Whether or not he's a 'plodder,' West is at least a ruckman.
Our 'rucks' in the finals were Vardy, a key forward, and Blicavs, a tall athletic guy who is most certainly not a ruckman and who may be a star in two years but is equally as likely to not be on our list.
I agree with Partridge that not selecting West that day was absolute insanity.
When Hawkins was a late out, it should have been West in as number one ruck and Vardy to the forward line. Does anybody want to argue West wouldn't have had more of an impact in the middle, and that Vardy wouldn't have done more than Walker up forward that day?
Thought not.
I'd argue that West has never had an impact full stop.
He's rucked for the past couple of years, in previous seasons he was parked at CHB in the VFL for periods; he's no more or less a ruckman than Vardy or Blicavs, he's played 50+ games and never shown much.
Now we have two ruckmen-sized players (all three players are listed @ 198cms), who have played just 20 games apiece, but both of whom have shown vastly more potential than West.
Aside from the potential, the actual performances from these two were in no way eclipsed by West. Otherwise West would obviously have held his spot in the team.
So now we have two young players *with finals experience* on our list, both equally capable of rendering West irrelevant.
I like what West was able to do for a handful of games in 2011, and I thought he battled pretty manfully in 2012 (although he nearly always lost).
We've seen the best West has to offer. It's mediocre at best. That's being generous.
You might reckon he'd have performed better as the #1 ruckman during the finals series
fpm84, but I think the complete opposite, his pure shiteness would have further unstabalised the side; he *was* given opportunities throughout the year and didn't do enough to keep from being overtaken.
People may point to his hit-out averages.
People with eyes may respond that it's one thing to get your hand to the ball, quite another thing to actually palm it to your team's advantage.