Analysis The Midfield

[sante]

I hate making threads and jumping the gun and overreacting to losses but is our midfield overrated internally?

Look at the better teams and their midfields s**t all over ours.

HAWKS
Lewis
Mitchell
Hodge
Smith
Hill
Shiels
Langford

SWANS
Hannebery
Kennedy
Jack
Jetta
Parker
Bird

PORT
Boak
Ebert
Gray
Hartlett
Wines
Polec
Cornes

TIGERS
Cotchin
Martin
Ellis
Miles
Deledio
Grigg
Edwards
Conca

I think Deledio and Edwards are moreso Half forwards but still good midfielders. Grigg and Miles are just B Graders really. Didn't include McIntosh cause he's a kid. We only have 2 gun mids in Cotch and Martin and both cop all the attention weekly because of it. Conca hasn't had a good season as a midfielder yet


I know I've probably missed a player or two but I think the difference in class is staggering and the reason we can't jump to a top 4 team.

 

[Tigerland]

Cotchin is a joke. Mark Murphy MKII.

Played a few good games then rides on coat-tails, JEEP ads and other soft s**t!

If he's our spiritual leader then we are well and truly farked. He's on media street is the pretty boy.

 

[sante]

Cotchin is a joke. Mark Murphy MKII.

Played a few good games then rides on coat-tails, JEEP ads and other soft s**t!

If he's our spiritual leader then we are well and truly farked. He's on media street is the pretty boy.

I don't think that's the case at all. He gets tagged every single week and nobody helps him

 

[SpudsLoveChild]

I don't think our mids are overrated.
I think our list is overrated by a few punters.

We're got 4 maybe 5 elite players.
Some solid B graders, a lot of kids with potential, and some spuds.

We're a development team...still.

 

[The Rusty Trombone]

I'd just like him to kick the ball more than 15 metres. We may as well have Matt Thomas running around when he does that .

I couldn't believe Jing Jong was tearing up our midfield today. WTF is going on at Tigerland.

Can someone please give Gale Phil Walshes phone number I heard he has a twin brother .

 

[sante]

I don't think our mids are overrated.
I think our list is overrated by a few punters.

We're got 4 maybe 5 elite players.
Some solid B graders, a lot of kids with potential, and some spuds.

We're a development team...still.

Imo our midfield is the problem. Our defence is fairly good. They hold up well even when under the pump. Hard to judge the forwards as our entries are so bad. Our midfield doesn't work hard enough and lacks class

 

[tunksy]

Not enough pure mids. Need some pure inside winners to release cotchin and allow him to play outside. Still not enough quality running through there.

Forward line still runbish and disfunctional

 

[SpudsLoveChild]

Not enough pure mids. Need some pure inside winners to release cotchin and allow him to play outside. Still not enough quality running through there.

Forward line still runbish and disfunctional

Forward line was awful without Lids.
Forward line and ruck are our weak points.

 

[partycorolla]

We still have no midfield depth.... or at least not enough quality depth. This is what the so called war-chest should be spent on.... blokes who can turn games or at least fit in to our midfield. Not Thomas, Grigg, Petterd's but Dangerfield, Sloane, Lewis types.... I wouldn't go after Dangerfield due to salary cap etc but I would offload a TV type and make room by axing Newman, Foley, Knights etc to bring in 2 A to B+ grader midfielders....

 

[partycorolla]

I'd just like him to kick the ball more than 15 metres. We may as well have Matt Thomas running around when he does that .

I couldn't believe Jing Jong was tearing up our midfield today. WTF is going on at Tigerland.

Can someone please give Gale Phil Walshes phone number I heard he has a twin brother .

Which two midfielders would you target at around 500k a season mark (assuming we could free up/find the cash and get the players) to bolster our stocks?

 

[sante]

Which two midfielders would you target at around 500k a season mark (assuming we could free up/find the cash and get the players) to bolster our stocks?

Shiel

And I know I've said this a lot but Miles is overrated.

 

[Nostradumbass]

I don't think that's the case at all. He gets tagged every single week and nobody helps him

Was he getting tagged in 2012?

 

[partycorolla]

Shiel

And I know I've said this a lot but Miles is overrated.

We got him in the rookie draft, we are getting plenty of value for him. The reason he is valuable to us is because he actually gets the pill inside, which nobody else seems to be able to do....

 

[Tigerland]

Shiel

And I know I've said this a lot but Miles is overrated.

