Strategy The case for a third tall forward

[BIG MATTY WHITE]

This thread made me really appreciate what matty primus did for this club...

He did much more then we give him credit for

 

[Andre]

I was more talking about afl rawness not position

Isnt that the excuse?

I like impey he does some real good things and can see why we picked him....but at times he has been caught way out of his depth but....I am happy hinkley rolled the dice on him and he will be better for it....

Just roll the dice hinks is all I am asking ...if they fail they fail...

Mitchell I've become resigned to. Once Amon or Flynn has their tank up to speed he'll go out for one of them. They'll provide running, plus speed (Mitchell isn't that fast), plus aren't so contact adverse. Especially Flynn. When we can replace Kornes and Mitchell with fast guys with decent (if not as good as those two) tanks, then it'll be a lot harder to shut down our spread and run.

 

[chiwigi]

As I've said plenty of times on this board, if someone wants to make the argument that the selection of Sam Gray over Butcher in round 4, and the subsequent selections of Gray and Mitchell since was the right decision in 2014 and going forward, I'd love to hear that argument.

Butcher would have been a better selection on so many levels.

The coaches made a bad call.

The best argument is that we won mot of those games.

 

[BIG MATTY WHITE]

Mitchell I've become resigned to. Once Amon or Flynn has their tank up to speed he'll go out for one of them. They'll provide running, plus speed (Mitchell isn't that fast), plus aren't so contact adverse. Especially Flynn. When we can replace Kornes and Mitchell with fast guys with decent (if not as good as those two) tanks, then it'll be a lot harder to shut down our spread and run.

kornes will be replace by the hoon who will be kane 2.0

 

[El_Scorcho]

The best argument is that we won mot of those games.

No, that's the worst argument.

We would have won most of those games anyway. The 22nd picked player in our side was not the driving force behind winning. We'd have won all of the games we won with Butcher in place of Gray or Mitchell, and we'd have won the Essendon and Collingwood games as well. Possibly even the first Sydney game.

 

[Schulzenfest]

The best argument is that we won mot of those games.

Yep, Butcher over Gray in Round 4 certainly would've given Brisbane the extra 114 points they needed to win that game.

Let's say we drop Boak for Cameron Hitchcock next week against Carlton. We'd probably still win. Does that make it the right decision?

 

[chiwigi]

No, that's the worst argument.

We would have won most of those games anyway. The 22nd picked player in our side was not the driving force behind winning. We'd have won all of the games we won with Butcher in place of Gray or Mitchell, and we'd have won the Essendon and Collingwood games as well. Possibly even the first Sydney game.

You can't say that. The only thing that is absolute is that we won them without him.

 

[BIG MATTY WHITE]

Just a wild opinion but

Hombsch should be our 3rd tall....kind of like adam hunter

Only when jackson is in the side

 

[El_Scorcho]

You can't say that. The only thing that is absolute is that we won them without him.

If we can't talk in hypotheticals then we may as well close down the entire forum m80.

We won them without Gary Ablett in our side as well, but i'm pretty sure he'd be a handy inclusion.

Look i'm happy for you to argue individual games if you like. Tell me which games we'd have lost with Butcher in the side ahead of Mitchell or Gray and if you make a compelling argument i'm happy to concede the point.

 

[Forzaport]

Yeah i'll agree that O'Shea replaced Butcher in round 4.

My argument is that the 22nd picked player in the side could have been replaced by Butcher for quite a significant net gain over the course of the season.

Grey or Mitchell (or both) played in rounds 4,5,6,8,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17 and 20. Round 9 was a bye.

If we'd played him all the way through, we wouldn't have had to bring Paul Stewart in as a psuedo KPF in round 18 and 19 as we'd have already had KPF cover.

I couldn't find someone who Butcher should have been selected ahead of in round 7 or 21. Every other round we should have selected him, and I called for his selection in every selection thread in that time.

The best players are what they are and shouldn't necessarily line up with selection, given not everybody in the team plays the same position. Butcher kicked 2 bags of 5 early on and was averaging 3+ goals at SANFL level for something like 13 weeks before his recent dip in form. He was kicking multiple goals and contributing week in week out. I'd love to see to see a graph showing how often someone kicks 5 goals and isn't named in the best. I'd imagine it's not often.

