AFL pre-season: Top picks already their teams' biggest stars, fading great hints at 2022 renaissance

If you had Sunday afternoon off, or you’re employed to watch pre-season games and try to derive some meaning out of them (stares into the camera), then seeing first Nick Daicos and then Jason Horne-Francis strut their stuff was worth it by themselves.

Remarkably, while neither have played a senior game of the real stuff, both had real claims as their team’s best player, with Daicos shining for Collingwood in a comfortable loss to GWS, while Horne-Francis showed he’s deadly around goals as well as being a future ball magnet as North Melbourne went down to GWS.

The game of the day was undoubtedly a tight tussle between West Coast and Fremantle, but if you could come out of the earlier two games not thinking that you’d just seen a pair of players who will take over the league in the years to come, I applaud you for your level-headedness.

If you want completely over-the-top hysteria and brazenly heaping expectations on teenagers, you’ve come to the right place.

GWS 15.10 (100) defeated Collingwood 8.11 (59) by 41 points at GIANTS Stadium.

Nick Daicos is a special one

Most midfielder draftees, even the top ones, tend to start their careers somewhere in the forward line before progressing to a full-time role on the ball. But the Magpies had a different role for the son of club and AFL legend Peter.

Starting at half-back, alongside Pies captain and champion Scott Pendlebury, the idea was to put Daicos’ elite ball skills and composure to good use. He didn’t disappoint, safely using the ball for much of the day. And he had it plenty.

The 19-year old finished with a team-high 31 disposals at 74 per cent efficiency, with only Pendlebury and Giant Tim Taranto managing more than his 508 metres gained.

“If this was yesteryear, he’d have been playing league footy like his old man at 16,” Dermott Brereton said on Fox Footy, while another former great in Nick Dal Santo lauded the teenager’s quick coming to terms with the demands of the highest level.

“There’s already been a handful of young players come into the competition during this AAMI Community Series – you can tell they’re a little bit younger, the game looks fast,” Dal Santo said.

“The game isn’t fast for him, this is the pace that he automatically plays,” he said.

The only question for Craig McRae is whether he can afford to keep him at half-back for long, with the Pies’ midfield, albeit minus Taylor Adams, smashed to smithereens by the Giants’ band of stars.

Josh Kelly, Taranto and co. racked up 45 clearances to 29 and 151 contested possessions to 131, with co-captain Stephen Coniglio in particular looking back to his best with 27 touches.

Nick Daicos of Collingwood competes for the ball with GWS’ Lachie Whitfield. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

‘Massive strife’ for Maynard as coach fears suspension

If there’s one thing more frustrating for a coach than an injury in the pre-season, it’s a suspension.

Regardless of the year, there’s always one player who rules themselves out of Round 1 with a careless act. In 2022, it looks like it’ll be important Pies defender Brayden Maynard, who caught Giant Daniel Lloyd high and late with a swinging arm.

“That’s pretty crude. There’s no real attempt at the footy there,” Brereton opined: when Dermott Brereton is able to call an act crude, you know it’s nasty.

Coach Craig McRae admitted after the match he is ‘concerned’ about the incident.

Concerningly for Maynard, who was placed on report at the time, Lloyd would take no further part in the match. According to Fox Footy’s Jon Ralph, the Magpie is in ‘massive strife’ – but could still escape a suspension.

“He’s late, there’s intent, he hits Lloyd in the head, his eyes are off the ball. But the actual slow-motion shows he does actually seem to clip the back of the Sherrin,” Ralph said after the match.

“Even then, [he] makes contact to Lloyd’s head… I think the MRO has a real chance to set a precedent here, but whether they actually see ways to let Maynard off is another thing.”

With Jeremy Howe missing the match with a groin injury and Jordan Roughead all but ruled out of Round 1, the Pies can ill afford another hit to their defensive stocks, particularly such an important cog as Maynard.

Adding to their woes was a bump from new recruit Nathan Kreuger on Callan Ward, with the pair’s heads clashing on impact.

Usually, that would be enough to raise Match Review Officer Michael Christian’s eyebrows, but Kreuger’s saving grace might be that it was him who ended up concussed, rather than the Giant famously nicknamed ‘Cement Head’.

Sydney 12.10 (82) defeated North Melbourne 7.9 (51) by 31 points at GIANTS Stadium.

