Blaze Storm
Brownlow Medallist
That is part of the reason why we got away last year with an unorthodox forward structure of one very tall ruckman and two fairly talls, one of whom is an exceptional runner, paired with two fast smalls and one quickish small: Rioli, Pops, and Bruest.
A standard well structured defence has two talls, a smaller lighter third tall, a medium who is often the outlet kicker (e.g. Malceski, we use Birchall and to a lesser degree Burgs to cover this role) and two smaller defenders for minding the small forwards. We stretched defences with the lack of a medium matchup and with the best two small defenders having to cover Breust and Rioli most defences did have anyone quick enough to go with Pops.
The fact that Gunners can beat most taller opponents 1-on-1 both above head and on the lead is critical to our success last year.
When Roughy gets back to marking rather than just looking for crumbs, the whole team will look much better.
I think the key to getting Rough back into form is for the smalls to stand up and force the opposition to isolate Rough 1-on-1.
Not to mention that all of our smalls are exceptional marks for their size.
Breust is solid lead-up marking option, Poppy is a reasonably good pack mark and Rioli can beat a taller opponent 1-on-1 more often than not.
Rather than focusing on kicking to the talls, we should be kicking to a small leading-up (e.g. Breust) and have one of Rioli/Poppy there to crumb. The moment Rough gets involved the opposition suddenly have their best intercept mark ready to snipe the ball.
Look at teams like Collingwood that have now utilised Elliot/Blair in this sort of mold to great effect.