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Past Bryce Gibbs

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The last time Bryce Gibbs played some decent consistent football was that stellar season he had leading into signing that end of season mega-contract of his. Since that deal was struck, he has been lethargic & spasmodic in most games only giving us the occasional teaser of what he is really capable of. This has frustrated many a Blues fan as he is one of a small handful of players who we have expected more from every week.

Whilst I haven't had the pleasure of watching the last three games due to no coverage up here in Sydney, the one thing that everyone I speak to talks about is how well Bryce Gibbs is playing right now. We have always known that he is a very smart player who knows where to get where the ball is going to be plus he is extremely precise by foot whether it is kicking for goal or delivering to a team-mate.

The thing is, what has made him fire up all of a sudden ??

It is my strong belief (and I have nothing to back up this claim) that he has been told, in no uncertain terms, that unless he delivers to his optimal level every week, he will be dropped to the seconds until such time that he does start delivering. Further to that, if he ends up being in the seconds he will find himself in a new environment next year.

Gibbs is a player who prides himself on never playing seconds so that sort of threat would certainly be something he would want to avoid because he wouldn't like the embarrassment of being dropped. He has been quite comfortable at Carlton and if he was traded elsewhere, he would be under more intense scrutiny than ever before.

I'm sure Bolton would of spoken to all of the players individually and laid out what his expectations of them all was. With Gibbs, I reckon Bolton would not have minced his words and would of spelt out quite strongly that Gibbs had a higher level of demands being placed on him due to his seniority, contract status & overall ability.

Thankfully, he has responded and we are the beneficiaries. All he has to do now is 'maintain the rage' because those threats are there to stay.

Good coaching by Bolton, good response (for now) by Gibbs.
 
Interesting today on Sen they were talking about Gibbs playing under Ratten and how Ratten played him off half back to give him more space to use his kicking skills.
Can't remember who said it but they said something along the lines of Gibbs was a clearance beast at SANFL level as a junior and that's were he plays his best footy.
No doubt we haven't done Gibbs any favours in development him in the past, but in the last month his playing even better football then he did in 2014. Seems to have harder edge to his game and has stepped up big time when we really needed it.
 
TheSheik said:
The last time Bryce Gibbs played some decent consistent football was that stellar season he had leading into signing that end of season mega-contract of his. Since that deal was struck, he has been lethargic & spasmodic in most games only giving us the occasional teaser of what he is really capable of. This has frustrated many a Blues fan as he is one of a small handful of players who we have expected more from every week.

Whilst I haven't had the pleasure of watching the last three games due to no coverage up here in Sydney, the one thing that everyone I speak to talks about is how well Bryce Gibbs is playing right now. We have always known that he is a very smart player who knows where to get where the ball is going to be plus he is extremely precise by foot whether it is kicking for goal or delivering to a team-mate.

The thing is, what has made him fire up all of a sudden ??

It is my strong belief (and I have nothing to back up this claim) that he has been told, in no uncertain terms, that unless he delivers to his optimal level every week, he will be dropped to the seconds until such time that he does start delivering. Further to that, if he ends up being in the seconds he will find himself in a new environment next year.

Gibbs is a player who prides himself on never playing seconds so that sort of threat would certainly be something he would want to avoid because he wouldn't like the embarrassment of being dropped. He has been quite comfortable at Carlton and if he was traded elsewhere, he would be under more intense scrutiny than ever before.

I'm sure Bolton would of spoken to all of the players individually and laid out what his expectations of them all was. With Gibbs, I reckon Bolton would not have minced his words and would of spelt out quite strongly that Gibbs had a higher level of demands being placed on him due to his seniority, contract status & overall ability.

Thankfully, he has responded and we are the beneficiaries. All he has to do now is 'maintain the rage' because those threats are there to stay.

Good coaching by Bolton, good response (for now) by Gibbs.
Click to expand...

Yeah nah.

I tend to believe Bolts. It's about creating unity, creating an environment where people can thrive and everyone is questioned.

Everyone playing better, from the tallest poppy to the lowest whipping boy.

Improvements through ultimatums and threats isn't much of a coaching philosophy anymore.
 
Old navy said:
Interesting today on Sen they were talking about Gibbs playing under Ratten and how Ratten played him off half back to give him more space to use his kicking skills.
Can't remember who said it but they said something along the lines of Gibbs was a clearance beast at SANFL level as a junior and that's were he plays his best footy.
No doubt we haven't done Gibbs any favours in development him in the past, but in the last month his playing even better football then he did in 2014. Seems to have harder edge to his game and has stepped up big time when we really needed it.
Click to expand...

I really hate how poorly we seemed to develop Gibbs and Walker in particular.

Gibbs was a midfield and clearance gun at SANFL level as a junior and was known for kicking goals...just like he is now. What did we do? Play him across HB.

Walker also was a midfield/wingman gun known for his running power, x-factor and speccy taking ability. All good attacking traits. What did we do? Play him in defence where he was average at best.
 
Farktherest said:
I really hate how poorly we seemed to develop Gibbs and Walker in particular.

Gibbs was a midfield and clearance gun at SANFL level as a junior and was known for kicking goals...just like he is now. What did we do? Play him across HB.

