Rockliff's possessions

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Elixuh said:
If he played in Melbourne and was dishing it out to experienced A graders he would be praised. The fact that he's often giving it off to inexperienced kids and that the team overall isn't doing well means that people think he must be having no impact with such immense numbers.
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I think its probably fair to expect his numbers to drop a little next season with the players we have coming back, but I think he will look a lot more damaging as a result. I'f he is still getting 40 touches a game next year with rich and redden back someone else won't be pulling their weight.
 
After much discussion (night shift) I can sort of see what people mean re Rocky's humungas disposals number yesterday.
He had 6 clearences and 2 inside fifties which isn't great for a midfielder.He does a lot of get and go's and in and under bullocking.Great player who deserves an AA jumper....
 
Dylan12 said:
You can't knock a lot about Zorko's game, because he is one of only a few genuine line breakers we have, however his disposal does let him down a fair bit. Improve that over the off-season and he will be amazing. You can't fault his attitude and ability to get better each year, but if he can temper how hard he disposes of it, then he'll go to another level.
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I know this is a Rockliff thread, but I agree on this wholeheartedly. His effort is fantastic, but I've noticed in the last few weeks especially he as the bad habit of handballing to teammates feet when he gets a bit of pressure. I think at times he just needs to slow down a bit.

On this thread, few things annoy me more than dismissive definitives e.g. "Rocky is a gun. End of discussion". The OP raised a very valid discussion point and some (thankfully a small minority) just want to shoot down sensible discussion.

Rockliff doesn't have the natural flair or athleticism of some, but it's hard to argue he's getting empty stats - they usually seem to have purpose. My impression is that his stats aren't padded by 1-2 handballs as much as some (and if he shaved his head he'd probably get noticed a bit more). He is a tireless worker and the fact he leads the comp in average disposals and tackles is seriously something I can't recall seeing.
 

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It's almost unfair that Gary Ablett Jnr. has set an entirely new bar for individual performance in a losing team, such that if a player of Rocky's caliber gets 45 mostly effective touches and lays 8 tackles in a 10 goal loss, the commentators have a tendency downplay the quality of the performance because he didn't also go forward and kick 3 goals and generally dominate a game in a Ablett-esque display.

That being said, I think his day against Freo was just reflective of the pressure they put on us. He can't be everywhere at once, and Freo were applying maniacal pressure. Most of the play seemed to be behind centre, so even given his workrate and performance I'm not surprised he didn't manage more I50's. Plus there was a lot of quick handballs and give/go happening trying to break into open space.

Anyway...he may not be quite as damaging by foot as the great Simon Black, but I think he's become an elite distributor in traffic, I'll be curious to see what happens to his stats next year with a few important players coming back into the midfield.
 
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I think that Rockliff's lack of goals and goal assists is partly due to the fact that we can't afford to rotate him out of the midfield. He basically runs on ball until he is stuffed. When he is stuffed, he comes off. When he goes back on, it is straight back into the guts. Some guys spend time at half forward because their side's midfield depth allows them to. That leads to goals and goal assists as you spend time forward of the footy. Rocky doesn't have that luxury.

Right now, we have no midfield depth whatsoever - yesterday, a first year player in Aish was effectively our fourth midfielder and we didn't bat a whole lot deeper than that. That means Rocky has to play in the guts all of the time in a side which is generally on the back foot - it is no great surprise he's not generating shots on goal.
 
Sanchez365 said:
I think its probably fair to expect his numbers to drop a little next season with the players we have coming back, but I think he will look a lot more damaging as a result. I'f he is still getting 40 touches a game next year with rich and redden back someone else won't be pulling their weight.
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Or we will be winning a lot more games. I suspect the latter.
 
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He normally gets a few more clearances, but being that he isnt a player that can burst from a pack, nor run past and get hand ball recieves he wont always be that guy delivering up field. It would be good if he can add some more goals to his game, but with our depth, I agree he just cant move from onball atm.

He has shown he has ability to take a good mark, and once Redden and Rich are back to help with the midfield, hopefully we can rest him forward for stints and he can add some goals.

I dont think he is a goal a game mid, mainly because he lacks that ability to have a running shot from 50 lot a lot of goal kicking mids do. He will get most his goals from set shots.

