Nic Naitanui’s second ACL tear could re-shape the league as we know it

Can a single, four-centimetre piece of connective tissue change the shape of the AFL as we know it? Most certainly, in the case of Nic Naitanui’s second ACL tear.

The West Coast Eagles last night confirmed what we all knew but pretended wasn’t true: Nic Naitanui has suffered a second torn ACL in the space of 24 months. This time, sadly for all concerned, it is in his “good” – as it is ominously described by many in the Western Australian football media – right knee. The previous ACL tear was in his left knee.

That’s the injury that saw Naitanui spend 19 months on the sidelines, building strength, suffering a set back, and working to regain the playing condition he spent almost a decade building towards. The workout videos were cool, but Nic Nat would’ve rather been playing.

Now, after 15 games, we are once again set to be without one of the game’s brightest stars – a superlative I do not dish out lightly – for an extended period of time. The implications are numerous, and significant.

For Nic Naitanui, and his prime years
Nic Naitanui was 26 years, 108 days old when he first injured his knee in 2016. He is now 28 years and 72 days old, facing the prospect of another season or most lost to injury should he and the Eagles go down the path of a traditional knee reconstruction as they did last time out.

If we assume Naitanui’s rehabilitation takes as long as it did last time around (583 days), he will be back playing for West Coast in Round 1 2020. At that time, Naitanui will be 76 days away from his 30th birthday.

There’s no one definition of a player’s ‘prime age’, but the rule of thumb is 25 to 29. If things go as laid out above, Naitanui will have spent more time rehabilitating than playing during the prime years of his career. No matter which way you cut it, that’s a football tragedy (to the extent football things can be labelled as such).

Naitanui’s playing style has been a unique – unprecedented in modern times at least – blend of size, agility and athleticism. At age 30, with two ACL surgeries in his rear view, one can only question whether the agility can remain part of his skill set. This will almost assuredly result in a ‘new’ Nic Nat.

However we shouldn’t necessarily be scared at that prognosis. Naitanui’s size is a comparative advantage, but so is his tap work. At his best Naitanui is the best tap ruckman in the competition, deftly placing the ball in the belly of his Eagles teammate s with striking regularity.

Without the freakish agility, we may just see a refined form of Nic Naitanui, like a whisky that’s been maturing in an oak barrel.

For West Coast’s 2018 season
West Coast will survive Naitanui’s absence. For all of his excellent play, the hulking ruckman had been on the field for 1,026 minutes in 2018, the equivalent of just over eight full games of football. In that time Naitanui took 695 ruck contests, the 13th most in the competition and only 60 more than his teammate Scott Lycett (per AFL Stats Pro).

Those ruck contests were generally very good for West Coast. Naitanui was second to Aaron Sandilands for hit out win percentage, and delivered the ball to his team’s advantage 29 per cent of the time – 11th for ruckmen with at least 600 ruck contests on the season. Naitanui is also currently second sixth for total clearances among ruckmen, but is the only player to be inside the top ten for both centre and stoppage clearances.

In my 2018 preseason preview mega column, I was salivating at the prospect of Naitanui being allowed to go to work without a third man up getting in his way. He certainly delivered the goods.

Champion Data’s AFL Player Rating system had Naitanui as the seventh best player in the competition through Round 16, despite his relatively low utilisation. He was putting together a stellar season, albeit among a crowded field of both Eagles and ruckmen.

West Coast will survive without Naitanui for the rest of 2018. Coach Adam Simpson has built a scheme that prioritises ball movement and control, rather than relies on midfield domination or power in stoppage situations. Naitanui is an outstanding player, and one of the most impactful in the league. But to my eye he was not the difference between West Coast winning or losing on a regular basis.

However, it is clear he is capable of producing incredible bursts of influence in short periods of time, be it through his ruckwork, his defensive prowling around the centre of the ground, or with a high mark on the wing. Naitanui is a great ruckman, but he’s also the sort of spark one may need to light a fire in a dark, dreary tunnel.

Survive? Yes. West Coast will play September football in 2018. Prosper? That’s more of an open question.

