Ainsworth and Petch over Schofield and Jetta in an elimination final is a real headscratcher.
Petch has looked awful, quite frankly, and Ainsworth is going to have to reprise his poor Masten imitation without an obvious tagging option. Obviously they’re not strictly like-for-like options, but we’ve been moving magnets around enough recently to show some pragmatism in team selection.
How Petch gets the nod over Jetta is beyond me, given that the club was willing to try Jetta up forward, he showed much more in that role than Petch has this season and only lost his spot through injury. Combine that with the fact that Petch struggles with decision making, pressure, defensive effort, tackling and intensity at the contest - pretty important things in finals footy - it beggars belief that he has been picked.
I’d love him to prove me wrong but I suspect we’ll see another ~8 touch, 1-2 tackle showing with some real perplexing kicks. In his 5 games this year he’s kicked 2 goals and laid 7 tackles. I appreciate that he was injured and is getting back into the swing of it but rolling the dice on him playing his first passable game of the year in a final is a risk I’d rather not take.
Petch has looked awful, quite frankly, and Ainsworth is going to have to reprise his poor Masten imitation without an obvious tagging option. Obviously they’re not strictly like-for-like options, but we’ve been moving magnets around enough recently to show some pragmatism in team selection.
How Petch gets the nod over Jetta is beyond me, given that the club was willing to try Jetta up forward, he showed much more in that role than Petch has this season and only lost his spot through injury. Combine that with the fact that Petch struggles with decision making, pressure, defensive effort, tackling and intensity at the contest - pretty important things in finals footy - it beggars belief that he has been picked.
I’d love him to prove me wrong but I suspect we’ll see another ~8 touch, 1-2 tackle showing with some real perplexing kicks. In his 5 games this year he’s kicked 2 goals and laid 7 tackles. I appreciate that he was injured and is getting back into the swing of it but rolling the dice on him playing his first passable game of the year in a final is a risk I’d rather not take.
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