Amateurs Fantasy Sports

With interest floating around in the GFOTS discord, I thought it would be interesting to have a look at Leo Thompson on the back of his start to the year. With three 50s this year out of his four 4 games and a 0.93 ppm does this warrant a closer look?

30+ min starts	AGE	AVG	PPM	BASE	ATTACK	DEMERITS
2022 (11 games)	22	29.1	0.85	28.4	+4.2	-3.8
2023 (23 games)	23	40.5	0.86	38.6	+6.4	-4.4
2024 (22 games)	24	41.5	0.84	41.1	+6.9	-6.5

2022	30.4 min per game
2023	47.2 min per game
2024	49.2 min per game

The Upside

Examining Leo’s career to date, we can draw some interesting conclusions and observe similar numbers exemplifying a man potentially in his breakout season as the main forward.

Leo entered the fray at the age of 22 mainly playing off the bench with 11 games and establishing himself as a first grader. The minutes then increased into Year 2 and Year 3 as he adjusted with the demands and rigors of first grade with the minutes representative of a player who is a now a key forward in the pack with a good and improved work-rate. He now enters this prime age of 23-25 with the potential to elevate his game even further.

With the injuries in the Newcastle forward pack, there does exist an opportunity for Leo to see an uptick in minutes as seen in the games he has played this year to be the top dog as it were. He is the right age and fits the criteria of a potential forward in his breakout year as we have observed with a bump in his PPM his year.

This may not work every time, but it is absolutely the recipe for success and essentially this is the upside for Leo Thompson. That Newcastle pack aren’t exactly spring chickens either:

• Jacob Saifiti: 28
• Adam Elliott: 30
• Tyson Frizell: 33

Throw into the mix Adam O’Brien needs to win to avoid job pressure and with Leo leaving at years end there’s more incentive to use him while you can than preserve him for the future. There is optimism here with a solid PPM to start his career that he could absolutely have what it takes to be a low 50s pushing mid 50s guy.

Downside:

The concerns I have around Leo Thompson really stem the available minutes in this rotation and whether he can sustain this 2025 ppm.

If you look last year in how AOB used his forwards, the front rowers averaged just below 50 minutes. Daniel & Jacob played 48 minutes and 47 minutes each respectively and Leo Thompson played 49 minutes. It also doesn’t help that AOB utilises two 80 minute edges and his utility playing lock minutes rather than just covering 9.

We would expect the Knights normal projects to look something like this:

Leo would need at least 55 minutes at a 0.93ppm which is a reasonable BMB projection to average 51 and this would be just about 5 points of value. Expanding on this, he really is purely a base stat guy. If you narrow down into his statistics:

In 2023 he ran 88.6 metres on average. This was followed by 103.2 metres per game when you filter to 30+ min games in 2024. Ideally, you’d would at least want him to attain a couple extra points running at an average of 120 metres consistently which would get him into the Max King area (who interestingly seems to have taken a step this year) with an average of 150.6 metres per game.

While Leo can theoretically do this and should be matching this as the main forward, he has not shown to me that he can do this consistently. He will of course get these tackles and the odd offload but when you are buying someone of this prototype, he really has to be great across the board in tackles and run metres.

The argument to buy him really stems on your belief of the BMB Theory (though I’d say he had his break out two years ago) and whether you think he sustains enough minutes. If Jacob Saifiti and Adam Elliott were out longer term, there’s an avenue to 55 minutes and runway from him but you would need everything to go right. While the theory has worked wonders for guys like Naufahu Whyte, Toby Couchman and alike – I question whether this might a 200k more expensive Moale situation.

Conclusion:

Given the above, I would suggest spending another 80k to look at a Max King/Lindsay Smith who have more minute’s upside and a better base. While I understand the logic behind Leo Thompson with mids looking particularly tricky for Rd 12, this feels like a purely sub-optimal bye coverage option who you need everything to go right to be a good hold.

I’d just focus on getting the best non-origin value guns at this stage and worry about bye coverage closer to origin to avoid getting stuck with the Jolliffes, Batemans, Twals of the world like I did because I planned far too early in advance.

If 2024 taught me something is that: A lot can change in the space of one day let alone 6 weeks. It’s almost a fool’s errand to try extensively plan now and picking up less then ideal options over average bye options for the sake of planning. In theory, planning saves us trades but more often than not due to no fault of our own, it’d the reason why we run out of trades.

Game Theory

Age: Good

Durability: Good

Team: Fair

Prototype: Fair

Versatility: Good

Grub Factor: Good

Coach Predictability: Concern

Rotation Predictability: Concern

Fitness: Good

Value/Upside: Concern