Past #31: David Hale - drafted at #7 in the Superdraft - 129 games for NM - traded to HFC in 2010

Zondor

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But he has been rapidly evolving into a very valuable KF. His contested marking is second only to Petrie in the team, and may even be better. His ground level ability is as good as any 200cm+ player in the comp. He just looks like a key forward now. He has the strength to throw opponents around in the contest when he'd get pushed out in the past.
C'mon Zebs. I'll give you RAPIDLY EVOLVING. Hales was that bad last year as a KF that he RAPIDLY EVOLVED into a VFL player.
 

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clean slate for all our squad this yr. Should we kick the ball to Hales advantage he'll go ok. Bit like most FF's really. But he shouldn't venture more than 45 mtrs from goal. And with Drew at CHF he shouldn't have to.Also if the umps get serious Hale's a nightmare for the chopping of the arms rule.
 

Zvim

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The issue with Hale was he spent 5 years developing as a ruckman, not a key position forward. He has really only had 2 years as a key forward so in development terms Smith has had a lot more development for the role he is playing than Hale.

Hale has shown the fundamental weaknesses of guys that lack development, like not presenting at the right time, going to the wrong position and dropping a lot of marks you would typically expect of a forward that has been in the system for 7 years.

We have to forget about his 5 years as a ruckman, he is a forward with around 2 years experience. He has deficiencies he needs to work on.

I don't know if Hale will make it as a KPF or not, but he showed glimpses that suggests he could with good supply. As far as the club is concerned, he is contracted for a few years and we have enough ruckmen, they don't really have much to lose.

Until we develop other options we have Petrie, Hale and Smith as options. If Petrie is the only realistic option then the other teams will just zone him out of the game.
 

Rippednew1

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it did seem a bit brash at the time, i'll curb the honesty if you curb your bias
Yeah just like baking a cake:

Flour
Butter
Sugar
SOAP
Eggs

Not so much bias, more ingredients like you do.

I'm expecting you to keep posters honest who put players in the bests for no apparent reason.

*RN1 showing faith in Bradley the Scott*

Depth looks good and if we had Porplyzia and Riewoldt we'd finish top 4.
 

whippa

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Yeah just like baking a cake:

Flour
Butter
Sugar
SOAP
Eggs

Not so much bias, more ingredients like you do.

I'm expecting you to keep posters honest who put players in the bests for no apparent reason.

*RN1 showing faith in Bradley the Scott*

Depth looks good and if we had Porplyzia and Riewoldt we'd finish top 4.
youre not preaching this glass half empty drivel again are you?

and how do i interpret the cake mixture....
 

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whippa

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has also butchered his chance to become North Melbourne's long term Full Forward with a fairly pathetic showing in too-oh-nine...

im not a career hale basher, he was in my supercoach team at the start of last year... but was hastily removed
 

The Chiefton

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Peter Everitt was good up forward. Kicked a lot of goals in the forward 50.
Obviously Paul Salmon.
Kurt Tippett is a gun.
Brad Ottens was an ALL Australian forward I think?
 

Devil Fish

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Gee, I'm just not sure how Buddy Hale is gonna go this year. I strongly believe Hale will kick 30 goals this year. Whether that's enough or not I'm not sure, but that's what I reckon. And I will NOT make any revisions to this prediction.
 

Zvim

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He needs 40 plus goals.

Anything less and we have to start looking elsewhere.

No more excuses.
It depends on where he plays. People thought the sun shone out of Petrie's behind and he averaged less than a goal a game at CHF.

I think you should really average around 2 to 2.5 goals a game at full forward as a bare minimum and about 1.5 should be the bare minimum from CHF.

That would be 55 for a FF and 33 for a CHF. We had enough supply to make the bare minimum targets, we just didn't have the supply to go well past it. While our midfield, or lack thereof, was a big reason for our poor year, most of our forwards were also dysfunctional so to not assign blame to them is not accurate.

A lot of easy dropped marks, missing sitters from dead in front, not presenting, leading to the wrong position, leading to the space of your team mate and dragging your man to the contest, standing around like a cone and clogging space up to lead into. These were common problems last year and when our mids looked up there was rarely someone offering an option so we held onto the ball and often lost possession.

So while a better midfield will help significantly, our forwards also need to extract the digit and give the mids some confidence to go with the first option, that being an option created by a forward busting his buns presenting an option to the mids. Warren gives the mids an option, we need more of his kind of endeavour from the senior key position players who should be the go to players.
 
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