A new defender for Thurlow price of pick 70

After being unable to persuade Darcy Moore or Tom Langdon to leave Collingwood, and seemingly losing interest or losing the “race” for Taylor Duryea, Sydney decided to focus on “Plan D”.

In this case, Sydney’s Plan D for their stated aim of finding a defender to free up Zak Jones or Callum Mills turns out to have been Jackson Thurlow, who had been told to look for opportunities at other clubs.

Thurlow is a mid sized defender who played 19 games in 2015 before doing his ACL and missing 2016. Since then he managed 10 games in 2017 and 7 games in 2018. However, 2018 turned out to have been the first time he established himself as clearly above replacement level in marginal PAV terms, albeit in relatively few games:Replacement level in mPAV is generally around -0.12 where an average player is about -0.06 and the average game would be 0.00. Thurlow may have showed just enough since returning from his ACL to warrant filling a list spot at the Swans. The trade is a pretty notional one.

There’s no guarantees either Sydney or Geelong would use pick 70 live, and no clear reason why this wasn’t a delisted free agency signing. Pick 70 was Sydney’s 6th selection and worth little in bid matching terms, and moves to become Geelong’s fifth selection.

Verdict: Fair trade.

Note: This post is part of a series of posts using a valuation method called Player Approximate Value (PAV) to evaluate trades for fairness and balance. Elsewhere, you can read much more about the method and theory behind PAV and also about PAPLEY, the projection method used to derive expected future PAVs. This method expresses both picks and players in terms of expected future value allowing them to be compared on this common basis.

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