Walker also was a midfield/wingman gun known for his running power, x-factor and speccy taking ability. All good attacking traits. What did we do? Play him in defence where he was average at best.
Click to expand...
Walker must look back on his career and curse his bad luck that he landed at Carlton.
 
Old navy said:
Interesting today on Sen they were talking about Gibbs playing under Ratten and how Ratten played him off half back to give him more space to use his kicking skills.
Can't remember who said it but they said something along the lines of Gibbs was a clearance beast at SANFL level as a junior and that's were he plays his best footy.
No doubt we haven't done Gibbs any favours in development him in the past, but in the last month his playing even better football then he did in 2014. Seems to have harder edge to his game and has stepped up big time when we really needed it.
Click to expand...

Our backline was flaky and Judd was our clearance player.

From memory Gibbs was sent their because we needed someone who could ready the play, take a mark and make good decisions.

Our whole midfield set up revolved around Judd and clearances .

I not be lamenting we chose to play Gibbs I the backline, I just wish we had another Doc or Plowman or Wietering back then.
 

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passmark said:
Our backline was flaky and Judd was our clearance player.

From memory Gibbs was sent their because we needed someone who could ready the play, take a mark and make good decisions.

Our whole midfield set up revolved around Judd and clearances .

I not be lamenting we chose to play Gibbs I the backline, I just wish we had another Doc or Plowman or Wietering back then.
Click to expand...
I wish we had a Bolton back then.
 
Farktherest said:
I really hate how poorly we seemed to develop Gibbs and Walker in particular.

Gibbs was a midfield and clearance gun at SANFL level as a junior and was known for kicking goals...just like he is now. What did we do? Play him across HB.

Walker also was a midfield/wingman gun known for his running power, x-factor and speccy taking ability. All good attacking traits. What did we do? Play him in defence where he was average at best.
Click to expand...

I know. Dumb stuff like regularly playing Gibbs as run with player or tagger, with logic being the good player his following will show him where he needs to go to get the ball. Gibbs has never had trouble finding the footy.

Walker remember the day he debut. The kid looked Judd like playing running through the midfield @PP.
The best consistent footy his played was as a lead up forward kicked 55 goals and was a nightmare of a match up for the opps. Has even said forward is his preferred position.
Where did they persist on playing him, down back. Why ? because we were in rabble mode.
Thank the gods the club is now in Bolton mode.
I just hope Walkers body comes good and gives him a few years of injury free footy. He deserves some luck and success.
 
Old navy said:
I know. Dumb stuff like regularly playing Gibbs as run with player or tagger, with logic being the good player his following will show him where he needs to go to get the ball. Gibbs has never had trouble finding the footy.

Walker remember the day he debut. The kid looked Judd like playing running through the midfield @PP.
The best consistent footy his played was as a lead up forward kicked 55 goals and was a nightmare of a match up for the opps. Has even said forward is his preferred position.
Where did they persist on playing him, down back. Why ? because we were in rabble mode.
Thank the gods the club is now in Bolton mode.
I just hope Walkers body comes good and gives him a few years of injury free footy. He deserves some luck and success.
Click to expand...
I do remember Walker playing some All Australian quality football across halfback though... before an injury... and then later a few years ago. He's always been a good utility. Super player at his peak.
 
passmark said:
Our backline was flaky and Judd was our clearance player.

From memory Gibbs was sent their because we needed someone who could ready the play, take a mark and make good decisions.

Our whole midfield set up revolved around Judd and clearances .

I not be lamenting we chose to play Gibbs I the backline, I just wish we had another Doc or Plowman or Wietering back then.
Click to expand...

We had Scotland and Simmo and Walker to help out down back. Gibbs should have been in the midfield with Juddy and Murphy, helping share the workload.
It took ages for Bryce to be played as a full time mid and his clearance and contested work has always been underrated.
It seems that a lot of people viewed Gibbs as soft because he would regularly wait outside the packs for someone to feed the footy out to him.
May be that was role he was told to play, stay on the outside of the contests to maximise he kicking skills
It very clear his not soft and can be a bit of a beast around the clearances and has no trouble winning his own footy.
 
gandaal said:
Walker must look back on his career and curse his bad luck that he landed at Carlton.
Click to expand...
He's also been real unlucky with injuries. My memories of Walker from 2003-2009 are hazy at best, but he became really handy after that and then the team and his own body fell apart again. Never got the impression he was born to play in the middle, but he definitely has always had skills to play anywhere. His career was probably hurt a hell of a lot by the mess we were in from 2003-2007. Some players can come in and play superbly in poor situations while some need a healthy environment. Walker's career probably would have benefited if he came into a far more stable environment. Reminds of Jack Watts in a way. He's starting to play good footy finally in a totally different environment to the toxic ones down at Dee land in the past, but he'll probably look back and wonder what could've been if he started elsewhere.

