Introducing the 2017 Consensus Phantom Draft

Since 2014 HPN has trawled the internet in order to find out which club is meant to pick which player in the upcoming draft, in lieu of our lack of knowledge about junior footy.

This is HPN’s fourth annual attempt at the Consensus Phantom Draft. In most years the method is within the two or three most accurate phantom drafts with respect to the final place that a given player is selected at, however the method becomes increasingly more accurate as the time until draft day narrows.

The method is simple – we have assembled eight draft rankings in order to sort the prospective draftees. We’ll use this to identify which players and clubs there is consensus on, and where the experts disagree. HPN looks at two different measures: the average draft position and the “mode” – the position a player is most .

At the end of the draft, we’ll take a look back and see which phantom drafters have been the most accurate. Last year, Callum Twomey nailed the first round, and Brett Anderson was the most accurate across the whole draft.

The phantom drafts/power rankings we’ve used so far are:

• Bishop/Matt Balmer at Bigfooty and elsewhere
• Josh Elliott and Maddy Friend at The Roar
• Chris Doerre/Knightmare at ESPN
• Footyprophet’s collective power rankings
• Brent Sternberg at The Sideline Report
• Riley Beveridge at Fox Sports
• The Sporting News
• Cal Twomey and Mick Ablett at afl.com.au

We are not re-publishing their work here in full because we don’t want to steal traffic away from these sites, and want them to get fair reward for their hard work. If you want to read the reasons for all the selections made by those writers above, we encourage that you have a read.

We encourage readers to bring new phantoms and power rankings to our attention, especially those at independent websites which we might have missed. Hit us up @hurlingpeople on twitter, via email at hurlingpeoplenow [at] gmail.com or via the comments below.

Here, then, is the first version of the Consensus Phantom Draft:

Pick	Club	Name	Pick	High	Low	Mode
1	Brisbane Lions	Luke Davies-Uniacke	2.0	1	4	2
2	Fremantle	Cameron Rayner	2.1	1	4	1
3	Carlton	Paddy Dow	2.4	1	3	3
4	North Melbourne	Adam Cerra	4.8	2	7	7
5	Fremantle	Jaidyn Stephenson	5.8	4	8	5
6	Collingwood	Andrew Brayshaw	6.6	4	13	5
7	St Kilda	Darcy Fogarty	8.6	4	12	12
8	St Kilda	Nick Coffield	9.0	6	11	9
9	Western Bulldogs	Aaron Naughton	9.1	5	14	6
10	Carlton	Hunter Clark	10.9	8	15	8
11	GWS	Aiden Bonar	12.0	8	23	10
12	Adelaide	Jack Higgins	12.8	7	18	11
13	West Coast	Charlie Constable	15.1	8	20	20
14	Sydney	Jarrod Brander	15.4	6	38	12
15	Brisbane Lions	Nathan Murphy	16.8	11	24	15
16	Western Bulldogs	Oscar Allen	17.0	13	38	13
17	Richmond	Ed Richards	20.4	11	37	19
18	Brisbane	Lochie O'Brien	23.3	14	38	21
19	Gold Coast	Sam Hayes	23.6	10	38	26
20	Richmond	Noah Balta	25.3	6	44	17
21	West Coast	Lachlan Fogarty	29.0	15	49	17
22	Richmond (F/S)	Patrick Naish	29.5	16	41	38
23	Brisbane (Academy)	Connor Ballenden	29.8	18	40	38
24	Geelong	Joel Garner	32.3	16	44	44
25	North Melbourne	Matthew Ling	32.9	22	49	38
26	Geelong	Charlie Spargo	33.1	23	49	38
27	West Coast	Zac Bailey	33.6	19	49	38
28	GWS	Jack Petruccelle	33.9	19	49	38
29	GWS	Gryan Miers	34.9	28	49	28
30	Melbourne	Sam Taylor	35.4	22	49	38
31	Carlton	Tim Kelly	37.4	23	49	38
32	Melbourne	Jordan Houlahan	39.3	23	49	38
33	West Coast	Harrison Petty	39.4	24	49	38
34	Sydney	Charlie Ballard	40.0	29	49	38
35	St Kilda	Dylan Moore	40.3	31	49	38
36	Geelong	Bailey Fritsch	40.4	32	49	38
37	Melbourne	Toby Wooller	40.8	35	49	38
38	West Coast	Brandon Starcevich	41.0	37	49	38
39	Collingwood	Ryley Stoddart	41.1	37	49	38
40	Adelaide	Kane Farrell	41.3	37	49	38