Just like with Daicos at the Magpies, there was no easing number one draft pick Jason Horne-Francis into his biggest hit-out yet for the Kangaroos.

Frequently around the ball in the first half – though mostly spared from the centre bounces – the young gun’s second quarter showed just why the Roos had their sights on him with their first ever pick one months out from draft night. He might have had ‘only’ five touches, but his class was on full display, most notably with this ice-cool finish from 45 metres out for North Melbourne’s second goal of the day.

By half time, Horne-Francis had added a second goal to his tally, enough to excite any Roos fans not already eagerly awaiting seeing him in action in the real stuff.

He won’t be a superstar right away, but the South Australian looks as ready for the big time as any draftee going around – maybe Daicos excepted.

Speaking of number one draft picks, the sight of Paddy McCartin in Swans colours for the first time was enough to warm the cockles.

Playing as a key defender, he didn’t set the world on fire, but plucked seven marks as part of a unit that held the Roos to just seven goals. If he was earmarked for a Round 1 club debut, he certainly didn’t play his way out of one.

The Swans have found their Dawson replacement – and it’s bizarre

The elite kicking skills of Jordan Dawson would be all but impossible to replicate at most teams, but Sydney have a knack of finding diamonds in the rough. The latest example? A spindly 21-year old by the name of Justin McInerney.

Having shown glimpses of a bright future across the wing and half-back late last year, the youngster excelled again in the same role against the Roos, winning a game-high 30 disposals and using the ball expertly.

Even more impressively, 11 of his possessions were contested – as elite as Dawson was on the outside, he seldom excelled on the inside too.

A hallmark of the Swans’ crop of exciting youngsters is their willingness to take the game on and attack, and McInerney has that in spades. Streaming down the ground with regularity, this goal on the run with no Kangaroo in sight demonstrated both his athletic gifts and his footy smarts to get into a dangerous position.

But Dawson’s true replacement on the half-back line was weirder by far – champion inside bull Josh Kennedy.

Floating in the backline for much of the match, the the former captain appears to have finally ceded control of the midfield to emerging stars Callum Mills and Isaac Heeney, plus the experience of Luke Parker to lead the way.

While his kicking and speed aren’t hallmarks of Kennedy’s game, neither were they for Hawthorn’s Sam Mitchell or the Western Bulldogs’ Matthew Boyd, both of whom found great success in the backline towards the end of their careers. It could well prove a masterstroke by John Longmire.

Fremantle 11.13 (79) defeated West Coast 10.6 (66) by 13 points at Optus Stadium.

The Eagles need ball-winners, fast

West Coast were far from awful against the Dockers, but their inability to find enough of the football is going to get them sliced up in the home-and-away season unless they can find an answer, fast.

It’s completely understandable – Elliot Yeo, Luke Shuey and Dom Sheed are all in the casualty ward, with only Tim Kelly of their regular centre bounce set-up available. But remarkably, they still won the clearance and contested possession count. It was their inability to force turnovers from the Dockers that worked against them, Freo taking a whopping XX marks.

Despite that, the Eagles still comfortably led their crosstown rivals for clangers, an ugly combination. It left spearhead Josh Kennedy unable to impact the game at all, held to five disposals without a single score.

So, what’s the answer? It might be that Adam Simpson is content to bide his time and allow Foley and co. time to develop, or at least give them until Yeo, Shuey and Sheed come back to try and bed down a position. But unless he finds one, 2022 is going to be a looooong one for the 2018 champs.

Michael Walters is on the verge of a renaissance

The last two years haven’t been kind to Michael Walters. Pushed out of the midfield rotation as Justin Longmuir looked to advance a crop of young guns including Andrew Brayshaw and Caleb Serong, the veteran could only muster 14 goals from his 16 appearances last season to leave himself on the fringes of the team.

With talented forward options Liam Henry and Michael Frederick looming large, it was an important match for Walters heading in. Two and a half hours later, and it seems he got the message.

Most impressive of all was his willingness to work hard into space and create options for his teammates, earning 10 marks. Fremantle’s game is built around a keepings-off style, with marks, kicks and disposals aplenty; but that needs complete buy-in to be successful.

With two goals to boot, it was arguably Walters’ best game for at least two seasons; and with a brilliant finish from the forward pocket in the final term, he showed he hasn’t lost any of the brilliance that made him one of the most watchable players in the game.