In 2015, portadelaidefc.com.au welcomes Paul Dunn - aka Dunny - from DT Talk. Dunny will be writing regular pieces giving you insights into the world of AFL Fantasy, who to choose and who to trade.

AS we head towards the AFL season it is time to start putting together our AFL Fantasy teams.

In the lead up to Round 1 I am going to hopefully give you some help whilst also looking at how some of our Power players will fare this year in AFL Fantasy and whether or not I think they should be a part of your starting AFL Fantasy squad.

First up I have a look at our vice captain Brad Ebert. Since he came back home from West Coast, Ebert has been fantastic both in the AFL and in Fantasy land. He has only missed one game in the past five seasons which was in 2011 whilst at West Coast.

In 2010 and 2011 at West Coast he averaged 81 and 62, the following three seasons at Port Adelaide he has averaged 99.3, 99.1 and 98.9. At mid $500k and to have a consistent year on year average a touch under 100 he has to be seriously considered for your team.

Despite averaging 22 possessions per game, Ebert doesn’t appear to get the number one tagger from the opposition all that often. That honour tends to fall to Travis Boak, Robbie Gray or Hamish Hartlett. So what this means is that Ebert can tend to run around loose! And run he does - he gets to a lot of contests, but he also finds a lot of space. But when he isn’t in space, he knows how to put pressure on.

An average of six tackles per game is fantastic. That is a walk up 24 points per game, without even touching the ball! With the recent improvement of the team and the increased presence in the midfield with new players like Ollie Wines and Jared Polec in the past two years there are more options on both the inside and outside for other teams to worry about.

Ebert had four games under 80 fantasy points last year, but they can be fairly easily explained, one was due to injury, another was that horrifically wet Metricon Stadium game where the team won 56-47, with the other two coming in games where the entire team played below standard (v Melb in Alice Springs and v Richmond at Etihad). Offsetting those poor games were a couple of big scores of 152, 136 and then a couple of games in the 120s. The rest are in the 80 to 119 range, which once again brings me back to consistent but not superstar scores.


Brad Ebert was a tackling machine in 2014

The Power has a tough run to start the year with Fremantle, Sydney, North, Hawthorn and Adelaide in their first five weeks. This does hint to potentially some tough games and low scores. I don’t see Brad having poor scoring games, but he won’t be a monster either.

In those contests at those grounds last year he scored 108, 100, 91, 115 and 112.5. Given his consistency too, he isn’t a guy that you would look at to buy low and sell high, if anything he would be a late year upgrade from a mid pricer/rookie when you are seriously strapped for cash.

I see Ebert staying in the range of 97 to 103, he won’t be within the top eight scorers for the midfield for the season, but he will be very consistent for you and is a safe bet. He is a Fantasy scorer and if you start with him you pretty much have to end with him. However, this is the one reason that you may be concerned about picking Ebert early on; he may not be a high scorer that will get you over the line in your weekly match. I don’t think this is a big enough reason to disregard him, but just make sure you have some of the big scoring guns of the league in your team.

Over the next few weeks I will look at a few more of our players and also the Fantasy focus of our pre-season games. You can find me on twitter @pkd73 and weekly throughout the season here on the PAFC website and also at www.dreamteamtalk.com 

Brad Ebert AFL Fantasy vital stats
2015 AFL Fantasy Price: $560,000
2014 Average: 98.9
2014 Games Played: 22
My Predicted Average: 102