are some rucks that can go forward and bring surplus value to a team, but there a very few that can genuinely do both at a high level. Rowan Marshall is one that springs to mind.
Before getting into it, let’s have a look at ruck success stats over the season and see how they correlates to winning. These numbers are presented without comment, and anyone who has played less than 10 games was excluded.
The three leaders in hit-outs this season are Riley O’Brien, Jarrod Witts and Sean Darcy.
The leaders in hitout win percentage are Sean Darcy, Andrew Phillips and Jarrod Witts.
The leaders in hitouts to advantage are, again, Witts, O’Brien and this time Todd Goldstein.
In terms of hitout to advantage percentage among players who have attended over 50 ruck contests per game over 10 games this season, the leaders are Marc Pittonet, Todd Goldstein and Tim English.
Of all the players mentioned above, only 2 ply their trade for teams currently in the top 8 in Andrew Phillips and Tim English. Only one of those two, English, is expensive.
What does it mean?
To me, it means that the ruck is essentially the running back of the AFL. There’s a value crisis for running backs at the moment. The crisis is spurred by a lot of factors including a back’s prime years being used either for free or under cost control that don’t apply to ruckmen. What does apply to ruckmen, however, is that a back in a lot of ways is dependent on other people doing their jobs.
To put it simply, a ruck contest is a 50/50 where the ball is almost always tapped down to another 50/50 and it’s up to the good players at the ruckman’s feet to make it work. Naturally, there is a level of physicality and team-lifting that a ruckman does for a team but generally, their value is largely confined to the ruck contest and any bailout marking work that they can do around the ground.
The devaluation of the position is actually illustrated in the most recent premierships, Melbourne excluded. Other than Max Gawn, who is the best ruckman who played for a premiership-winning team? I’ll save you the time, it’s Dean Cox.
As if to illustrate the point that I’m making, Brodie Grundy was on the losing side in the 2018 Grand Final. Nic Naitanui, the Eagles’ expensive, high draft pick ruckman was injured when they won the flag.
With the exception of Melbourne and Fremantle, teams have largely learned this lesson. Look at the ruck landscapes across the league. Most teams just have one clear ruck, and someone else who can pinch hit. What teams have largely accepted is that unless you are excellent or terrible at the position, it doesn’t matter. The middle class is interchangeable, and expanding.
Carlton, for instance went into this season with a bake-off at the position. They’ve now wrapped that up on that and handed Marc Pittonet the keys to the position. I imagine he’ll very happily drop Tom De Koning at the airport for his flight to Sydney.
Look at the Carlton v Freo game in round 17 of this year. Both of the Blues’ ruckmen were injured so they lost the hitouts 70-18. They won the clearances by 6. The Freo ruckmen were doing their job, but the success of that was dependent on the mids doing theirs as well to get maximum value.
Freo, in that game had two “star” level highly paid rucks in Luke Jackson and Sean Darcy. The only other team that has that is Melbourne. They’re the only two teams that have zigged while the rest of the league zags, and it isn’t going that well.
The Dees’ decision is less egregious in process, but worse in terms of where the club is. Melbourne came into the season a genuine premiership contender, despite not having a key forward. Their ruckman, Max Gawn is a 6x All-Australian and still a gun. He is excellent at the position, not only because of his exceptional tap work which creates highly valuable clearances, but also his marking on the wing and behind the ball. He brings some surplus value that most other rucks don’t. Despite that, they felt it necessary to overcapitalise on the position and bring in Brody Grundy.
Grundy is, in my view, a luxury player. He’s a big man that plays small. He’s Victor Wembanyama’s worst case scenario, a wannabe small man trapped in a huge frame. Andrea Bargnani, perhaps? He’s not a great tap ruckman, can’t go forward, and takes fewer than 3.5 marks per game for his career.
🗣️ "We're not trying to turn Brodie Grundy into a forward. Let's be really clear on that."
Simon Goodwin on the Dees' ruck strategies 👇 pic.twitter.com/UrKojeMaYg
— 7AFL (@7AFL) July 20, 2023
He is an excellent ground-level follow up player for his size, which is terrific for him but hasn’t proven overly helpful to the most stacked top end midfield in the league when Clayton Oliver is fit (or whatever). The Dees’ brought him in, admittedly, for basically nothing parting with pick 27 and not much salary cap space by all accounts.
It’s a move that made sense in theory but not in practice given the type of player that Grundy is. He’s almost perfectly suited to take away Max’s superpower, in his ability to outwork his opponent and get to the fall of the ball constantly. Something he can only do if he can ruck the full game.
"Goody brought us both in… I almost thought I was getting dropped!"
Max Gawn gave us a behind the scenes look at Melbourne dropping Brodie Grundy this morning.
LISTEN HERE: https://t.co/kvDaDewbrF pic.twitter.com/mOMrIW9geo
— Triple M Footy (@triplemfooty) July 21, 2023
The fact that Melbourne dropped Grundy and played one of their better games for the year probably wasn’t an accident. The fact that Gawn played his best game of the year definitely wasn’t.
The Dockers’ move was more egregious. They already have Sean Darcy, who is a terrific advertisement for why the skinfold test is overrated. He’s a solid (though not in build) ruckman who is probably a tier below Gawn, but a tier above the position’s interchangeable middle-class. Last season, with Darcy playing 21 games, they finished 5th on the ladder and were 7th in clearances.
However, this offseason they decided to bring in Luke Jackson, the former number 2 overall pick for Melbourne. Jackson is allegedly a forward prospect (career high 16 goals in a season before this one) and could complement Sean Darcy as a ruckman. For this complementary piece Fremantle paid 2 first round picks and a future second, and then handed him a 7 year, $900,000 per season contract. They had to bite the apple twice. They had to give up the draft capital and the cap space, and for that they got a worse ruck situation because, again, they have robbed the genuinely good ruckman of his ability to play a full game in the ruck.
Melbourne and Freo had strengths at the position. They essentially transacted with each other to remove that strength.
It’s not that ruckmen don’t matter at all. They do. You can’t be terrible at the position for a full season. While teams might be able to cope with just sharking an opposing ruckman’s work for a game or two, eventually the lack of physicality and the bailout marking will tell. It’s that the middle-class of the position is interchangeable, and serious resources can’t be devoted to multiple players at the position. It just doesn’t make any sense.
It’d be like Darryl putting a second fake chimney up.
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