10 Bold Predictions for this AFL Season
By Brent Ford
Luke Dunstan will Win the Rising Star Award
This kid is going to be a star of the game, was severely underrated when he slipped to number #18 in the 2013 Draft. He was one of the stars of South Australia’s 2013 State Championship winning team, being awarded South Australia’s Most Valuable Player for the tournament. t’s quite hard to believe that Dunstan is 19 years old, his body shape is that of a much older player. This allows Dunstan to be a strong contested midfielder with the skills to match, to add to his repertoire he can also kick goals.
Another thing that helps his cause is he will see plenty of game time in a struggling St. Kilda midfield that will be missing some quality players. In fact I would almost expect him to be nominated in Round 1 if he shows a strong performance.
St.Kilda’s midfield for the first game against Melbourne will be missing Jack Steven (foot), Lenny Hayes (suspension), Maverick Weller (suspension) and Leigh Montagna (suspension). It could be a rough debut, but Dunstan has already shown in the NAB challenge games he is more than up to the task.
Sydney Swans will Struggle with ‘Bondi Buddy’
Well done I say to the Swans for being able to accommodate enough cap space to steal one of their main nemesis from the past few seasons, but it is quite possible that Franklin could become the Swans kryptonite.
For starters the SCG isn’t the world’s biggest ground and having Reid, Tippett, Franklin and Goodes in the same starting forward line is going to cause some super headaches for Coach John Longmire.
There isn’t enough speed in that forward line to have the ability to stop fast defenders on the rebound, it just becomes way too clustered in there and on a small oval like the SCG it is going to hurt the Swans.
Franklin also likes to take chest marks which makes it easy for his opponent to spoil him. The Swans don’t move the ball as clinically as the Hawks so expect to see some games where Franklin struggles to get some touch.
On top of this Franklin’s off field misdemeanours are well known to all that follow AFL, his off field antics would want to fix themselves or we could see some in house problems at the Swans in 2014.