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Been a while but this has been playing on my mind for a few years. Hear me out and would love thoughts.
This is arguably one of the most underrated positions in modern football. The hawks throughout their success utilised our man D Hale to perfection. St Kilda, a wonderful outfit capable of challenging one of history’s best teams, had Michael Gardiner. On the opposition you had Brad Ottens. Ask your pies friends about the Leigh Brown role and how they utilised him. West Coast used Lycett to perfect effect last season. Point made?
The role is one of little reward and great malign. Standard game may be 8 touches, a goal or two and a few hit outs. But it’s that presence, run through a man sitting in the hole, the dump down the line to old boy if all else fails, the occasional float in mark up forward, this is why they are there.
I think over the years we’ve really missed a trick in developing one of these guys properly. Whilst blessed with one of the better ruckmen and key forwards, we lack aerial presence forward of half back. We lack the bail out option. Our backline knows this and try to handball, short kick their way through but they haven’t got the skills. We get camped in our back half for long long periods and have done for years.
This season was always gonna be a test for Wood but he’ll play his best footy as a third tall/flank. Ziebell is sadly undersized and too slow at ground level. The long ball in will not work for us with this line up. We play under a roof so expect teams to stretch us successfully this year.
I hope our management shifts heavily towards key stock over the next few seasons.
This is arguably one of the most underrated positions in modern football. The hawks throughout their success utilised our man D Hale to perfection. St Kilda, a wonderful outfit capable of challenging one of history’s best teams, had Michael Gardiner. On the opposition you had Brad Ottens. Ask your pies friends about the Leigh Brown role and how they utilised him. West Coast used Lycett to perfect effect last season. Point made?
The role is one of little reward and great malign. Standard game may be 8 touches, a goal or two and a few hit outs. But it’s that presence, run through a man sitting in the hole, the dump down the line to old boy if all else fails, the occasional float in mark up forward, this is why they are there.
I think over the years we’ve really missed a trick in developing one of these guys properly. Whilst blessed with one of the better ruckmen and key forwards, we lack aerial presence forward of half back. We lack the bail out option. Our backline knows this and try to handball, short kick their way through but they haven’t got the skills. We get camped in our back half for long long periods and have done for years.
This season was always gonna be a test for Wood but he’ll play his best footy as a third tall/flank. Ziebell is sadly undersized and too slow at ground level. The long ball in will not work for us with this line up. We play under a roof so expect teams to stretch us successfully this year.
I hope our management shifts heavily towards key stock over the next few seasons.
