Macca43
Premiership Player
- Mar 10, 2011
- 4,214
- 11,106
- AFL Club
- Carlton
Not a valid argument.
At any time JSOS is in the middle, somebody gets pushed into the forward line. Whether it's Murphy, Fisher, SPS, Dow, whoever - one of those players is playing in a forward pocket so Jack can play on the ball. Doesn't matter if they share that time. It's still one of the preferred midfielders playing forward so Jack can be accommodated.
Flip it. Gibbons spends most of his time on ground in the forward pocket, with occasional stints on ball. Murphy, Fisher, SPS, Dow spend more time on the ball.
I'd rather a faster midfield and a mature age, undersized mid who applies pressure in the forward pocket, than a slower midfield and all the outside mids having to take a turn through the forward pocket.
I'm not convinced JSOS offers enough at senior level as an on-baller to justify that selection. He may in time, I hope so, that would be amazing. But between Cripps, Setterfield and rotations from Curnow, I think we have enough tall mids that we don't need to squeeze in another. Three at any given stoppage is too many and hurts us on the spread, so two mostly-mids and one mostly-fwd-but-can-mid does the job.
Unless we want to play JSOS mostly forward or back, I think he's hovering behind Cripps and Setterfield, and battling with Kennedy for the honour of being next in line.
Of course it is valid, it just isn't your argument.
Lets just say Gibbons spends 80% of his time forward and gets pantsed - we are stuck.
Play JSOS and their small defender has to play on a 190cm leading forward one minute, SPS the next, Fisher the next, Murphy the next,maybe Dow, maybe even Thomas goes through as JSOS can play back - we are constantly asking questions of their defence.
On the other end we can have smalls running through the middle with Murphy, Walsh, Dow, SPS, Fisher & Cuningham or we can go big with Jack, Cripps Setterfield & Ed or more likely we can always have a 3-2 split of different smalls and talls in the middle.
Options are good, rotations are good. We don't have a small forward good enough to exist only as a small forward (unless Fasolo hits his potential) so we need to use constant rotations to keep the players in the game and keep the defence guessing.