Preview Rnd 1 Preview Port Adelaide v St Kilda 1st April 2012

[PatientMental]

Surjan has lifted his game back above Logan, he's always been a better player. Except last year he shouldn't have been ever played until he got fit again, Logan will only replace Surjan if he is injured.

Surj is set for a massive year.

 

[Gricky]

Is he officially out? or is still the extended bench?

emergency

 

[cmpower]

emergency

Yeah just seen the final 22, logan a bit stiff, Surprised surjan named as starting, Dunno about how i feel about Jacobs at back pocket?? I'd swap Hartlett and P Stewart, Boak and McCarthy, and Surjan for Logan. But, when we win... all moves will be master strokes!!!

 

[Wargreymon90]

I would have young ahead of broadbent. Would be a decent sub option imo.

 

[cmpower]

I would have young ahead of broadbent. Would be a decent sub option imo.

Before NAB Cup and Challenge, i'd have said the same, but Broadbent was very strong and i think earned his spot

 

[DonDraper]

Feel for Tommy but shows that we have a bit of depth now. But having said that, he should be in there for Jacobs. I hope Benny can really step up now...

Broady has been brilliant in pre season and deserves his spot. I was buzzing walking out of work today, and it's only Friday.

Bring on Sunday!!!!

 

[Forzaport]

Now that the 22 is final, I'm mostly happy with the selections. I do think it's a little strange to see O'Shea and P.Stewart named on the centre line while Boak is at HFF. Not that that means much anyway. Jacobs is a bit of a surprise selection but it's evident that the club rates him much higher than we do. Disappointed for Logan as I felt he had taken his game up a notch, but very happy to see Surjan reinstated to BP.

We've named a reasonably experienced side (compared to last year), 10 players have ~90 or more games experience and there are a few mature bodies out there - 13 players are over 23 years old. Almost all of our younger players are highly rated (5 of them were drafted in the first round).

Key inclusions into our midfield include: Ebert, McCarthy and P.Stewart.

Having 3 players injected directly into the midfield should relieve the pressure on Boak and Pearce, allow Thomas to play his natural game (as midfielder #5-6 and not as #2-3), Rodan should have more scope to attack the goals. All around our midfield should be massively more potent than last year.

Trengove is a massive out, made worse by the absence of Gray who IMO is our most reliable game-breaker. We will miss them sorely, but we do appear to have named a team capable of winning. Looking forward to seeing a competitive effort.

 

[Schulzenfest]

If Trengove was fit I could understand leaving Logan out, but with Trengove injured leaving Logan out is dumb. Stewart's going to be needed to take a tall, which means we'll need somebody to replace him in taking a small. Pearce is untried defensively and Jacobs is terrible defensively, so neither of them are the answer. Jacobs is very, very lucky to have his spot ahead of Logan. Would've much rather had Logan in than any of Kane, Thomas or Broadbent too since those three are all pretty much the same player (along with Cassisi). We don't need 4 plodders who can win hard ball but can't do much else in the one side, but we do need two small defenders.

 

[Honeyboy Wilson]

Agree with gopower apart from Broadbent... Far more skilled than the other players he was compared to.

 

[rellim]

Disappointed no Logan. If there is room for Jacobs and Surj then it shouldn't be Logan or Surj but rather Logan AND Surj. I hope Jacobs proves me wrong and has a cracker but it just seems he needs more experience in the SANFL before AFL call-ups. Under no pressure against Melbourne he missed targets so when the real stuff starts I think he might cost us a few turnovers. Like I said though, hope I'm wrong and he has a solid game but I don't see it happening.

Happy Rodan is in - super sub I hope for Kornes/Broady and injects some pace and a few goals across the HFF when he comes in. With limited game time recently (maybe only two pre-season games???) Rodan may be most beneficial playing less than a half.

 

[Schulzenfest]

Agree with gopower apart from Broadbent... Far more skilled than the other players he was compared to.

Sometimes. Broadbent's a funny one, he can pull off some excellent kicks at times and he but he's also prone to the occasional absolute howler. But yes, he is further outside of the category of 'contested ball winning plodder' than Kane and Thomas are.

My preferences for a spot would've been

1. Logan
2. Broadbent
3. Kane
4. Jacobs
5. Thomas (IIRC he's only played a half of footy in the NAB cup, so I'm not sure what he's doing in the side, especially ahead of Logan who had a good NAB cup and plays a position that we need more right now with Trengove out).

