Ashcroft Tops the Lot as GWS Flood Round 18
Will Ashcroft led every player in the competition this round, but it was the Giants who owned the graphic with five names. Here's the story behind the selection.
Round 18's team has a clear owner. GWS pushed five players into the side — more than any other club this round, a spread across the ground that no one else got close to. When one club stacks the graphic like that, it tells you where the round's weight sat.
Nine clubs share the other slots, 18 in all across the 18 positions. But the shape of it is Giants first, and everyone else filling in around them.
Will Ashcroft was the best of them. On the engine's read of how much each player drove their side, no one in the competition topped him this round.
Behind him came a Fremantle pair — Shai Bolton and Josh Treacy — the next best of the lot. But this was Ashcroft's round at the top, clear of the field.
Here's the beauty of Round 18: the top of the round was so deep that seven players had games big enough to make the on-field side most weeks, and still got squeezed out. That's not a snub. That's a stacked round.
And Brisbane are the story inside the story. Three of those seven unlucky omissions were Lions — Zac Bailey and Kai Lohmann among them — more selection-worthy games than any side could hold across a capped set of positions. Add Ashcroft at the very top and Brisbane had a day too good to fit on one graphic.
The other stiff ones to miss: Taylor Walker at Adelaide and Melbourne's Tom Sparrow, both good enough to walk in on a quieter week.
That's the round's best on the engine's read — Ashcroft out front, the Giants five deep, Brisbane spilling over the edges. The bolters and the unlucky ones are yours to argue.
That is the round's best on the engine's numbers, one per position. The bolters and the unlucky omissions are yours to argue.