NRL SuperCoach: Which premium FRF gun should be in your starting side?
WITH the tightening of FRF/2RF dual eligibility, selecting the FRF position is the most challenging it has been for years. We analyse the top contenders and tip the one you should select.
WITH the tightening of FRF/2RF dual eligibility this season, selecting the FRF position is the most challenging it has been for years.
There are just four genuine “keepers” at the position this year, five if you’re an Aaron Woods optimist, and each have selection question marks over them.
Paul Vaughan tops the price range, but pedigree is an issue with the Dragons big bopper having just one year of elite SuperCoach stats in the bank.
Marty Taupau is next and as my colleague Tim Williams pointed out in his Sea Eagles preview Kapow is heavily reliant on how many Manly minutes coach Trent Barrett opts to give him each week.
Sam Burgess is a gun, no doubt, but he’s ageing and has a new coach in place so Surgess is as big a lottery as he has ever been this year.
Andrew Fifita is coming off his worst average in years, and that average has been in decline every season since his 2013 breakout season.
Woods is next, the Bulldogs recruit is at a new club and Tommy “The Sage” Sangster has argued all pre-season that his PPG can be discounted due to the heavy minutes Woodsy played over the back end of 2017 as he was farewelled by the Tigers.
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After that the position is a grab bag of:
— an ageing warrior (James Graham — also at a new club and with questions over role to be played) who even at his prime was five points short of genuine keeper status,
— a former gun who had a shocker in 2017 (Jesse Bromwich)
— a guy with plenty of potential, who has only delivered on that potential in one season, also at a new club (Ben Matulino)
For mine you want at least one of the top five FRF as a rock around which to build your squad.
We run the rule over the four leading FRF contenders (NB the relative merits of the FRF/2RF eligible Sam Burgess will be discussed in a later article) and tip the one worth shelling out for to start 2018:
ANDREW FIFITA
2017 points: 1413
2017 Average: 64.2
Pros: In 2017 Fifita showed reasonable consistency — scoring below 60 PPG only twice — and durability — playing 22 games and posting his third-best ever total season points.
His underlying stats in 2017 were comparable to those of 2016, a year in which he averaged 72.1 PPG.
The number of games played (22) was the same, the time on ground (1228 minutes in 2017, 1202 in 2016) pretty much the same and the effective tackles made (527 in 2017, 518 in 2016) similar.
Despite these stats, and absence of sub-60 point games, Fifita averaged a significant eight PPG less last year than he did in 2016.
What was the cause of that significant difference you may ask? That’s covered below in the “cons”.
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Cons: In 2017 Fifita made 192 hit-ups exceeding eight metres in distance and 145 between 0-8 metres.
In 2016 he made 230 hit-ups exceeding eight metres in distance and 168 between 0-8 metres.
That’s 61 less hit-ups over the course of 22 games, 61 less opportunities to off-load and tackle bust — unsurprisingly Fifita’s production in both those categories were lower in 2017 than in 2016.
And while there were plenty (12) of games where Fifita scored in the 60-80 range there were only two games in which he scored 80+.
Compare that to previous seasons in which Fifita exceeded 80 points:
2016: 8 times in 22 games — and two 79s,
2015: 7 times in 16 games; and
2014: 4 times in 12 — and two 78s
Precis: 2017’s pain is 2018’s gain, with Fifita available for $570,000 (that’s 6 per cent of salary cap) to start this season, whereas you were shelling out 6.8 per cent of cap to pick up Fifita to start 2017 — for the mathematically challenged if Fifita were to be priced at the same percentage of cap in 2018 as he was at the start of 2017 he would cost us $647,122 this year.
I expect the big man’s hitup rate to improve in 2018, I am confident he will post more 80+ games than he did in 2017.
Worth a punt? A definite maybe. This is the cheapest Fifita starts relative to cap in years. Even in his bad year he was consistent and we all know the potential to go large remains.
PAUL VAUGHAN
2017 points: 1560
2017 Average: 67.8
Pros: Vaughan led all scorers at his position in 2017 with 1560 total points at a staggering 67.8 PPG. Vaughan’s quality workrate saw him score a tad over 50 PPG in effective tackles and hit-ups combined — 55 if you include tackle busts. This combined with his ability to jag attacking stats in bunches resulted in him besting 80 PPG eight times making him a POD in plenty of head-to-head victories through the season.
