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Mabior Chol gets the award for the first player movement of the offseason. As an unrestricted free agent, he departed Tigerland for the Gold Coast Suns. But is it a fantasy footy relevant move?
Embed from Getty ImagesCareer High SuperCoach Score: 113 vs Brisbane (2021)
Career High SuperCoach Average: 67.5 (2021)
Career High AFLFantasy Score: 106 vs St Kilda (2019)
Career High AFLFantasy Average: 60.5 (2021)
Impact on New Club
Injuries are an ever-present reality in all sports, but the Suns ‘talls’ brigade were smashed with injuries this year. As a result, it left them using players like Caleb Graham and Chris Burgess playing #1 ruck duties.
The addition of Mabior Chol instantly brings needed support and positional versatility. Despite only playing 30 AFL games, Mabior has shown he’s a more than capable option that’s capable of playing through the ruck in addition to being a marking presence up forward.
I forecast the Suns to use him as a key forward support to Ben King, who can then also play a relief ruck role for 5-6 minutes per quarter. Athletically he’s shown he can do things that most ‘big men’ cannot do, so the Suns will be looking to expose opposition with that.
Impact on Old Club
Thirty games over the past four seasons say it all for Choil and what his future would be like if he remained at Richmond. As much as the club would love to have him as an insurance policy for their tall forwards and rucks, he’d only ever be just that—an insurance policy for if and when injuries hit.
His departure and Callum Coleman-Jones do potentially open Richmond for the weakness of depths of some talls. However, Richmond still has some very useful stocks. Noah Balta missed the majority of the season and walks straight back into the best 22. Similarly, Ivan Soldo should be back from an ACL. The next level down of talls is: Ryan Garthwaite, Mate Colina and Ben Miller.
Ultimately, the impact for the Tigers will centre on this, do they play Toby Nakervis as a solo ruckman, or will they use two? Don’t be surprised to see the Tigers use atleast one of their draft picks on further bolstering the talls stocks.
Fantasy Summary
He’s shown glimpses in several games that Chol could be a really good player. It translated to some solid fantasy scores this season. In round 12 against the Bombers, he scored 97 in AFLFantasy and 93 in SuperCoach. A month later, he followed these scores up with a 78 in AFLFantasy and 98 in SuperCoach against his new team Gold Coast.
His game against the Lions in 18 certainly is eye-catching from a SuperCoach perspective. He kicked four goals in that match and delivered a personal best score of 113.
Like with any tall, he’ll have some games where his scoring pops and others where he barely registers on the radar. Given his price point for salary cap formats will be in the low to mid 60’s (depending on the format you play), I don’t see enough scoring volume increases to make him a worthwhile option.
The drafting formats of the game is probably the only place I’d consider him, and given he’ll likely have R/F status it might be a handy squad flexibility addition as a later round selection.
