Robbo’s Top 50 AFL: Mark Robinson reveals his top players from the 2016 AFL season
ROBBO’S No.1 is obvious, but a Western Bulldogs star has made a meteoric rise up the Top 50, while another Dog has been dumped. LIVE CHAT TODAY 11.30AM (EDT).
Mark Robinson
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AT THE start of the year, there was debate about who would be the better player — Marcus Bontempelli or Jake Stringer.
The two Western Bulldogs, aged just 20 and 22, were on the verge of stardom.
As the 2016 season played out, one of them rocketed into the top 10 players of the competition, while the other plummeted out of the top 50.
Stringer’s season was not so much disappointing, but perplexing.
How can a bloke with so much talent have such a non impactful season?
Not so “The Bont”.
Bontempelli was at No.30 in the pre-season top 50 and finished the season at No.8 and, unquestionably, there will be pundits who will want him in the top five.
What a season from the unflustered Bulldogs midfielder.
He’s a premiership player, an All-Australian and he won the Bulldogs’ best-and-fairest. This from a man who has played only 63 games.
He’s widely acknowledged as a special player, in that he’s a big-moment player as opposed to a huge accumulator of the ball, and more than likely a candidate for the No.1 position in the coming seasons.
BLOG WITH ROBBO ABOUT HIS TOP 50 FROM 11.30am MONDAY
The remarkable season by Luke Beveridge’s team has seen seven of his players acknowledged in the top 50.
They are Bontempelli, Dale Morris (34), Liam Picken (37), Luke Dahlhaus (39), Lachie Hunter (45), Matthew Boyd (47) and Jackson Macrae (49).
There’s no apologies about Picken. The one-time rookie-listed player produced an inspiring September.
It started with his first quarter in the elimination final against West Coast, when he hauled down several huge marks and finished with a match-winning, three-goal final quarter of the Grand Final against Sydney. They were terrific bookends.
Of course, Patrick Dangerfield was the No.1 player in the competition.
He’s won virtually every award this season and deservedly so.
What’s most to admire about Dangerfield is his incredible fitness levels, which propel him from contest to contest, and his ability to defy a tag. Then when he gets the ball, it’s whooshka.
At No.2 is Richmond’s Alex Rance.
He polled just seven votes in the Brownlow Medal — the winner polled 35 — which once again highlighted how much the medal is the midfielders’ medal.
1-50: ROBBO RANKS HIS END-OF-SEASON BEST
That’s not denying Dangerfield, but just seven votes for Rance. Please, it’s an insult to defenders.
Rounding out the top 10 are Lance Franklin, Eddie Betts, Rory Sloane, Joel Selwood, Tommy Lynch and Sydney’s Josh Kennedy and Luke Parker.
Three Swans make the top 15 and Tom Mitchell was unlucky to miss out on the top 50.
No one could not be impressed with Nick Riewoldt’s season and he comes in at No.17, the fourth of the key talls behind Franklin, Lynch and West Coast’s Josh Kennedy.
Riewoldt roams more than the other three and at almost 34 his numbers are phenomenal.
He had a career-high 437 disposals, he kicked 41 goals and took 222 marks, the fourth highest tally in a season since his career started in 2001.
He heads the list of veterans in a top 50 dominated by newbies and youngsters.
Time will tell if they make it into the Top 50 to kick off next season.
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