West Coast ruckman Nic Naitanui divides opinion like few players in the AFL. He is sometimes criticised as an overrated footballer who flashes in and out of matches.
At the same time, he is often slated as the most potent ruckman in the competition and the Eagles’ key player.
I am firmly in the latter camp. To my mind, Naitanui has become the most damaging ruckman in the competition at just 23 years old.
His influence on West Coast has been brought into sharp relief this season. The Eagles, who many pundits favoured to win the flag this season, stumbled to a 1-4 win/loss record while clearly missing the injured Naitanui’s impact around the clearances and inside 50.
Since his return, they have won five of their six games and, while still a long way from their best, have looked a far more dangerous outfit.
Naitanui’s ruckwork, in particular, has been clinical. Countless times he has spoon-fed his midfielders leading directly to goals from stoppages.
The dreadlocked big man dominated the headlines after he took a jaw-dropping pack mark in the dying seconds of the Eagles’ Round 8 clash against North Melbourne. His goal after the siren gave West Coast a desperately-needed win.
But he played an equally pivotal role in his side’s thrilling victory against St Kilda last week, without garnering the same praise. Naitanui smashed in-form Saints beanpole Ben McEvoy, continually giving his teammates clean possession at the stoppages amid the frenzied pressure of the tight game.
McEvoy is the second best ruckmen in the competition after Naitanui according to the league’s website AFL.com.au, which recently launched its official player ratings.
Naitanui was ranked as the 10th most influential player overall in the competition, streets ahead of his nearest ruck rivals McEvoy (ranked 62nd overall) and Todd Goldstein (70th). The website states that its ratings are the “result of the most sophisticated, detailed and wide-ranging statistical system ever devised for AFL footy.”
Statistics can often be misleading. But these ratings go well beyond analysing how many marks, possessions, goals and hit outs Naitanui registers. They take into account the circumstances in which each stat was earned, their effectiveness and a player’s impact over his previous 40 games.
Well before these rankings were released, Naitanui had already received lavish praise from some of the most respected figures in the game.
AFL hall-of-famer Kevin Bartlett has predicted Naitanui will, in coming seasons, win a Brownlow Medal and “blow everyone out of the water.”
Leigh Matthews, arguably the AFL’s greatest ever player and a four-time premiership coach, has said he’d only ever seen three “freaks” on the football field – Gary Ablett snr, Lance Franklin and Naitanui.
Brownlow Medallist Gerard Healy wrote an article two years ago detailing the way Naitanui was “revolutionising” ruck work and stating he was probably the best centre bounce practitioner he had ever seen.
All-time great Wayne Carey has declared Naitanui a future 200-game champion. Meanwhile, four-time premiership coach David Parkin has compared him to Carlton legend Anthony Koutoufides.
Now consider that Naitanui is just 23, an age when most ruckmen are only beginning to have a consistent impact at AFL level. Naitanui’s teammate and mentor Dean Cox, the greatest ruckman of the past 20 years, did not win an All-Australia berth until he was 24.
Naitanui got his first All-Australian nod last year and is tipped by Brownlow Medal-winning ruckman Graham Moss to possibly become a better player than Cox.
So can Naitanui fulfil his mammoth potential and become the competition’s best player? He still has a way to go.
He is not yet in the same league as the likes of Gold Coast champion Gary Ablett, Hawthorn gun Lance Franklin, Essendon skipper Jobe Watson or Collingwood ball magnet Dane Swan.
But Naitanui is at least three years younger than all of those players and when he reaches his peak in four or five years time, they will all likely be past their best.
Perhaps it is more prudent to compare Naitanui to players his age or younger, those who will most probably be challenging him for the title of the AFL’s best player in the future.
Adelaide’s Patrick Dangerfield, 23 years old, is his closest rival. The 2012 All-Australian is the kind of game-breaking on-baller every club covets. His bulk, acceleration and power through the core make him almost impossible to stop at clearances or on the burst, similar to a young Chris Judd.
Dangerfield is arguably the quickest player in the competition, having won the past two grand final sprints, which together with his exceptional long kicking helps him to break zones and kill teams on the turnover.
He averaged 27 disposals, six clearances and a goal a game last season and was rewarded with a seventh placing in last season’s Brownlow Medal count. Dangerfield has been one of the few standouts for Adelaide this year.
At Richmond, Trent Cotchin, 23, has a similar level of importance to Naitanui and Dangerfield. The Tigers captain is now one of the truly elite midfielders in the competition alongside the likes of Ablett, Watson, Swan, Judd, Scott Pendlebury and Joel Selwood.
Cotchin does everything you want from an on-baller – he wins clearances and busts packs with his strength, breaks lines with his speed, tackles ferociously, and brings other players into the game with brilliant vision and decision-making. His admirable consistency saw him finish second in the race for the Brownlow last season.
Collingwood’s 23-year-old maestro Dayne Beams is yet to play a game this season but was one of the most improved players of 2012. His hard running and attacking instincts saw him gather 31 touches and more than a goal a game last season.
But he also increased his defensive work-rate to average 4.2 tackles per match. Beams’ influence became so pronounced that in the second half of the season, some teams chose to tag him instead of teammates Swann or Pendlebury. He edged out that superstar pair to win Collingwood’s best-and-fairest award.
At just 21 years old, Fremantle’s Nathan Fyfe is the best player of his age in the AFL. He is a monster around the stoppages, reads the play beautifully, has a great work rate, and is perhaps the best overhead contested marker of any on-baller in the AFL.
He polled 14 votes in the Brownlow last season despite playing only nine games because of injury. In just his second season of AFL, Fyfe finished runner-up in Fremantle’s best-and-fairest award aged only 19.
Injury has sidelined Adelaide spearhead Taylor Walker (23) this season but there is little doubt he has the ability to become the best key forward in the competition.
Walker had a breakthrough year in 2012, booting 63 goals in just 19 games to be one of the main reasons Adelaide came within a goal of making last year’s grand final.
He kicked five goals in the Crows’ semi-final win over Fremantle and four in the narrow preliminary final loss to Hawthorn.
Walker’s quick leading, vice-like hands and pinpoint accuracy in front of goal will make him a nightmare for defenders for years to come.
A wildcard in the race to become the AFL’s best player of the next generation is Tigers 21-year-old Dustin Martin. The powerhouse on-baller is, on his day, as lethal as any player in the competition.
Martin hurts teams on the inside and the outside – he burrows in to win hard ball gets and clearances, but is just as potent when given the ball in space. He bounds away from congestion with the ball under his arm and then uses his long kicking to spot up a teammate or thread goals, often from outside the 50 metre arc.
If and when this prodigiously-gifted Tiger matches the consistency of his skipper Cotchin he will be a true superstar.
Any of these players could one day earn the tag of the best footballer in the country. It’s also entirely possible that a greenhorn like Greater Western Sydney sharpshooter Jeremy Cameron could overtake them all.
But, as it stands, Naitanui is as likely as any developing player in the AFL to become the competition’s supreme footballer.
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