Can you win without a Wakelin?

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Oct 12, 2007
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52,672
The Hills
AFL Club
Port Adelaide
With our proposed recruits it seems like we are going to go all out on the high defensive press and intercept marking game. Unless they develop significantly there aren't any KPD that I would be confident defending a 1v1 at a crucial time in a big game.

So the question is this.

Can you get good enough at the high press/intercept game that the occasional easy 1 on 1 goal out the back doesn't kill you?

Or do you still need a full back who can play one on one?

And if it's the latter can we develop on of our KPD into that? And who is most likely? Rat? Zerk? Marshall? Pasini?

On SM-G975F using BigFooty.com mobile app
 
The botched development and list strategy surrounding Howard will always rankle.

200cms, lightning quick for his size, won a spoils title (in NBA parlance) in just his third year with only 30 games under his belt, and was deemed promising enough to be handed the captaincy for a day.

49C08D26-2186-43EC-AE8B-6A0BA714DF68.jpeg

But instead of settling him in, allowing him to develop and polishing him up, he’s moved forward and back when not dropped, before understandably taking the bag to play elsewhere.

And in general the club and its apologists were happy to spotlight his flaws (he doesn’t intercept mark enough! he’s too error-prone!), despite labouring with an undersized defence that has struggled to deal with genuine height/one-on-one contests for literally years — capped by Ben Brown’s 10-goal bag, with Baby Larkey banging in 5 of his own.

So now we’re going to pay overs in salary and trade capital for Esava Ratugolea and Brandon Zerk-Thatcher — both of whom have huge question marks in that department?

The circus continues.
 

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