Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
LIVE: Richmond v Melbourne - 7:25PM Wed
Squiggle tips Demons at 77% chance -- What's your tip? -- Team line-ups »
But he’s taller than Cripps, so...I’ve said this before but I am not convinced McLean has a long AFL career ahead of him. He is too one dimensional, needs the ball kicked on top of him. If it isn’t he is largely ineffectual.
He offers little defensive pressure, is poor below his knees and doesn’t seem to be able to get any separation from his opponent nor get up the ground to create an outlet forward.
I have never suggested that the club doesn't make mistakes.Um, easy. Stephens or Warner would've offered more than Rowbottom out there. Ling or COR would've provided more than Cunningham who has looked slightly off the pace the last few weeks. We could've played McLean in the ruck instead of Sinclair, with Amartey forward. Yes, we would've been smashed still, but Sinclair had to be moved out, and nothing changed except we lost Aliir in defence.
Your logic of 'fielding the best team possible' just doesn't hold up, because we just did, and they managed a quarter and a half of good footy. That's it. So now we blew a chance to rest a few who badly need it, in a match that was winnable if we could run the game out a bit better, and we now face a situation where we'll probably end up resting a few anyway, only this time against even harder opposition.
I am also sick of you and others sprouting BS about how the club always knows best, implying they are never wrong and we the fans are never right. The medical staff get it right all the time? Tell that to Harry Marsh and Toby Nankervis who watched from the sidelines while our hospital ward took to the field grand final day 2016 and did SFA between them. Tell that to Hanners who was cooked by the age of 27 because the medical staff OK'd him to play every week.
Sometimes it's okay to just accept that everyone involved in the club is human and they will **** up, from Rowbottom telling the coach he feels fine, to the coach backing him in when he's moving like a geriatric come game day. It's not a big ******** deal to just accept these things and try to learn from them instead of wearing rose-coloured glasses while riding your moral high-horse through the board.
It shouldn't be underestimated how much of a punish it is to travel from cairns to the gold coast. Its early flight.. Bus.
I have never suggested that the club doesn't make mistakes.
I have suggested, and will continue to do so, that, with the limited information available to you, you are are not in a position to identify those mistakes with the certainly you apparently have.
Why does a team rest players? They do it because they figure that the loss of performance in the short term from missing that player now has a benefit in the longer term because they will be able to better perform later.
So, you wanted us to rest players against Carlton, weakening us in this game, so we are better able to perform against Brisbane and Geelong?
That doesn't make sense.
This was the last realistically winnable game in our season. It made sense to prioritise performance in this game ahead of the two upcoming games against teams who are in second and third spot right now and which we are unlikely to win regardless of who we put on the field. There are no finals to prepare for, everyone is on holidays in two weeks time, so there is really no longer any need to work on keeping players fresh this season.
And so we did that, we put out our best available team. It was the team that beat Melbourne last week. It was the team that kicked the first seven goals of the game to set up what should have been a match winning lead. It was the team that still had chances to win the game in the last quarter except for some terrible skill errors and execution. That the team did not win does not mean we didn't put out best team out. It just means that our best team wasn't good enough to get the result on the day.
I'm not convinced any of your proposed changes would have made any major positive difference to the team today.
Rowbottom was not at his best, only managing 9 possessions , 5 tackles, 2 clearences. But would we have got more from Stephens or Warner? Warner had two games at AFL level and both games were even less impactful than this poor Rowbottom game. Stephens hasn't played the inside role that Rowbottom has at AFL, and his most prolific game is only 12 possessions, he averages 11. Rowbottom on a relatively poor day is still as good or better than the best we have seen so far from Stephens and Warner.
The suggestion of Ling or O'Riordan instead of Cunningham is fiddling around the edges, and removes a more experienced player from the field.
But selecting a debutant ruckman in Amartey, one who is realistically getting delisted in a couple of weeks without ever making it to AFL level, and expecting him to give us more than Sinclair did is incredibly optimistic. More realistically we would have been much worse off if this change had been made.
So, yeah, I don't think these changes get us closer to winning the game than we already were.
The team all year has been inconsistent. Good quarters and halves here and there, interspersed with terrible quarters and halves, or indeed whole games. We got more of the same against Carlton. The good was really pretty good and should have been enough to win us the game. I don't think there are any changes you could have made with the available alternative players that would have made any sort of real inroads on fixing the bad. When things went bad we needed experienced leaders to stand up and take control. We didn't have enough out there. Putting guys like Warner, Ling or Amartey on to the field isn't going to help with that either.
You don't have any evidence that the club is mismanaging Rowbottom in a way that threatens to harm his potential longevity, so why do you believe it?
Exactly.Imagine kicking 7 unanswered goals to start the match and only 1 more for the rest. Tried to protect our least waaaaay to early then couldn't match the increased intensity
Considering the AFL has banned metal studs it seems expectedModern boots must not grip much , players slip so often
Yeah probably a bit of moisture around but happens during the day too
Spot on Masey.I’ve said this before but I am not convinced McLean has a long AFL career ahead of him. He is too one dimensional, needs the ball kicked on top of him. If it isn’t he is largely ineffectual.
He offers little defensive pressure, is poor below his knees and doesn’t seem to be able to get any separation from his opponent nor get up the ground to create an outlet forward.
Easy in hindsight but off a four day break we could have selected Bell, Stephens, and Ling. Maybe Knoll.Is O’Riordan fit? Who knows. There was a scrimmage played so there are fit players.For those suggesting we shouldn't have gone in to this game unchanged... I'm wondering who you would have selected that you think would have performed better than the players who were out there?
At this stage of the season the cupboard is pretty bare. With only games against Brisbane and Geelong to come before the season is over, it made sense to play the best team we had available, and I think that is what we did.
No doubt there are some tired players out there at this point of what has been a pretty crazy season, but it isn't going to kill them. The idea that some on here have a better idea about the physical condition or capacity of the players than the doctors, physios and coaches is laughable.
I’ve said this before but I am not convinced McLean has a long AFL career ahead of him. He is too one dimensional, needs the ball kicked on top of him. If it isn’t he is largely ineffectual.
He offers little defensive pressure, is poor below his knees and doesn’t seem to be able to get any separation from his opponent nor get up the ground to create an outlet forward.
Hate to say this but I don't want to see JPK at a centre bounce ever again.
Rowbottom didn’t get a lot of the ball last night but I’m not sure it’s due to him being tired. He had the most pressure acts of any player on the ground with 24. Also the 5th highest average speed in attack. Didn’t get a lot of the ball but he was close enough to apply pressure.
McLean offers a good contest (which I've been told is the only criteria for key forwards to get games for us). Unfortunately our small forwards and mids were ineffective at reading the spill and winning the crumbs. It also wasn't hard to see that Carlton had an emphasis on shutting down our front and centering, which isn't really surprising given that a) they more than any club are aware of how dangerous someone like Papley can be, and b) they have a very good batch of mid-sized defenders who are great at nullifying these loose balls, like Docherty, Simpson, Jones and Plowman.
So yes, McLean needed to be clunking marks to be effective in this case, but given the conditions were sh*t and the delivery was sh*t, I think it's unfair to criticise him on this game. Just as it would be unfair to criticise Sinclair or Reid for this game.