AFL Fantasy is back for another season, and the team at Footy Prophet will again be supplying NMFC.com.au with premium fantasy analysis and tips for the 2015 season.

When it comes to building your AFL Fantasy Classic team of 2015, you won’t find many players with as much value as North’s skipper Andrew Swallow.

Over the past three years while serving as captain, Swallow when fit has been able to provide a great deal of bang for your fantasy buck.

A lot of players are hindered by the captaincy, seeing their scores slide backward when they take on the role, at least initially. We’ve seen it happen to big names like Trent Cotchin, Marc Murphy and Scott Pendlebury in recent years.

Swallow bucked the trend. After three years of consistent footy beginning in 2009, he was named North’s captain replacing Brent Harvey ahead of the 2012 season. It spurred him onward to take the next step in his fantasy progression, pushing his average past the 100 point mark for the first time.

That year he led the AFL for tackles and showed his fantasy prowess with some huge scores. The best of the bunch was massive 160 that included a phenomenal 17 tackles – just two off the all-time record of 19, set by Jude Bolton.

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There are few better ways to score in the fantasy game than through tackles. Just ask Tom Rockliff, this year’s most expensive player, who led the AFL in tackles last year averaging more than nine per game.

Swallow started 2013 in even better form, averaging 126 points per game from his first three appearances and was leading the Brownlow count early in that year’s count.

However, fate had other plans. In North’s round 18 game against Melbourne the skipper was running with the ball in clear space when he was suddenly stuck down and had to come off the ground.

While North had a massive 122-point win that day, the club had lost the skipper for the rest of the year, and some of the next.

After 106 consecutive games it was almost surreal to see North run out on the field without Swallow in the side. After missing the end of the 2013 season and the first seven matches of 2014, he was finally able to make his return last year against the Lions.

Regaining fitness in his first two appearances, Swallow returned to some good fantasy form against West Coast in round 11 with a score of 102, and backed it up against Richmond the next week with 111.

His best performance for the year was a 129-point effort against the Bulldogs in Round 21 in which he had 29 disposals and laid 11 tackles.

Swallow finished the year with an average of 89.7 points per game, his lowest since 2008.

Statistically, the major differences between his career-best 2012 season and his injury-affected 2014 were decreases in his possession counts, mostly through having less uncontested possessions, and in tackles.

Coming into the season mid-way after a long injury was not an ideal return for Swallow, but in 2015 he will have the benefit of a full-preseason to properly prepare him.

A conservative estimate would be that an improved fitness base should help him return to his old form and push back towards his 2012 numbers.

However, the real value with Swallow is the potential he has to push past his previous efforts and produce a new set of career-best numbers.

He showed signs in 2012 and 2013 that he was capable of being in the upper bracket of elite fantasy midfielders, and though his achilles injury delayed his progression, it is by no means too late.

Brad Scott said of Swallow, when he last week signed a three-year contract extension, that he thought the skipper would play the best football of his career over the next few years. That may well be true in fantasy stakes as well.

At a price tag of $508,000 in AFL Fantasy Classic, Swallow is priced around the same mark as the likes of Matt Rosa, Matthew Stokes, Hamish Hartlett and David Armitage.

The major difference between him and the others at the mark is that he has produced a 100+ season before, and we know that, given a full pre-season, he is a very good chance to do so again.

Throw in the fact that he has the potential to improve further, and he is hard to turn down. The best is yet to come.