Jack Riewoldt out of the boxMike Sheahan
Herald Sun
October 09, 2010 THE first big shock of Mike Sheahan's top 50 AFL players is ... Richmond's gun forward Jack Riewoldt.
Put all the modern stats and sophisticated analysis to one side, one thing doesn't change: teams that kick the most goals win the most games.
That's why there has to be a specialist goalkicker among the top 10, and Riewoldt wins decisively.
He kicked 78 goals from 22 games, with two or more in 20 of them and one bag of 10. That's in a team that averaged goals a game, the lowest in the competition.
I love his hunger for the ball, his leap, his hands and, more recently, his conversion.
He kicked 78.39 (60 per cent efficiency) after 32.27 last year. There's 68 tackles to his name, too. The coach is big on "team" at Punt Rd, and that's fair enough. But Jack is the new Richo, and that's priceless.
LET'S all remember the rules - the October Top 50 is for contributions during the preceding six months. That's it.
Nothing to do with reputations going into the 2010 season, nor what we think players might do next year and beyond.
Simple, really. Yet it is why it's so hard to judge certain players.
Nick Riewoldt, for example. He was No.2 going into the season, but ended up missing 10 of St Kilda's 25 games after being hurt early in the Round 3 fixture against Collingwood.
Effectively, he played 14 games.
While he produced four or five big ones, bottom line is he finished with 39 goals, which didn't get him into the top 20. For the record, he didn't finish top 10 in St Kilda's best-and-fairest, either.
Jimmy Bartel is another. Perhaps the unluckiest player of the lot to miss out.
Yep, has to be.
Bartel was flying until he injured an elbow mid-year. He probably should have missed a game or two, but continued to play and had a flat spot for weeks. One or two too many.
I'm a trifle embarrassed about leaving Jimmy out.
Then there's Adam Cooney. I am a huge Cooney fan, but he still doesn't play up to the full extent of his talent often enough.
He is the most capable player at the Western Bulldogs, yet finished seventh in the club championship.
Cooney at his best can be as damaging as Gary Ablett. We don't see it anywhere near enough.
He kicked nine goals for the season.
That's poor. Nowhere near good enough. He needs to be 25-plus.
My 50 is selected on the basis of players' contributions to their teams over the journey, with a premium on a player's ability to impact the course of a game, to influence a result, to perform on the big stage.
Brendon Goddard and Dale Thomas enhanced their reputations in finals,
Geelong's Harry Taylor and Steve Johnson went the other way, and Stephen Milne's Grand Finals hurt him.
I feel guilty each time I overlook certain players, for example Daniel Cross and Jobe Watson.
I love watching Cross in the battle for the footy. Every contest is life and death. Sadly, though, Crossy can't hurt with his feet. He has played 158 games in his career for 26 goals.
Watson is similarly afflicted. He is brilliant in the crushes, amazingly adept at winning the hot footy and dispatching it creatively by hand.
Yet, Watson's impact on the scoreboard - goals and score assists - totalled 30 for the season. played in a poor team, but Richmond finished near the bottom and Collins, Jake King and Ben all had 25 goals and goal assists, three kicked more goals.
Anyway, as one of Melbourne's great old broadcasters, Ormsby used to say, it's only one opinion.
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