Reckon he'd want to come to this rabble?

 

[sante]

We got him in the rookie draft, we are getting plenty of value for him. The reason he is valuable to us is because he actually gets the pill inside, which nobody else seems to be able to do....

After winning the ball at a centre bounce/throw in, what does he do? Bugger all imo

 

[partycorolla]

After winning the ball at a centre bounce/throw in, what does he do? Bugger all imo

I think he works pretty hard most of the time. He's not athletically gifted but he's a workhouse.... he's the least of our problems.

 

[sante]

I think he works pretty hard most of the time. He's not athletically gifted but he's a workhouse.... he's the least of our problems.

Agree actually. But for us to be a top team he can't be our 3rd best midfielder which he currently is. Not including Deledio...

 

[TJTIGER]

Imo our midfield is the problem. Our defence is fairly good. They hold up well even when under the pump. Hard to judge the forwards as our entries are so bad. Our midfield doesn't work hard enough and lacks class

Do we need a plan B for the forwards If delivery is not good ? As this is inevitable in some games. We can't settle fo that....

 

[Nostradumbass]

Do we need a plan B for the forwards If delivery is not good ? As this is inevitable in some games. We can't settle fo that....

I don't think we have a plan A...

 

[Mr Magic]

Shiel

And I know I've said this a lot but Miles is overrated.

Shiel has stepped it up this year.

If we did get him not the worst option

 

[johnno77]

We really missed 2 of our most durable players today. We missed them badly. Lids and Sheds. We had no answers today. Other players couldn't show any kind of creativity to work their way through today. Instead they kept handballing to their teammates under more pressure than themselves. Or kicking the ball backwards. Insipid.

 

[Rayzorwire]

We do miss the likes of Jackson and Tuck at the coalface, but way more than personnel issues, we still have one of the worst midfield systems in the league.

Maric is looking more and more like a liability as his workload of recent seasons continues to take its toll, but we don't tactically react to counter that probability. After today, I suspect he will have the worst hit-out to advantage ratio in the league by quite a long way (he was a long last after rd.1). We don't tag anyone, Hardwick's got way too many footy smarts for that. We seldom help our tagged mids out with anything resembling a chop-out. We rely on individual brilliance and raw ball-winning skill, there's very little tactical nouse going on and when the brilliance is blunted by hard tags and the fall of the ball isn't going our way in the centre, as we've seen, we can get wiped off the map by a lot of sides with a lot less talented players.

Arguably bigger than all that, the development issue.

As you'll note, quite a few of the players on your list sante, are relatively young and recently developed players - Smith, Hill, Shiels, Langford, Hannebery, Parker, Hartlett, Wines, Polec...I'm sure there'd be some debate over the definitions of that list and add or subtract here and there. Point is, we haven't developed our draftee mids in that age bracket as well as the better clubs.

Further than that, three years ago, I think you'd be hard pressed to find many on this board who would trade a single one of the mids on those top sides' lists (those who were even playing at that stage) for either of Martin or Cotchin. Or many in the AFL community who would for that matter. Hodge and/or Mitchell might have tempted a few, but with how many years they had left compared to our two 'future champions?'

So they haven't been developed into champion midfielders in line with anyone's expectations either.

Either everyone is consistently wrong about the potential of our midfielders (including each new batch of draftees since Cotchin), or there's a consistent pattern of insufficiently fulfilled development.

 

[Cevap_Roll]

I dont think our midfield is too bad. We just need some of the younger players either playing or playing in their correct positions.

I actually think we are one player short from every line. Our backline is our strongest line. Include Astbury and Elton and remove Chaplin and Grimes making Rance 3rd man up. * imagine Rance playing loose.

I would look at bringing in
Danger
Carlisle
Zack Smith

Or but it's a big risk but could pay off with dividends

Danger
Kruezer
Sheil/Hannebury -----------T.Mitchel

 

[PetterdHoisted]

Maric is looking more and more like a liability as his workload of recent seasons continues to take its toll, but we don't tactically react to counter that probability. After today, I suspect he will have the worst hit-out to advantage ratio in the league by quite a long way (he was a long last after rd.1).

We have a very serious ruck problem don't we? May cost us finals.

 

[The Rusty Trombone]

Reckon he'd want to come to this rabble?

And there lies the problem " let's do another documentary on how hard we trained over the off season and lose a game to a bunch of kids"

The footy world know we are full of ourselves