WITH the AFL season less than one month away, some of us are madly scrambling to put together our AFL Fantasy teams.

For most, we might as well not even bother, but at least we have fun.

portadelaidefc.com.au wants to help and has taken a look at some of our club’s best bets to help you at least get close.

Today we start with our ruckmen.

The absolute lock:

Scott Lycett ($559,000) is likely to be Port Adelaide’s go-to ruckman in 2019. The 2018 premiership player crossed from West Coast to his boyhood club as a free agent and will team up with Paddy Ryder, rotating between ruck and the forward line. He played all 25 matches for the Eagles in their run to the flag, proving his versatility.

Lycett averaged 20.1 hit-outs in 2018 to go with 12.5 disposals and 2.8 marks. His 2018 AFL Fantasy average is 77 points, ranking him 10th in the competition overall and he’ll be looking to improve on that with the Power.

The 26-year-old has shown he can score and score well, including cracking the 100-point mark in back to back games in rounds 20 and 21 last year. The second performance was a career-high 40 hit-out, 19-disposal game against the Power, which scored him a season-high 114 points.

The other lock:

Paddy Ryder ($543,000) didn’t have a stand-out 2018 by his lofty standards but still averaged 74.8 AFL Fantasy points. His total of 1197 points in 16 games in which he was hampered by injury has him ranked 15th in the AFL’s ruck department.

If you consider Ryder scored a total of 2009 AFL Fantasy points at an average of 91.3 per game, and played all 22 games in 2017, he represents good value.

Effectively he costs $7,300 per point, the same as Port Adelaide’s best scorer Justin Westhoff.

Ryder is also likely to hit the scoreboard more often in 2019 because he is expected to play up forward more often, sharing the ruck duties with Lycett.

The roughy:

Justin Westhoff ($740,000) was Port Adelaide’s best scorer in AFL Fantasy in 2018 and the 13th best in the competition overall. He averaged 101.9 points per game, making him the only Power player to average over 100 points. For that reason, he is also the club’s most expensive player at $740,000.

Westhoff played every game in 2019 and is rated highly in AFL Fantasy circles because of his versatility.

While he is unlikely to feature much in the ruck given the arrival of Lycett at the Power, he is considered a ruck/forward in AFL Fantasy and ranked third in the competition for ruckmen in 2018 behind Collingwood’s Brodie Grundy and Melbourne’s Max Gawn, esteemed company considering they were both named All-Australian. 

Given Westhoff has the ability to pick up possessions and marks across the ground, and bob up for a goal or two each game, he could be worth a punt in the ruck department.