Is Jaeger O’Meara worth the risk in SuperCoach this year?

HE impressed on Friday night but the question will persist: Is this the year Jaeger O’Meara’s knee holds together and he becomes a SuperCoach premium? Or is he a disaster waiting to happen — again.

JAEGER O’Meara is one of the most divisive players in SuperCoach.

Is this the year his knee holds together and he returns to his AFL Rising Star Award winning, SuperCoach premium scoring days?

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Or will it be deja vu for the coaches who lived through the Jaeger nightmare in 2017?

If last night’s display in a Hawks’ intra-club is anything to go on, then Jaeger fans will be lining up. And who knows? Those doubters might have been converted after he sizzled through four quarters at Waverley Park.

Here’s some pros and cons to consider when weighing up the great Jaeger conundrum:

WHY WE SHOULD PICK HIM

THE guy can score. In his debut season he played 22 games and averaged 90 points a game, including eight scores over 100. The next year he upped that to 98 points from 22 matches — at age 20. If he gets his body right he could be a premium midfielder.

DID you say a premium midfielder for $315,800? Instead of picking Patrick Dangerfield you could take Jaeger and Tom Liberatore. To put it another way, O’Meara is cheaper than Curtly Hampton. He’s priced at a 72 average, which is way below his potential output.

IT’S all about his knee. O’Meara didn’t play for two years then his first season at Hawthorn was derailed after another setback in the middle of the year. He made a comeback for the final two rounds — picking up 25 disposals and scoring 91 SuperCoach points in Round 23 — and Jay Clark reports the Hawks think they have fixed the former Rising Star winner’s issues after discovering the problem was in a different area to where he was feeling pain.

HE is in full training in the lead-up to the pre-season competition. “The knee’s feeling really good,” O’Meara said in December. “I’ve been able to do most, if not all, of the program so far. It’s obviously early days in the pre-season, so I’m keeping a lid on it, but it is feeling great and I’m really happy with how it’s going.”

HIS bye is in Round 12, which will be very handy when the bye rounds roll around (even if you aren’t thinking about them much now). Most of the popular SuperCoach guns will be available that week and Jaeger will be there to cover for them for the next two weeks.

IF EVERYTHING goes right he has the potential to become a midfield keeper. That might be overly optimistic but even if he can’t make it through the full season, an average of about 100 over the first 10 rounds would surge his value close to $500,000 where we can jump to a top-line midfielder you can’t afford to start with.

THE Hawks have invested a lot in this guy, and they don’t get many wrong.

Jaeger O’Meara presents a tantalising SuperCoach target. Picture: Michael Klein

WHY WE SHOULDN’T PICK HIM

WERE you paying attention last year? O’Meara was one of the most popular picks before Round 1 but proceeded to burn all his owners with three scores under 90 in the first three rounds followed by two weeks off, a 39 then another 15 weeks on the sidelines. Can you put yourself through that again?

HIS fantastic SuperCoach seasons were now four years ago, an eternity in AFL footy. Since then he has had surgery to fix knee tendinitis then ruptured his patella tendon during his comeback. That was before last year’s setback. How much confidence can we have that he is fully fit?

DURABILITY is a huge, but too often overlooked, factor in SuperCoach. A midfielder who averages 90 over 22 games is worth more to your total score than a gun who averages 115 over 17. Missing games also puts a dent in a player’s money making potential, stalling any price rises and making you wait longer to grab those premiums you’ve got your eye on. Even if O’Meara is flying there’s a chance the Hawks will “manage” him at some stage.

HE’S cheap, but not THAT cheap. Despite last year’s disaster, O’Meara’s starting price is just $4000 down from this time 12 months ago. He’s in the classic SuperCoach mid-pricer no-man’s land. He’ll have to score like crazy to allow a straight swap to a fallen premium and in the much more likely scenario he settles with a 90-95 average, is that a win? It’s good value for his price but well short of the top eight midfielders, so he will cost you a trade. Find an extra $100k or so and you could grab Tom Liberatore or Stephen Coniglio, who are much more likely to become keepers. Or pick a rookie who can score 70-80 a week and use the $200,000 somewhere else.

THE VERDICT

Al Paton: I hope he proves me wrong because he kid deserves a break but I just can’t trust him even with only $315k. No mid-pricers in my midfield this year.

Gilbert Gardiner: Once bitten, twice shy. Would like to see Jaeger string a few games together before going back for more.