AFL Fantasy is back for another year, and the team at Footy Prophet will again be supplying NMFC.com.au with premium fantasy analysis and tips for the 2016 season.
North Melbourne gave AFL Fantasy coaches exactly what they would’ve wanted coming out of Round 1, with the big name fantasy players scoring well.
The match overall was a low scoring fantasy game with only three players scoring hundreds.
Jarrad Waite had a dominant outing and from every fantasy perspective he excelled with 20 disposals, seven marks, six tackles, three goals and 117 points.
Sam Gibson was the best of the players to not score 100, finishing with 95. Meanwhile Shaun Higgins reaffirmed that he is one to watch as a unique forward option with 102 points. In our preview, we named the top five most relevant players from North Melbourne, and in hindsight, one glaring omission was Higgins.
Having averaged 85 as a forward last season, the skilful utility looks like replicating that. He represents good value at $477,000.
The sour note of the round came from Jed Anderson’s hamstring injury early in the game.
Anderson is projected to be out for eight to ten weeks. It's a shame for the young man and fantasy coaches who picked him.
Footy Prophet’s Fantasy Five
1. Todd Goldstein ($630,000, RUC)
Goldstein picked up exactly where he left off in 2015, scoring 121 points in relatively simple fashion on the weekend.
The ruckman scored 48 points in a dominant last quarter, showing his ability to grind opposing ruckmen into the ground and the scary thing is he could certainly play and score better than this.
2. Daniel Wells ($293,000, MID/FWD)
Wells came into round one as the most selected player in AFL Fantasy and the midfielder delivered well above expectations with a score of 95.
Wells was always a risky selection due to his past injuries, but he was also never really a high scoring player.
He blew that out of the water this round and hopefully he can continue to deliver big scores to reward the majority of teams that chose to start him.
3. Brent Harvey ($451,000, MID/FWD)
Brent Harvey showed that even after 410 games, he’s just as fantasy relevant as ever delivering 85 points, including 36 in the third quarter that saw the Roos fight their way back into the game.
Boomer is under-priced and could be a great pick if you’re looking for a quality forward option.
4. Andrew Swallow ($487,000, MID)
Swallow finished the game with 84 points which is a solid performance, but probably not enough to consider him for your team with the amount of fantasy relevant options in that price range.
Half of Swallow’s score came from his 10 tackles.
5. Jamie Macmillan ($436,000, DEF)
Macmillan got off to a good start, scoring 23 points in the first quarter before tailing off and finishing with 57 for the game.