As for Gibbs he's always been one of the most unfairly maligned players in the competition. It pisses me off looking back and remembering we had two jets with the ball in Simpson and Scotland down there yet we felt the need to play Gibbs there for the majority of time from 2007-2011/2012. He was given a role to rack up ball and use his foot skills down there and he did that pretty well. In the spells he played in the middle in 2011-2013 it was blatantly obvious he knew what he was doing in the midfield. Might not be a Cripps type extractor but he has superb vision, evasiveness and footy smarts that he uses to set up play well and get his own pill. Clearly shown he can find the goals too.

I really hope we can turn things around really quickly because it will really sadden me and anger me if blokes like Gibbs and Murphy (both unfairly targeted by idiots for years) who have shown great loyalty to a club that has gone in circles don't get to have another crack in September.

passmark said:
Our backline was flaky and Judd was our clearance player.

From memory Gibbs was sent their because we needed someone who could ready the play, take a mark and make good decisions.

Our whole midfield set up revolved around Judd and clearances .

I not be lamenting we chose to play Gibbs I the backline, I just wish we had another Doc or Plowman or Wietering back then.
Click to expand...
Still had Scotland there and they gave Scotland runs in the middle. It really pisses me off looking back. Especially considering how much close attention Judd got. Murphy, Gibbs and Judd would've been a headache for teams. Instead it was rely on Judd to do everything and hope that Murphy could play well too.

It's only early days but we can already see how much more unpredictable we are in the middle with Gibbs, Murphy and Cripps in there. Murphy has gone from being the number one tagging option to probably the third now and that is a huge help.

A big thing in this rebuild needs to be ensuring we draft players and maximise their ability. No more experimenting and wasting genuine talent.
 
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You guys make it sound like Gibbs never played in the midfield till this year. That's not the case, he has been used there since his second year, he went into the backline to sure things up and set things up.

if you're telling me now our back half didn't need help in some of those seasons you must have been watching another team.

Gibbs is playing terrific footy now but let's not make this "poor Bryce"
story . This is about a team playing well because of good coaching , not just Bryce.
 

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Old navy said:
I know. Dumb stuff like regularly playing Gibbs as run with player or tagger, with logic being the good player his following will show him where he needs to go to get the ball. Gibbs has never had trouble finding the footy.
Click to expand...

The logic wasn't about developing Gibba, the logic was "****, we need someone to do this job/role to win the game, who can we rely on?"
And it wasn't just half-back roles. Ratten used him to do jobs that nobody else could do, and it helped us win, but it was detrimental to Bryce's development.
 
Kramer1 said:
Enigmatic. Not sure what flick has been switched but the difference between his first and last four games is astounding.

Hunting the ball, involved at stoppages, kicking the clutch goals, creating for others, tackling with intent...and all the key stats back it up. Certainly been our most important over that stretch.

And the crawling over PA players to get to Simmo after the win is a side to Bryce I haven't seen enough of. Loved it.

Really intrigued to see how he goes against the physical North mids. Take the game on or back in the shell?
Click to expand...
Historically, in 9 games against North, he has his lowest disposal average (19.22 - against everyone else he's over 20 per game). Has kicked 9 goals against them and has 44 tackles.
His last game against them in round 18, 2014 (arguably he's in the same form now) was 27 touches (14 contested), 2 goals, 5 tackles and 7 clearances.
 
Old navy said:
Interesting today on Sen they were talking about Gibbs playing under Ratten and how Ratten played him off half back to give him more space to use his kicking skills.
Can't remember who said it but they said something along the lines of Gibbs was a clearance beast at SANFL level as a junior and that's were he plays his best footy.
No doubt we haven't done Gibbs any favours in development him in the past, but in the last month his playing even better football then he did in 2014. Seems to have harder edge to his game and has stepped up big time when we really needed it.
Click to expand...
I tend to agree. Would rather him on a wing than HBF, but he does have elite foot skills (most of the time) and does need that little bit of space to get the best out of it. When playing in tight around stoppages, he's good at getting the ball, but tends to panic and bang it on the boot blindly. I think he can play a good combo of inside and outside work.
 
TheSheik said:
The thing is, what has made him fire up all of a sudden ??

It is my strong belief (and I have nothing to back up this claim) that he has been told, in no uncertain terms, that unless he delivers to his optimal level every week, he will be dropped to the seconds until such time that he does start delivering. Further to that, if he ends up being in the seconds he will find himself in a new environment next year.

Gibbs is a player who prides himself on never playing seconds so that sort of threat would certainly be something he would want to avoid because he wouldn't like the embarrassment of being dropped. He has been quite comfortable at Carlton and if he was traded elsewhere, he would be under more intense scrutiny than ever before.

I'm sure Bolton would of spoken to all of the players individually and laid out what his expectations of them all was. With Gibbs, I reckon Bolton would not have minced his words and would of spelt out quite strongly that Gibbs had a higher level of demands being placed on him due to his seniority, contract status & overall ability.

Thankfully, he has responded and we are the beneficiaries. All he has to do now is 'maintain the rage' because those threats are there to stay.

Good coaching by Bolton, good response (for now) by Gibbs.
Click to expand...
From speculation to pure fiction. All sorts of other explanations possible but you chose one that denigrates the player and his achievement this year. Why not just appreciate that he is delivering this year?
 

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Past Bryce Gibbs

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