I agree in principle that we should be using our 21st selected player to develop a much needed key forward. I agree that KPP players should be afforded more leeway in their performances given they play a very difficult position. What I don't agree with is that Butcher should be given the equivalent of a gold pass to gain AFL experience when he hasn't earned it. We should be playing Butcher so that he gains AFL experience but it's a 2 way street and for whatever reason, he hasn't done enough to earn that privilege. Butcher was kicking a lot of goals at SANFL level - going on reports from posters here, many of those goals were cheapies from the goal square and he didn't kick many lead-up goals which should be the bread and butter of key position forwards.

I know AFL selection isn't based on whether you're named in the best players at SANFL level but it does give us supporters some idea of who would be in the frame for AFL selection. That Butcher hasn't registered in the best even once and was the only AFL listed player with such a stat was a surprise to me. Outside of his raw numbers and lack of bests, there may be other reasons keeping him out of the AFL team - work-rate, playing to structure, 2nd/3rd efforts, pressure acts and so on. We're effectively running an AFL system in the SANFL, so development wise it appears many of his needs are being met. While it isn't a substitute for AFL experience, I would hazard a guess that Butcher has some very clear performance targets that he would need to meet at SANFL level to even be considered for AFL duties. He's been listed as an emergency only twice since the Brisbane game so that would seem to indicate that he hasn't quite met those performance targets all year.

 

[chiwigi]

If we can't talk in hypotheticals then we may as well close down the entire forum m80.

We won them without Gary Ablett in our side as well, but i'm pretty sure he'd be a handy inclusion.

Look i'm happy for you to argue individual games if you like. Tell me which games we'd have lost with Butcher in the side ahead of Mitchell or Gray and if you make a compelling argument i'm happy to concede the point.

Talk in hypotheticals when there is no other evidence to the contrary by all means. The game we have lost are fair game for that, but when the aim is to win a game of football and select the correct side to do so has been successful, its a bit of a dead end debate wise.

And for the record, I believe we have desperately needed another tall the pbast few weeks as we lost our run and had no one to aim for far too often.

 

[El_Scorcho]

I agree in principle that we should be using our 21st selected player to develop a much needed key forward. I agree that KPP players should be afforded more leeway in their performances given they play a very difficult position. What I don't agree with is that Butcher should be given the equivalent of a gold pass to gain AFL experience when he hasn't earned it. We should be playing Butcher so that he gains AFL experience but it's a 2 way street and for whatever reason, he hasn't done enough to earn that privilege. Butcher was kicking a lot of goals at SANFL level - going on reports from posters here, many of those goals were cheapies from the goal square and he didn't kick many lead-up goals which should be the bread and butter of key position forwards.

We're getting closer to agreeing here. The only things I really disagree with were that a gold pass was required to continue to pick him at AFL level after round 3. He should never have been dropped. He then kicked 2 bags of 5 in 3 weeks, but stayed out, which made it almost impossible for the selectors to pick him again on statistical performance because if 10 goals in 3 weeks isn't enough, what is?

I totally agree that there is something about him that has stopped him from getting selected by the coaches. My argument is basically that they haven't made the right decision on that one, all things considered.

Also I really dislike the "oh but he only kicked cheapies from the goalsquare" argument.

a) 6 points are 6 points
b) I'm advocating for him to have replaced Sam Gray on the basis that he is taller. I don't care if he's not Jay Schulz on the lead and set shot. All we have needed this year is someone who can compete in the air. If he breaks even in the air and competes like a small forward and kicks small forward cheapies when the ball hits the ground, great!

I know AFL selection isn't based on whether you're named in the best players at SANFL level but it does give us supporters some idea of who would be in the frame for AFL selection. That Butcher hasn't registered in the best even once and was the only AFL listed player with such a stat was a surprise to me. Outside of his raw numbers and lack of bests, there may be other reasons keeping him out of the AFL team - work-rate, playing to structure, 2nd/3rd efforts, pressure acts and so on. We're effectively running an AFL system in the SANFL, so development wise it appears many of his needs are being met. While it isn't a substitute for AFL experience, I would hazard a guess that Butcher has some very clear performance targets that he would need to meet at SANFL level to even be considered for AFL duties. He's been listed as an emergency only twice since the Brisbane game so that would seem to indicate that he hasn't quite met those performance targets all year.

