When teams come up against West Coast, talk tends to surround who can curb the influence of Josh Kennedy, Nic Naitanui, Matt Priddis or Andrew Gaff.
Rarely do we hear pundits or opposition supporters addressing the significant threat posed by a man who is arguably as good as any small forward we have seen in the past decade – Mark LeCras.
With 337 goals from 152 games, LeCras easily has averaged more goals per game across his career than fellow star small forwards Eddie Betts, Cyril Rioli, Chad Wingard, Lindsay Thomas, Michael Walters, Hayden Ballantyne or Jamie Elliott.
Yet it is not unusual to see him left out of discussions about who is the best small-to-medium forward in the AFL.
Among this year’s top 20 goalkickers, no one had more goal assists than LeCras, only one player had more clearances, only two players had more touches, and only three players had more inside 50s.
His assists numbers – which placed him fourth overall in the AFL – are particularly important when assessing LeCras’s impact. He has shown a wonderful ability to be effective while playing deep inside 50, as we saw when he bagged 12 goals against Essendon in 2010, exploiting his extraordinary one-on-one skills.
These days, though, LeCras tends to play further out from goal, with the Eagles using his vision, poise, decision making and foot skills to set up scoring chances. The 29-year-old has all the attributes you expect of an on-baller and has shown the ability to be highly effective when pinch hitting through the middle.
So clever and versatile is LeCras that he easily could be an elite half back, but he is just too valuable in the forward half to consider such a move. Above all this, what makes him such a danger to North Melbourne this week is his appetite for performing in big games.
Unfortunately for LeCras, his career took off just as the Eagles’ era of dominance came to an end eight years ago, so he has played few finals.
Place him in front of a packed house in Subiaco, however, and he shines more often than not. The spotlight of finals is barely more intense than the focus on the Western Derbies each year and LeCras has excelled in those hotly contested matches.
No small forward in the past decade has caused as many problems for the watertight Fremantle defence as LeCras – in 12 Western Derbies he has booted 34 goals. The space offered to him by the long surface of Domain Stadium makes him extremely difficult to contain, whether in a goal-scoring or goal-creating sense.
When North Melbourne defeated the Eagles in Tasmania in Round 10 this year, it was significant that they managed to blanket LeCras, who was held goalless and to just 13 possessions.
On that day, the Eagles badly missed his creativity and delivery, which so often helps their forward line prosper.
North will surely put a heavy emphasis on closing him down once more. If they give him the kind of latitude he was afforded by Hawthorn two weeks ago they will live to regret it.
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