Overlooked in his original draft years, Nic Newman started to carve out the beginnings of a career at the Swans, but his time in Sydney has come to an end.
Originally a mature age draftee from the Frankston VFL side, Newman featured regularly for a solid Sydney defence over the last two years without standing out. He played most games in 2017, but only injuries to Mills and McVeigh opened the way to regular senior football in 2018.
Carlton, desperately needing as many AFL level players as they can get, pounced. This could easily have been a delisted free agency or pre-season draft move, but the trade was done late, after Carlton became sure about other moves that were happening.
Newman is a fair chance at outperforming his projection at Carlton as long as the Blues are struggling – he should be able to get regular games and contribute. Carlton will hope that he can begin to run through the middle more, and provide some drive into attack. Sydney will hope Newman doesn’t help Carlton climb the ladder in 2019.
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.