For West Coast’s list management
This is where Naitanui’s injury could get complex, and quickly, for the Eagles. And it’s not even about Naitanui himself.

West Coast has three young restricted free agents to manage in the 2018 off season: Andrew Gaff, Jeremy McGovern and Scott Lycett. Naitanui’s knee affects them all.

It affects Lycett more so than the others, at least directly. There has been some talk around the place that Lycett might like to take on the number one ruckman mantle, a title under normal circumstances he is almost never going to hold so long as Naitanui is at the club. Well, never just became now. With Naitanui down, Lycett is the man.

But what happens at the end of this season, when Lycett and his management sit down to listen to the offers of half a dozen teams across the league who might like to entertain the notion of the 26-year-old as their number one ruckman? Suddenly, West Coast becomes a more attractive option, at least in the short term. And West Coast, suddenly, are far more interested in Lycett beyond the next six to ten games.

But that has a flow on effect to the amount of cash West Coast may have available to satiate both Gaff and McGovern. Suddenly it may find itself having a genuine choice between the trio, rather than a false choice that would’ve seen Lycett leave for greener pastures. If Gaff and McGovern were fine to stay at West Coast for, say, ten per cent less money than their best alternative, how much more are they willing to give up should the Eagles seek to lock Lycett down?

That cascades through the system. The team circling Lycett now suddenly has to find an alternative. The teams circling Gaff or McGovern now hold some additional leverage. West Coast is stuck in the middle of it all.

And the Eagles will once again have to look hard at the ruck position, which for all its profile is less than 1.5 spots in the average best 22 in 2018. Nathan Vardy is locked away for another two seasons after this one, and will be called upon.

Meanwhile, Fraser McIness is still lurking at East Perth, as well as fellow rookie Tony Olango; both of which can play for free from a salary cap perspective so long as Naitanui is on the long term injury list. It is a headache Brady Rawlings and his crew could do without in what looms as one of the more crucial off seasons in West Coast’s history.

For Nic Naitanui, in 2020 and beyond
Naitanui signed a five-year contract with West Coast which, cruelly, expires at the end of next season. With the rehabilitation path outlined above, Naitanui will have played just 15 games of professional football in the final three seasons of that contract – a disaster from a list management perspective considering it is widely believed Naitanui is West Coast’s highest paid player.

Naitanui will be a free agent next season, although it isn’t clear at this stage whether he will be restricted or unrestricted. The league is still working out whether it wants to enact the new free agency rules that abolished the requirement for players to first pass restricted free agency before becoming unrestricted free agents regardless of the years of service.

Naitanui will have 11 years of service with West Coast after next year, an unrestricted free agent under the new rules but a restricted free agent under the old – and still in effect – rules. The way the AFL’s player payment system is structured means a player’s earliest free agency is generally their first and last opportunity at a long-term deal that stretches into their 30s. Naitanui will hit free agency in a less than ideal position.

We’ve already talked about how Nic Nat’s game may have to change as he returns to the game post the prime years of his career. But what does that look like from a contractual perspective?

We should be talking about Naitanui as one of the modern day greats – a player as uniquely gifted as Cyril Rioli, revolutionising his position. Instead it is likely Naitanui will carry the burden of unfulfilled promise owing to his injuries.

Equally, Naitanui has shown once before he can come back from the abyss of an 18-month rehabilitation stint and retake his place atop the ruck mountain. This time he does so with the knowledge gleaned from the last time around, and with the goodwill of fans of both West Coast and AFL football behind him.

Regular readers will know I’m not a religious man. But Nic Nat himself might have said it best last Friday – prophetically or coincidentally – with this.

If this is some sort of divine plan, it looks to be a pretty sucky plan. But even I could get behind some otherworldly intervention right now.

This is a tough sentence fragment to type. At a fundamental level, we are dealing with a 201cm, 110kg athlete that jumps and twists and plants a hundred times a game tearing the anterior cruciate ligaments in both of his knees in less than two years.

We don’t really know what comes next. That’s scary, and above all else, it’s sad.