- Mar 2, 2015
- 931
- 3,055
- AFL Club
- North Melbourne
I agree to an extent… his field kicking has dropped off what it was earlier in the season & he is prone to a turnover.I posted this in the autopsy thread and I get that it's a super unpopular opinion, but I reckon his year has been overrated by a lot of people and I'm not convinced he should be the short or medium-term answer to a role that is, imo, one of the most important in both the modern game and the way that Nobes wants us to play.
While, yes, he does give us a lot of overlap run atm and he can hit some ridiculous kicks to get our ball movement going, he still turns it over way too often for someone playing that role, and some of those turnovers are genuine shockers. The thing about those turnovers in that part of the ground, too, is that they almost always end up in scoring shots for the opposition because we're completely out of our defensive shape. I'm not absolutely convinced that the risk of him turning over the ball in dangerous positions is worth the reward of our scintillating ball movement when it does happen. I'd love to see some advanced stats to see the comparison between scoring shots from a Hall turnover versus how many shots we get per Aaron Hall kick. My suspicion is that the number is not as beneficial to us as it seems to the naked eye and hence my risk vs reward comment.
Honestly, I'm going to be disappointed if all of Hall, Atley and JZ start in our 2022 backline. There are just far too many turnovers in that group of players and it's going to continually fu** us if we persist with attacking the corridor, which I absolutely believe we should.
His 1-2 run & gun style is great though & his meters gained is top 10 in the league.
We don’t currently have anybody on our list to do this role, apart from maybe Polec, who I think should be trialled in the same role - he is the best ball user on our list (along with Thomas)
If Hally could start kicking more of those 50m goals on the run, we’d be absolutely loving him.