With the news of Tom Trbojevic gone for a month, I asked myself how does this effect the long necked school captain as he’s currently one of only 3 halves averaging more than 56. My first thought would be this likely negatively impacts him as Manly become less potent attacking wise and will be starting sets deeper without Turbo’s kick returns. However, Daly’s career average is in fact more than 6 points better without Tom. I’d assume this likely comes through an increase in receipts without your star Fullback demanding touches. Let’s dig into the stats and see if Daly could potentially be a better pre-origin buy than King Cleary.
From 2018 until now Cherry played 28 games (at least 60 minutes) without Turbo for an impressive average of 61.1 (adjusted for new scoring). With this attacking weapon in his side, DCE has played 60 games since 2018 for an average of 54.5. We don’t have a particularly large sample of 2018 with DCE only playing 2 games without Turbo but let’s compare each year from 2019 to 2021 before jumping into where the differences come from.
| Average by year | with Turbo | without Turbo |
| 2019 | 53.0 (12 games) | 56.4 (6 games) |
| 2020 | 53.5 (7 games) | 59.7 (13 games) |
| 2021 | 66.7 (15 games) | 68.3 (7 games) |
We can see a noticeable uptick in Daly’s points whenever Turbo is not in the team with the smallest difference coming last year. This isn’t overly surprising given the PVL ball rules super charging Tom’s attack last year which translated into increased attacking stats for DCE with sharp increases in tries, try assists and linebreaks offsetting a big chunk of the extra work Daly picks up in Turbo’s absence. Now that we’ve established a pattern, where does DCE earn these extra points and can he potentially improve on what’s already been a great start to his 2022 fantasy season with him yet to post a score under 60.
| Stat | without Turbo (19-21) | ’22 thus far |
| Tries | 30% | 25% |
| Try Assist | 100% | 25% |
| Linebreak | 40% | 25% |
| LBA | 70% | – |
| Tkle Bust | 3.4 | 3.5 |
| Tackles | 20.5 | 21.8 |
| Offloads | 1.1 | 1.5 |
| Run Mtrs | 80 | 83 |
| Kick Mtrs | 396 | 459 |
| 40/20 | 10% | 25% |
| Kick Defusal | 30% | 25% |
| FDO’s | 0.7 | 1.8 |
| TO Tkl | 25% | 25% |
| Negatives | -7 | -6.5 |
| Total | 60.1 | 64 |
As you can see the majority of these Turbo-less stats are very similar to what Cherry has been able to produce so far this year. The noticeable difference is the sharp increase in attacking play and try involvements with his try assist’s increasing dramatically as well as his linebreak assist’s, which he’s yet to record any this season. I don’t think this will come as a shock to anyone who’s watched a Manly game in the past 2 years but Turbo is obviously heavily involved in their attack sweeping around the back creating a numbers advantage which he’s exploited to devastating effect. Now obviously whoever has replaced Turbo in the past and will over the next month isn’t at the same standard. This change likely also comes with a change in attacking structure that requires DCE to being more hands on in attacking position.
Cherry has been scoring remarkably consistently so far this year in ways that are fairly sustainable for him. With added attacking responsibility it’s plausible we see him tickling the under side of a 70 average over the next 4 weeks but at worst I think he’s able to maintain this level scoring leading into Origin.
-Ryan
Amateurs Fantasy Sports 