 

[P.A.F.C]

Saints have quite a few falls and very tall players at that. Who exactly is our third tall defender? Hoff to go back into defence?

 

[Schulzenfest]

Stewart I guess.

This is the problem I had when we picked up Blee. All well and good to pick up tall defender depth, but Blee is no more a 'tall defender' than P. Stewart is. We have Blee, Salter and Stewart who are all around 190 cm, but we only have Chappy and Trengove who are tall enough to take a resting ruck, which is not enough in today's post-sub rule game where most sides play 2 key forwards, 1 main ruck and 1 ruck/forward who rotates between the two. If one of Chappy and Trengove goes down we don't have anybody to take the ruck/forward (even Carlile's a bit short for that job), as shown by this week. I'd have been much happier with someone 5 cm taller than Blee, even if said player was rated slightly lower.

 

[P.A.F.C]

Height can be misleading, all the clips I've seen of Blee make him look like a proper key defender, whereas Stewart isn't.

 

[Puddy]

Jacobs over Logan better not be some ****ing stupid youth policy thing

 

[SupportMe]

Not happy. A good previous season, Coaches award and a good pre-season counts for nothing folks.

Unless he's injured, there is no way Logan should be missing out. Especially not for Jacobs who needs a good 8 weeks in the SANFL going on his pre-season.

 

[Wargreymon90]

To be fair. None of us saw how they went at training. Logan could have been a bit off this week

 

[Schulzenfest]

I suppose there's a possibility that we've done this to throw St. Kilda's forward line choices off and we'll bring Logan in as emergency for the underdone Thomas or Rodan.

 

[Portia]

Logan out, Cornes in. lol.

 

[DonDraper]

Can you imagine that lol...

Hopefully all our 22 are fully fit and can run out the game strong

 

[SaintsSeptember]

I suppose there's a possibility that we've done this to throw St. Kilda's forward line choices off and we'll bring Logan in as emergency for the underdone Thomas or Rodan.

Dont worry, StKilda are unleashing their secret weapon..... Dean Polo

 

[PatientMental]

He's still on your list...?

 

[Forzaport]

Polo? Could be a candidate for the 2012 'spuds that tear us apart' thread

 

[SaintsSeptember]

Polo? Could be a candidate for the 2012 'spuds that tear us apart' thread

He's still trying to beat that first game he played for Richmond all those years ago.

 

[Hellgood]

Jacobs over Logan better not be some ****ing stupid youth policy thing

I find your trolling of soccer on Bigfooty pretty amusing, but FFS whats the point of repetitively going on about this "youth policy" stuff on our board? I haven't seen you post anything but that on here!

I too would pick Logan to play in our side over Jacobs, I love his hardness and desperation and Jacobs seems a bit starstruck out in the middle of a footy field against men, but its pretty much general consensus that a team that has too many guys like Logan, Thomas, Surjan (who I rate a bit higher) and Broadbent will finish low down on the ladder. Now Jacobs at the moment pretty much sits alongside those blokes in terms of his skills, but his kicking was identified as his strongest asset by our recruiting team. I don't believe it's a matter of him having poor skills, I think it's just a case of finding the pace and intensity of an AFL match very unconfortable early in his career. Look back to Cameron O'Shea in the first couple of rounds last year, he couldn't have looked any more out of place and made several glaring mistakes simply because he wasn't used to how little time and opportunity you get at that level. But the thing that struck me at the time is that he was getting the ball and he kept working hard no matter how many mistakes he made, it took until the latter rounds but he finally looked like an AFL player and wasn't a deer in the headlights any more. He was running to the right spots, shutting down his man when the oppositon had the ball and his skill level improved out of sight.

I believe that Jacobs too will show a lot of improvement this year, because he will eventually adjust to the speed the game is played at and his skills won't look bad anymore. It's all confidence and he's only going to pick that up by working his arse off at AFL level. The reward is for us that he becomes a player with the class that we need and as much as we all love the Logan's and Thomases theres not a whole lot of room for those types of players in the best teams.

I don't want to see us playing youth teams and significantly compromising the quality of team we put out on the park like Melbourne, but we have to have an eye on where we want to go in the future.