Pat Carrigan (MID): BRISBANE BRONCOS

Origin hero takes next step?

With Carrigan coming off a career filled with (more or less) everything a player could dream of in Rugby League, you would be forgiven for thinking he was an elite fantasy option.

BRISBANE BRONCOS

COMING SOON

In reality, Carrigan is a great player with a high base and a fantastic ability to pump out big minutes. Unfortunately, his downside is that his negatives are still a bit higher than you would like, and he also lacks a little in what I would call “base attack” – being tackle busts and offloads mostly.

He definitely took a step forward in 2022, moving from 49 in 61 mins in 2021 up to 53 in 63 mins in 2022, which is an improvement 0.04PPM (roughly 3 extra points in an 80 min game on average). That might not sound like much, but its enough to push a player from “non keeper” to “keeper”.

In this new year though, we need to look at whether there is further room for improvement. With no tries in his 45+ min starts to date, thats the obvious area for a few spike weeks. He does definitely present some value as a baseline, starting the year priced a tick under 50.

Unfortunately, due to Carrigans success, he will no doubt be a fixture for Origin 2023, and that combined with the very limited amount of upside to start the year pushes him firmly to the “avoid” category for me. This is only enhanced by my comments on the game theory article about the high number of middle forward options.

(M)