Are the days of highly paid ruckmen numbered?

SHOULD clubs invest heavily in their ruckmen from a financial perspective?

That was the question asked by Kane Cornes following Melbourne’s decision to drop recruit Brodie Grundy to the VFL.

The Demons along with Fremantle are two teams that have invested heavily in their ruck stocks, but both sides have dropped off from where they were at this time last season.

Given four of the top five sides don’t invest heavily in ruckmen, with Collingwood, Port Adelaide, Brisbane and Geelong choosing to spend their salary cap elsewhere, Cornes said he doesn’t believe having a dominant ruckman is vital to winning.

He discussed the plight of the position and its value with David King on SEN Breakfast.

Cornes: “Are you going to go and pluck a second ruck from another club like Richmond have done with [Toby] Nankervis?

“Clubs have done in the past with many others, going a more Moneyball style with your ruck more so than investing heavily like Fremantle and Melbourne have done.”

King: “I think teams have stumbled across the elite ruckmen of the comp, stumbled across them.

“They’ve been rookie selections or it certainly deep in the draft.

“I’m a little bit with you in terms of how you acquire them.

“Max Gawn was pick 34, you’re almost getting to that speculative range.

“I think anything north of [pick] 30 there’s high risk and just the level of speculation gets more as you go.

“Aaron Sandilands was a rookie.

“Dean Cox was a rookie, so you can find them anywhere.

“I think we’ve gone to basketball a little bit to try and find some failed basketballers that want to come back and play our game.”

Cornes: “[Luke] Jackson was a high pick, he’s on big money on a seven-year deal and Fremantle gave up a lot to get him.

“Particularly because there was a future first [round pick] and where they sit now looks worse than perhaps when they first did the deal.

“You look at premiership-winning teams and the rucks that have controlled that space.

“They haven’t been your All-Australian highly paid ones.

“There’s a couple of outliers, but for the last 23 years, mostly they’re your battling ruckmen that have come from other clubs or off the rookie list or haven’t cost you a whole lot.

“I guess the good model now is what Collingwood would have done with [Darcy] Cameron and they invest their money elsewhere.”

King: “Is there a school of thought that you can’t get hammered in the ruck?”

Cornes: “You’ve got to compete, 100 per cent, you have to have a ruck.

“There has to be someone in there that can compete and break even.

“But in terms of winning hitouts or dominating around the ground, I don’t know if that equates to success.”

King: “You’ve got Tim English in your All-Australian team?”

Cornes: “English is a good point, they’ve dominated clearance, but that hasn’t equated to scores from clearance or wins.”

Apart from Max Gawn, recent premiership ruckmen include Toby Nankervis [2017, 2019, 2020], Rhys Stanley [2022], Scott Lycett [2018] and Jordan Roughead [2016].

– LACHLAN GELEIT/ SEN