Three Games In, Mraz Out-Ranks Every Key Back in the League

The Rising team's headline act has played three games of league football. Around him, this week's sheet is a study in ceilings being set right now: three outright career bests, a debutant at full-forward, and two players walking their final lap — Joe Richards and Karl Worner both sat on 49 games this round, their last week of eligibility, and both left with statements.

Melbourne placed three of their kids — Tholstrup, Jefferson and Langford — more young talent in one round than any other club. And the sheet is honest where the week ran thin: only five key defenders and ten midfielders under fifty games played this round, so a couple of picks are on the card below their own standard. The team prints what happened, not what flatters.

Noah Mraz, career game three. Not the best young key-defender round — the best key-defender round of anyone in the competition, senior team included. He beat his man, cut off what came his way, laid more tackles than any tall back picked in either side, and finished the game forward to hit the scoreboard.

The only thing that kept him off the senior sheet was the length of his record. Three games is not yet an argument against two-hundred-gamers. It is, on this round's evidence, an argument about what Hawthorn have found.

The pattern in the back half of this sheet is momentum, not novelty. Luke Nankervis backed up last week's career best with the second-best game of his life — back-to-back peaks in his 42nd and 43rd games. Jagga Smith's two biggest games have both come in the last month, and this one made him the clear best of the young midfield. Zeke Uwland finished a whisker short of his own ceiling. Koltyn Tholstrup didn't fall short of his — a career best in game 37, the No.1 pick of the whole young side. These are trajectories bending upward in real time.

Jay Polkinghorne's story needs one sentence: on debut, he produced a game that sat in the top quarter of the whole competition. The engine had no history on him when the round started. The league has one now.

The stiff ones ran deep. Mitch Zadow, four games in, produced the furthest-above-his-own-standard game of the entire young pool — and missed, out-ranked by Richards' farewell surge. Liam Reidy produced a career best and lost the ruck spot anyway, because Nick Bryan produced a bigger one — two young ruck career bests, one jumper. Hugo Hall-Kahan, six games in, finished fifth for four half-back spots. And the graduation watch: Hugo Garcia finished one spot short of the senior side's forward line. He is the first name on this sheet with nothing left to prove on it.

Eighteen names under fifty games, judged on one round. A three-game key back leads it, a debutant follows him, and two forty-nine-gamers walk off it at their peak. The arguments are open.