Cons: Vaughan was not ultra-consistent — scoring less than 60 PPG eight times (though two of those were injury-affected). Should he revert to the mean regarding linebreaks (10 in 2017) and tries (8 in 2017) — ala Ryan James’ 2016 to 2017 slide — then I would expect his average PPG to slide back around 60 PPG. One other slight query would be how the addition of James Graham, a ball-playing FRF, will impact on Vaughan’s role as a distributor and attacking stat generator. Will it help, will it hinder? I don’t know but before I shell out $600K I want to know.
Precis: An old SuperCoach adage is never buy the guy who had a career year and Paul Vaughan certainly had that in 2017. At this price, and with the potential for regression/attacking stat reliance I’m putting Vaughan firmly in the wait-and-watch category. If he storms out of the blocks in 2018 I might have to scramble to find the upgrade coin but at this stage I’ll pass.
MARTIN TAUPAU
2017 points: 1365
2017 Average: 65.0
Pros: Marty ‘Kapow’ had a banner year in 2017, lifting his total points for the season by 12% compared to his 2016 total while playing almost 10% less total minutes.
In 2017 Taupau’s base stats in effective tackles and hit-ups alone were good for a tick under 46 per game. That’s the same base as he delivered in 2016.
Where he took his game to a new level in 2017, however, was the addition of a devastating offload (54 effective and 15 ineffective in 2017 as compared to 22 effective and 9 ineffective in 2016) — that and 25 more tackle busts in 2017 than he made in 2016.
Cons: It’s no contest that when he is on the field Taupau is a SC monster. However, as mentioned above, coaches have to contend with the ‘Mystery of Marty’s Minutes.’ Taupau played 45 minutes or fewer seven times in 2017 and averaged a very non-keeper 47 PPG over that span. Compare that to the 10 games in which he played 55+ minutes for an average of 74.5 PPG.
Precis: Ability is not an issue. The minutes are the issue. Before paying $576k I would want to see how Manly plan to use their wrecking ball before jumping on board.
AARON WOODS
2017 points: 1381
2017 Average: 62.8
Pros: You KNOW what you are going to get from big Woodsy when he is on the field — tackles and hit-ups — enough to average 51PPG in base. What Woods added to his game in 2017 was a developing offload game (32 effective and 13 ineffective in 2017 compared to 18 effective and 7 ineffective in 2016).
Cons: Woods is not a PPM monster, not that his PPM (1.06 in 2015, 1.05 in 2016 and 1,08 in 2017) is poor, it’s just not in the same territory as the other contenders here (Vaughan 1.43, Taupau 1.25 and Fifita 1.15 — his worst result in years).
Rather Woods relies on big minutes to accumulate a solid score. Last year, Woods played 7 games in which he exceeded 60 minutes for an average score of 75PPG.
Precis: Woods is at a new team this year and therefore is a wait-and-see prospect. If he picks up significant minutes at the Bulldogs he would be a sneaky POD. If not you will have dodged a bullet by taking a conservative selection policy.
CONCLUSION
As I stated at the beginning of this, perhaps overlong, yarn, the stripping of dual-eligibility from so many FRF guns of years gone past has tightened the field at the top of this category considerably. In a position ripe with fallen guns (Bromwich, Graham — and I discuss the merits of both in a later article), midprice minefields (Packer, Scott, Napa etc) and few cheapies (Matt Lodge an obvious exception should he nail down a starting role) then the need to pick at least one genuine keeper is evident.
Running through the four by process of elimination here is the gun I rate most highly:
— Despite being bullish on Woods early on this year I’ve cooled on the back of Sangster’s words of warning. His price was pushed up thanks to a big close to 2017 and the new role at new team warrants observation prior to investing.
— Taupau is another whose value is out of his hands and that scares me off the big guy. He’s an offloading, attack stat gathering machine but the minute fluctuations worry me.
— Vaughan may well be the next FRF superstar, but he’s priced at such after just one season of production at those stratospheric levels. Pedigree is a knock not ability and the price is too steep.
— That leaves Andrew Fifita as my recommended premium FRF gun worth investing in. Yes his average has regressed year on year for five years, but it was always going to do that from the heady heights of 2013. In a similar vein I would argue that his 2017 average is an outlier and I would expect him to add 5 PPG to last year’s 64.2 average.
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