Marcus Bontempelli

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Marcus Bontempelli returned to the Bulldogs line up two weeks ago and it was as if he'd never missed a game at all, stepping into the role of instigator of everything good about the team. His fantasy score last week was not as impressive in standard scoring formats, but in Supercoach his ratings are still very much at a premium level. As he builds match fitness this is probably going to be his pattern: a much better Supercoach score due to the quality of his disposals, without consistency of quantity like the 30 he got against the Saints.

Marcus Bontempelli returned to the Bulldogs line up two weeks ago and it was as if he'd never missed a game at all, stepping into the role of instigator of everything good about the team. His fantasy score last week was not as impressive in standard scoring formats, but in Supercoach his ratings are still very much at a premium level. As he builds match fitness this is probably going to be his pattern: a much better Supercoach score due to the quality of his disposals, without consistency of quantity like the 30 he got against the Saints.

Marcus Bontempelli is visibly struggling with groin injury in the latter part of the 2022 campaign, never a scintillating mover but lumbering even more than normal. Despite that problem he has been delivering sensational fantasy scores, and the question for those who don't have him and are yet to finish their forward six on the run home to fantasy finals - do you need to get the Bont into your team? The conservative option is to deathride him and hope he succumbs to a season-ender. Every week he scores big, that strategy looks suboptimal.

Marcus Bontempelli is obviously one of the premier players of the competition, seen on billboards, featuring in ads, leading his team... but it doesn't always translate into premium fantasy scores. He can go missing a bit during games, holding his powder dry for when his talents can be put to best use while accumulators handle the footy in less dangerous areas. He is a quality player who doesn't care all that much about quantity, the sort who is usually a Supercoach special, but he can put up monster scores on the odd occasion when he goes particularly large.

Marcus Bontempelli is obviously the best player at the Western Bulldogs, if not the entire league this season as he is one of the hot favourites for the 2021 Brownlow Medal. As a fantasy player he has underwhelmed at times in previous campaigns, with a tendency to drift out of games and to spend too much time forward and out of the play. No such worries this year as he is almost exclusively in the guts and his floor has been lifted considerably, leading his Dogs to top spot on the ladder if they can bank another four points against the lowly Roos. Fill your boots, Bont!

Marcus Bontempelli looked in the preseason like everything had clicked for him, and in round 1 he continued on his merry way against an admittedly poor and porous Collingwood midfield. He won't always have things as easy as that, but he's very much in the discussion for joining the top eight mids in the competition, especially since new recruit Adam Treloar is being used sparingly on the outside running off a wing to allow Smith to stay central. Five FAs were the only fly in the ointment in his performance, but that should be an outlier for a player reaching the peak of his powers.

Marcus Bontempelli has always been an impressive player, possessing a lot of ineffable qualities of leadership and dedication to his craft. His role at the Western Bulldogs has drifted away from midfield and towards a forward pocket the more his career has progressed, and this year is possibly the first in which fantasy coaches can see some value in him playing that deep role. He is looking more dangerous in front of goal as the rounds go on in 2020, and if he follows the path of Toby Greene he can become a more reliable fantasy asset, especially in draft leagues.

We all want the Bont

Many were disappointed in 2018 when Marcus Bontempelli increased his time spent forward, as it reversed his annual upward progression. In 2019 the Bont bounced back as the move of Toby McLean to half forward was a big help to his CBAs and lowered his rotations in attack, ranking fifth in centre clearances in the league, sixth in metres gained and was the 16th-best fantasy scorer in total points. Within the Kennel, he finished with the most kicks and third-most tackles.
Invested with the added responsibility of being the league's youngest captain, the only query over Bontempelli is his timeshare from centre to attack as he enters his prime. Rarely tagged out of a game thanks to his ability to go forward, Luke Beveridge showed last year he wanted the Bont in the engine room more often so it would take a string of quiet ones under hard tags for that to change. Missing just three games in the last four seasons, he is an early selection without a doubt.

Marcus Bontempelli is the undisputed leader of the Western Bulldogs, and gets the respect of being their best player even if on a game-by-game basis he can be outshone by fellow mids like Jack Macrae and Josh Dunkley. It is his consistency that has prevented him also becoming a fantasy premium, as he can tend to go missing for periods in games and also spend too much time getting cold up forward. He figures as a crucial point of difference option in salary cap leagues on the run to finals, as the Dogs try to silence their mounting chorus of critics.

Marcus Bontempelli has been the undisputed leader of the Bulldogs through their flag run and in the barren years since, never quite reaching the status of a fantasy premium over that time due to a worrisome trend of concentrating more on quality than quantity, not to mention spending too much time in attack getting cold. As the team lifts around him, perhaps this will be the time to get on his back again as he attempts to carry them towards finals once more. Then again, there are already a lot of accumulators at the club.

Bont uncompelling

Advancing his standing in the game throughout his first four seasons, Marcus Bontempelli was unable to continue the rise in 2018. Increasing exposure to the forward line last season, the premiership winner produced a personal best goals per game, whilst reducing his contested possession figures. Having just surpassed the 100-game milestone, the next step in the All-Australian's development is to increase his volume of forward 50 marks, gathering less than one per match.
The Bont’s development hinges on where he is utilised. With Tom Boyd and Josh Schache still struggling for consistency and continuity, along with the retirement of Jack Redpath, Bontempelli is likely to play significant periods forward during 2019. Advanced in his stoppage work, the Bulldog has been less effective as a key forward. Given his fantasy future is heavily correlated to coach Luke Beveridge, it may be wise to wait until the draft rounds reach double digits.

Marcus Bontempelli has had the knock on him through his flag year and beyond that he tends to focus his energies on key moments in the game and not accumulate possessions at less important points, which makes him less valuable to fantasy coaches than his quality suggests. That trend had gotten worse in 2018 as he is now at the stage of being a Supercoach specialist, dropping double digits in basic scoring to below 90s while barely maintaining a SC ton average. He is only useful at this point as a mid-range starter in draft leagues.

Bont's tempo smelly

The usual response by Marcus Bontempelli to tags is to move forward to break them, and he had to do that only a couple of times last season, with Brad Ebert the only one to stick in round 22. The Bont improved both his contested percentage by six points to over 50% and his ratio from 12:13 to 13:10, plus a new personal best in tackles that had him reach the top 20 in the league in that stat.
Perhaps the hype over Bontempelli from 2016 was a little overblown, as his fantasy scoring in exotic formats does not really reflect the respect he is shown in football circles. We are reassessing all the Bulldogs in light of their premiership hangover, and in the Bont we have a player who paces himself too much to reach the top echelons of scorers. He will still go in early rounds, with a reach likely by a hopeful fan.