We are missing Moloney, Rich and Redden from our midfield last year. Even with the potential at grabbing a FA mid next year along with maybe a top rated academy player, we could still use another on baller mid in this draft.
 
Good thread for discussion.

This season in the few games where we have been losing and clearly not going to win (GWS, Adel, Freo) I watched Rocky closely towards the end of the game. I fully agree with others that his ability to have time and space and deliver the ball along with the player towards the correct space is fantastic, reminds me very much of S.Black. Add that to his on field leadership, work rate, aggression, tackling, pressure and support for team mates and he really is the complete package.

He hasn’t kicked many goals which would probably be the only reason others can see him as not damaging. Probably more to do with the inexperience around him and needing to be at so many contests because as we have seen he can take marks in the forward 50 and kick goals.

I was looking at some stats on Rocky comparing him to M.Voss and S.Black and he is really up there with them at this early stage. It says a lot that we have only won 1 of our 31 wins (2011 vs Crows away) where he has wasn’t playing in the past 4 years!

He will be our captain next year IMO and if he leads this young team back to some form of glory will easily go down as a legend of the club/game.
 
I think Reddo being out has hurt his ability to get forward a bit more, as highlighted by POBT

The Ablett comparison is an interesting one, not between them as players, but more of where they are getting their ball. If you ever saw the heat maps of Ablett's seasons at the suns you would have seen that his first year or two the majority of his possessions were in the back half of the ground and middle with only a few forward. This was mainly out of necessity as a) thats where the ball was a lot of the time and b) him not getting much rest up the ground and having to clean up down back a lot. Now he was still able to kick a few more goals due to being a superior athlete and probably player. Over the last season or two as the midfield spread has improved he has been able to go forward much more in part due to getting a rest but also having the faith to be able to spread forward from a contest as the players around him have improved. This will only increase next season IMO. Rockliff is in a bit of a similar boat on both regards and will hopefully see the same change as our midfield support develops and he starts having a bit more faith in those around him.

He's never probably going to reach the levels of Ablett, and that's not what I'm trying to say in the above, but given his smart delivery into f50 and his marking ability one on one there is certainly significant scope for improvement in his perceived hurt factor and being more of a scoring threat.

What I tend to notice is that when we're on song and moving the ball well, due to our quick ball movement Rockliff doesn't get on the end of that good work, mainly due to the fact that he's the one generating it at the start. By the time we've handball chained our way up the field, Rockliff's not really fast enough to get on the last few passes like a hanley or zorko can. However most of the time he's the one who got the hard ball or put in the original handball that opened up the play. So his perceived hurt factor is lower. Conversely when we're struggling to move the ball forward with any great speed, due to his high work rate he's the one most likely to get free for a short kick and then generates the next one. He then tends to get into position for another short kick and again finds a target. He's an excellent linkman when we're moving it slowly, however once again his perceived hurt factor isn't there once again. In both cases he may not be the one finishing it but he's largely the reason in both cases why the ball got inside 50 in the first place and without his work in the buildup we would be in all sorts of trouble.

Having said all that I do look forward to the day when he's getting low 30's rather than mid to low 40's all the time and we're winning because it means we're getting a better spread of contributors. I also think when that happens we'll find his goal assists and goals scored will have increased significantly as well.
 
For the first half if last year Rocky played half forward and was then moved into the middle. 19 Browlow votes last year and likely All Aust this year shows this is easily his best position. He is still 24? And playing in a side down near the bottom of the ladder. Best preseason draft pick up ever.
 
Bit weird to look at the stats from the Pies game and see he had no inside 50's or rebound 50's and yet 43 possessions; the only other time he has done that was in his debut against the Pies in '09.
 
Tairy Greene said:
Bit weird to look at the stats from the Pies game and see he had no inside 50's or rebound 50's and yet 43 possessions; the only other time he has done that was in his debut against the Pies in '09.
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Tairy Greene said:
Bit weird to look at the stats from the Pies game and see he had no inside 50's or rebound 50's and yet 43 possessions; the only other time he has done that was in his debut against the Pies in '09.
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Like Diesel Williams. A true centreman.
 