It surprised me as well, because he's been much, much better than Harvey in every game i've seen them both play (which admittedly is not every game). I'm pretty shocked he didn't get in the bests with either of his bags of 5 or any of the subsequent bags of 3, and it pretty clearly shows that they aren't going to give him anything cheaply. Maybe they feel tough love and having a higher expectation of him is what will drive him to succeed, but as I said earlier, I can't think of too many times an SANFL player would kick 5 goals and be left out of the bests.

Talk in hypotheticals when there is no other evidence to the contrary by all means. The game we have lost are fair game for that, but when the aim is to win a game of football and select the correct side to do so has been successful, its a bit of a dead end debate wise.

And for the record, I believe we have desperately needed another tall the pbast few weeks as we lost our run and had no one to aim for far too often.

Well no, the aim is to win a football premiership. Yes, we picked sides that won a lot of games early in the season, but then our game plan got figured out, as you say, we lost our run, and now the wins have been few and far between.

We could have played Butcher in every game this season, and if we want to go absolute worst case scenario, maybe we lose the West Coast and Hawthorn games because Butcher is an enormous negative impact. I picked them because they were our narrowest wins during our unstoppable run (although both by more than 2 goals, and his height would have stopped MacKenzie from having a day out against us at Subi and stretched a very undermanned Hawks defence, so again i'm going to argue that he would have helped, not hindered).

However, by persisting with him, we'd have certainly won the Essendon game (which was decided by poor kicking at the death, but Essendon were only even in the same ballpark over 4 quarters because we had lost our two KPDs, not replaced them and were unbelievably short) and most likely the Collingwood game as well.

It's all hypothetical but ultimately, as i've argued throughout this and plenty of other threads, the miniscule, debatable gains we made in performance by not playing him simply haven't been worth the structural and KPF development losses.

 

[Macca19]

It surprised me as well, because he's been much, much better than Harvey in every game i've seen them both play (which admittedly is not every game). I'm pretty shocked he didn't get in the bests with either of his bags of 5 or any of the subsequent bags of 3, and it pretty clearly shows that they aren't going to give him anything cheaply. Maybe they feel tough love and having a higher expectation of him is what will drive him to succeed, but as I said earlier, I can't think of too many times an SANFL player would kick 5 goals and be left out of the bests.

I saw 2 of his 5 goal games live and my comments were:

vs Glenelg:
Butcher - Kicked 5, including 3 late, but I just don't know. Im convinced he doesn't know how to judge the ball coming in on a lead. This was a light bulb above the head moment for me as it clicked that the reason you never see him take many grabs anymore is because he over-leads too much. Cant judge the ball, is forced to double back and try and run onto it instead. We've all commented on that in his AFL games over the last 12 months and I reckon that happened 15 times today. So either everyone he plays with all the time cant kick to the lead, or hes going out too fast and working himself into a poor position. He basically kicked 5 goals as a 197cm small forward today. He probably kicked the best two goals of the day - one a 60m drop punt that sailed in with the wind, the other a great effort where we had a clear forward line with him chasing his opponent heading back towards goal, he jumped on him in the tackle, got the ball free, got back up and dribbled it through for goal of the day. He was ok, and his stats were good, but im not sure we need a 197cm version of Hitchcock.

vs North:
And then theres Butch. 3 goals early - all from handballs over the top kicking them from a metre out. He contested really well and took some super contested marks. But geez his kicking was a shocker today. Kicked two great goals in the last quarter to put the game away but he had probably 4 or 5 shots in the middle two quarters for 2 behinds and 2-3 out on the fulls. With the crowd giving him a ridiculous amount of s**t every time he went near the ball, I reckon it effected him today.

