Joel Hamling is an example of the Levi Greenwood dilemma HPN faced last year, whereby a valuation on 3 years of output results in an unexpectedly low worth for a recently emergent player. Greenwood was traded to Collingwood the first year after he became a regular senior player at North Melbourne. That limited track record meant the HPN formula valued him cheaply.
In Hamling’s case he sat unused on Geelong’s list for two seasons before playing 23 games for the premiership-winning Bulldogs this year. The question is – will he sustain the newly increased level of output or sit outside the best 22?
If HPN assumed that this season was a sign of things to come, and applied a 22-game-a-year assumption to Hamling, he would instead be worth pick 6:
HPN doesn’t think that it is appropriate that Hamling should be rated this highly by either party off one year’s fine work, and the completed trade seems to back that up.
While he had a great year in 2016, there must be reasons Geelong delisted him, and a 1-season track record just doesn’t give the same confidence as a longer period of this level of output. If nothing else, he could turn out to be injury-prone or regress to a lower level of effectiveness. The trade values him pretty similarly to where we do:
The fairness of this trade depends on how we view the risk of Hamling faiing to live up to his 2016 performance. The Bulldogs are receiving slight nominal but probably not real overs for Hamling, but it’s hard to truly predict this one.
Verdict: A pretty fairly balanced trade between both sides for a player who has yet to fully prove his worth.