Carltank… Soooo close but so far! Sitting pretty inside the eight for 99% of the home and away season, only to fall short at the eleventh hour at the hands of Collingwood. Fair to say the “Flagbaggers” fans went quiet preeeety quickly! They actually ended up finishing in the top 4 on the Fantasy ladder if that means anything to the Carltank faithful out there?

In these reviews, we will take a closer look at each club’s Fantasy snapshot for season 2022, whilst I nominate players for MVP, best rookie and biggest flop. I will also provide my two cents on what to look out for in 2023!

Most Valuable Player (MVP)

3 votes… S.Docherty. What a season the Doch put together after an unthinkable recurrence of testicular cancer back in August 2021. He was racing against the clock to be fit for R1 and he would have been forgiven for being a bit off his best. Fast forward 23 weeks and he goes and averages a beastly 110, primarily off a half-back flank but with stints in the midfield at the back end of the season! Three scores <90 illustrates the consistency of the man, saving his second best score of the season (137 vs Collingwood) for when it counted the most for many coaches in R23! Fantasy legend.

Best Rookie

We got a taste for the likes of Jack Carroll, Jordan Boyd, Jesse Motlop, Corey Durdin and the returning Caleb Marchbank throughout season 2022. While he did not set the world on fire from a scoring perspective, my vote here is for Durdin. Despite residing on most coaches benches, he was a mainstay in the Blues line-up missing only one match for the season due to Covid. We were never expecting huge scoring from a small forward but Corey had his moments with a two round patch where he averaged 73 pre-bye when most of us continued to hold around other carnage! His eventual average of 42 was scaled down a bit off the back of a couple of sub-affected games.

*FYI I didn’t count Charlie Curnow as a “rookie”, however, he technically started the season at rookie price of $347K and had all these guys covered with an average of 77 from 22 games. Silenced plenty of doubters on the way to his first Coleman Medal!

Biggest Flop

Not really any standouts in the flop department… so let’s put it to a poll – just quietly, some harsh inclusions here!

2023 Watchlist

There was plenty of hype around Carltank’s on-ball depth heading into 2022 and I expect more of the same come 2023. Plenty of mouths to feed in the midfield when you consider the likes of Crippa, Walsh, Hewett, Kennedy, Cerra… Even Zac Fisher, Will Setterfield and the Doch got a run on-ball late in the season! With the inevitable attention placed on Crippa and Walsh by opposition sides, surely someone else will get off the chain. That midfield mix will be an intriguing watch over pre-season and you suspect it may force the hand of someone like a Paddy Dow to go looking for a new home.

So there you have it folks, the third of the Fantasy Fanatic’s 2022 Reviews! Stay tuned for more new content, Collingwood are up next.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below! Feedback, comments and banter welcome.

Cheers legends,

Fantasy Fanatic #70