Derickx is ranked 10th for time on ground percentage at the Swans this year with 84%. That puts him ahead of all our midfielders except McGlynn, McVeigh and KJack, who obviously have resting roles onfield.
It also puts him ahead of guys like Brodie Grundy (75%), Hale (83%), McEvoy (73%), Naitanui (69%), Dean Cox (76%), Tom Hickey (50%), Sandilands (81%), McIntosh (81%) and level with Lobbe (84%).
Ruckmen with a higher TOG than him include Minson, Mumford, Giles, Goldstein, Maric and Longer. Some of the best in the league and one of the brightest young prospects.
What Derickx is doing is playing an energy-conserving style that enables him to maximise his time on ground and let us fit 100 minutes worth of vaguely competitive ruck contests into 22 players more efficiently. He rarely (if ever) jumps, he simply finds the opponent's line, makes body contact, and tries to prevent the other ruckman from getting a clean tap. What he's doing could be called anti-rucking, or ruck-tagging, something like that.
Derickx shouldn't just be judged against a hypothetical better ruckman, but also for the fact that he's letting us get away with only playing one true ruckman. His value to the team is arguably also the midfielder or extra forward he allows us to play by soaking up contests and ruckman time on ground.
Even with Pyke in the team, he might well let us leave Pyke deep as a target for more time than we otherwise could with a less durable ruckman than Derickx.
So with Tommy D and Jake Lloyd we're our Star Wars franchise is pretty much set: Return of the Buddy and the Tandem Menace.
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