He probably could have got in against North in the best players, but he should have ended up with 7 or 8 goals instead of 5.2.3

 

[Jason K]

Just a wild opinion but

Hombsch should be our 3rd tall....kind of like adam hunter

Only when jackson is in the side

Please, please, never compare Jack to Adam Hunter again.

 

[Jason K]

This was a light bulb above the head moment for me as it clicked that the reason you never see him take many grabs anymore is because he over-leads too much. Cant judge the ball, is forced to double back and try and run onto it instead. We've all commented on that in his AFL games over the last 12 months and I reckon that happened 15 times today. So either everyone he plays with all the time cant kick to the lead, or hes going out too fast and working himself into a poor position.

Barry Hall and Cameron Mooney talked about this same thing happening with the young Western Bulldogs fwds and reckon they struggled with timing and knowing exactly where they should lead until they were between 24 and 26.

Butch can lead and mark, we've seen him do it, just not much lately

 

[edgie]

Bump.

The Butcher thread is in full swing lately, and opinions are being expressed everywhere. Some posting in that thread has bordered over to topics more suited to this particular thread, I was about to post there myself, regarding players that show less than Butch who are being given games and backed in.

(If it is relevant, it was going to be how St Kilda have 2 competent forwards - Roo and Bruce, plus a resting ruck, yet are selecting Membrey nonetheless)

The time for this thread to be revived has come. Whether it is Butch, Harvey, or even Ryder when he returns, our forwardline has looked a shambles this year, and we don't have a 10-1 record to hide it or defend our structures.

 

[BIG MATTY WHITE]

I wouldnt mind swinging a backmen up forward....

Hombsch trengove take your pick .....take westhoff out let him rome...

As an extra sidenot.... keep kraks playing fwd of centre he made things happen

 

[edgie]

Hombsch is not a forward and never should be.

 

[ozph1870]

I wouldnt mind swinging a backmen up forward....

Hombsch trengove take your pick .....take westhoff out let him rome...

As an extra sidenot.... keep kraks playing fwd of centre he made things happen

westhoff has been roaming around aimlessly all year, always plays his best footy when he is a key target up forward, i would like to see the hoff play solely up forward.

 

[edgie]

westhoff has been roaming around aimlessly all year, always plays his best footy when he is a key target up forward, i would like to see the hoff play solely up forward.

I don't think solely up forward is a good idea, he showed during the Primus years, during Schulz's injury absences, he doesn't have what it takes to be a number 1 full time target at FF. He should at least be spending 2/3 of his time as a forward though, with the rest as loose back. Midfield time should be an absolute minimum.

 

[ozph1870]

I don't think solely up forward is a good idea, he showed during the Primus years, during Schulz's injury absences, he doesn't have what it takes to be a number 1 full time target at FF. He should at least be spending 2/3 of his time as a forward though, with the rest as loose back. Midfield time should be an absolute minimum.

knowing the way port panic at every chance he will always go back behind the ball, just think he is a tough match up for opposition teams up forward. he is at his best when he hits the scoreboard.

 

[ozph1870]

I don't think solely up forward is a good idea, he showed during the Primus years, during Schulz's injury absences, he doesn't have what it takes to be a number 1 full time target at FF. He should at least be spending 2/3 of his time as a forward though, with the rest as loose back. Midfield time should be an absolute minimum.

during the primus years we could have had tim evans, scott hodges, plugger and dunstall up forward and still struggled to kick a decent score with the way they moved the ball back then.

 

[edgie]

during the primus years we could have had tim evans, scott hodges, plugger and dunstall up forward and still struggled to kick a decent score with the way they moved the ball back then.

Our forward line and structure was ok, Primus was trying to move away from Choco's midget days and weird KPF decoy, the trouble was the ball was very rarely going forward in the first place.

 

[Power Raid]

westhoff has been roaming around aimlessly all year, always plays his best footy when he is a key target up forward, i would like to see the hoff play solely up forward.

May be roaming around with a water bottle in hand would have been more productive.

 

[JimmyBeerCans]

Trengove can play forward for stints although his kicking would be an issue but he has shown before he knows how to contest as a forward, Hombsch on the other hand is not a forwards arsehole and should never play there again... wonderful backman leave it alone.