I can't quite remember what quarter it was during yesterday's game but there was one possession that really stood out to me.

He was able slide into a contest with two Dockers, pin the ball to the ground with one hand, slide it around behind him, turn and shovel it to a team mate while sitting. It was glorious. Gifworthy. Rocky is a juggernaut.
 
The Flying Belgian said:
My impression is that his stats aren't padded by 1-2 handballs as much as some (and if he shaved his head he'd probably get noticed a bit more). He is a tireless worker and the fact he leads the comp in average disposals and tackles is seriously something I can't recall seeing.
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a comparitor player for the 1-2 handballs and collecting a kick off a tall whose taken a mark is Sam Mitchell. He is always standing beside Hawthorn's talls begging to get a handpass for him to move the ball on. This is probably part of Hawthorn's set plays using his duel sided foot skills and assists with switches and direction changes by giving it to someone on a different angle and with run. Just a comparison that maybe 5-10 of Mitchell's 30 possessions are gained as a result of the gameplan/set plays where as from my view Rocky gets almost no posessions in this way and all are 'in the play.'

One thing Rocky could improve on is the pace of his kicking - he tends to punt the ball up a bit even on short kicks and it can take a while to get to its destination. Unlike Black he also doesn't have the left footers perogitave to turn and suddenly find an extra 5 seconds to spot up a laconic left foot pass over traffic to the free player - if you say he runs at 80% efficiency I'd say his handball efficiency is close to 100% and his kicking is at 60% because they are rushed and he's less able to use his smarts to spot a target than with a quick handball within shouting easy eye distance.

to whoever referred to Supercoach. I agree its a great proxy. Noone argues that Ablett is the best in the game, that Pendlebury is right up there, that Fyfe is right up there and it shows in Supercoach Points. A few years ago (2010?) when Goddard was 2nd highest ranked supercoach player averaging 120+ and everyone agreed he'd had an unbelievably year and was almost competiting with Ablett that year as consensus best player in the league. Whether by luck or design Supercoach does tend to see the best players in the comp rise to the top of the rankings.
 
I think Rockliff is one of the safest kicks at the club. On the Lions Podcast, Freeman was asked which midfielder he liked kicking to him on the lead inside 50 the most and he said Rockliff (he named another, can't remember who). I think he might not have the bullet kick, but he is pretty bloody accurate with his kicks. As someone said earlier in this thread, he kicks to his team mates advantage more often than not - in fact I'd say bar Rich, he is probably the best at kicking to a players advantage at our club. He would be the best handballer at our club as well.
 
Dom PC said:
I think Rockliff is one of the safest kicks at the club. On the Lions Podcast, Freeman was asked which midfielder he liked kicking to him on the lead inside 50 the most and he said Rockliff (he named another, can't remember who). I think he might not have the bullet kick, but he is pretty bloody accurate with his kicks. As someone said earlier in this thread, he kicks to his team mates advantage more often than not - in fact I'd say bar Rich, he is probably the best at kicking to a players advantage at our club. He would be the best handballer at our club as well.
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Hanley might dispute that, every time l see him kick into the f50 it is a bullet pass to the guys advantage.
 
a mayes ing said:
Hanley might dispute that, every time l see him kick into the f50 it is a bullet pass to the guys advantage.
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Probably splitting hairs really in terms of who's the more accurate kick out of Hanley and Rockliff. Hanley certainly is more penetrating, but I'm not with you if your saying he is less accurate than Hanley.
 
Big Sauce 21 said:
$5.50 to win the brownlow. Only behind Fyfe, Ablett and Selwood.
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Incredibly, he started the season at about 30/1, on the back of polling 19 votes in the last eight games of 2013.
 
Dom PC said:
I think Rockliff is one of the safest kicks at the club. On the Lions Podcast, Freeman was asked which midfielder he liked kicking to him on the lead inside 50 the most and he said Rockliff (he named another, can't remember who). I think he might not have the bullet kick, but he is pretty bloody accurate with his kicks. As someone said earlier in this thread, he kicks to his team mates advantage more often than not - in fact I'd say bar Rich, he is probably the best at kicking to a players advantage at our club. He would be the best handballer at our club as well.
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He's one of the few players that I know will make the right decision when kicking in as well.
 
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