Dream Team builder: Jonathan Giles

2012 position: ruck
2012 price: $117,800
Bye: round 11

Four reasons to have him in your team

1) Hear that sound? Whistle blowing, steam hissing all over the shop? It's the Giles train pulling into the station. Tickets are cheap and the good news is there is loads of room for everyone. Giles will, after Saturday night's opening NAB Cup salvos at Blacktown, be hands down one of Toyota Dream Team's most selected players this season. He is a ruck, he's basement priced and he looks the goods. All aboard!

2) Giles' Saturday night stats look like this. In the Giants' first round-robin game against the Bulldogs he had seven hit-outs, six touches, two marks, three tackles and kicked a goal. That made him the game's second-highest scorer for GWS with 45 Dream Team points, narrowly behind Rhys Palmer. Backing up against Collingwood a short while later, he topped his side's stats list with another 44 including eight hit-outs, eight disposals and another goal. Before you dismiss those figures as nothing special, remember both games were short-form NAB Cup bouts comprised of two halves of 20 minutes. Double those totals and add a bit for a rough approximation of Giles' potential in a full-length AFL game.

3) The mature-aged star picked off the scrapheap is a familiar trope these days: think Michael Barlow, James Podsiadly, Giles' mate Nick Lower and Geelong ruckman Orren Stephenson, profiled earlier in this series. Giles is 24 and spent four seasons with Port Adelaide without playing a game. He was delisted by the Power at the end of the 2009 season, only to be thrown a footy lifeline when former Port coach Mark Williams took an assistant role at the Giants. The aforementioned names prove that a battle-hardened body coupled with desire often equates to DT gold.

4) The occupational hazard in stacking your team with cheap Greater Western Sydney players is their job security in their first year - and under a famously eccentric coach. But in this respect Giles has better prospects than most. Only four players on the Giants' list stand 200cm or taller. Giles is one. Another is Dean Brogan, the man who kept Giles on the sidelines for several years at Port Adelaide and has now been coaxed out of retirement. The remaining two are Andrew Phillips, who is a rookie, and Tom Downie – a youngster who has only recently trained his focus on footy from basketball.

The downside?

Giles is not immune to rotation, and he could sit out the odd match in the first half of the season as Kevin Sheedy aims to put games into his young list. His age should provide some insurance against the typical rookie fade towards the end of the season. But regardless of how well he performs early on, DT coaches should be wary of viewing him as a long-term option.

Risk rating: Barring a pre-season injury there is very little standing between the Giles train and an express start to the season. One Alan Didak.

Know your footy? Select your Toyota AFL Dream Team to be in the running for more than $86,000 worth of prizes, including a brand new Toyota FJ Cruiser. Get amongst it here: dreamteam.afl.com.au.

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