Delivery into forward 50

[the rotating forward]

Interesting to note who's had the most inside 50s (had to have had 25 or more):
Paul Medhurst 46 (ranked =6th in AFL)
Rhyce Shaw 42 (=13th)
Alan Didak 41 (17th)
Travis Cloke 40 (18th)
Ben Johnson 38 (=20th)
Dane Swan 36 (=24th)
Dale Thomas 32 (=47th)

Those in bold are the players who I think are the most damaging out of this group and would hit the most targets, yet not one of these players is in the top 3 at CFC for goal assists. More worrying is that 4 of the 7 (those not in bold - dane swan a bit stiff to be included but this yr hasnt been as good) have relatively poor disposal, an aspect you don't want your leading deliverers to have.

The three players who've had the most number of goal assists [Shane Obree (12), Scott Pendlebury (9) and Tarkyn Lockyer (8)] are not on this list. They are all midfielders, unlike most of those above, suggesting that most of these assists would have come from inside 50s. Thus it would suggest that those who are delivering the ball into the 50 are not doing their job well enough, and should be giving more to guys like obree, pendles and lockyer to enter the 50, or smarten up their act.

I know people will respond and say that i'm only talking about goal assists and excluding score assists (that's becuase i only have the goal assist figures), but the better the area kicked to and position of the man on the mark, the more chance players have of kicking goals. Thus it is once again an accurate measure on the quality of ball entering the forward 50.

If Collingwood can improve this area of their game, then I suspect that they could be extremely damaging going forward, feeding our plethora of goalkicking options with quality delivery, blasting teams away.

 

[hellfire]

Rhyce has really improved his disposal in the last two weeks, I've been thoroughly impressed. If he continues with it, I'll be more than happy for him to be delivering inside 50.

Re: the goal assists, Pendlebury is probably our best player at hitting up a target inside 50, so we definately need to work on getting the ball to him to deliver it. It probably has a lot to do with him being the 'in-traffic' extractor, who gives it to the runners like Rhyce, Johnson etc., who then kick long inside 50. I think we have shown recently how effective we are with fast movement on the rebound, and then kicking long inside 50, usually to a target running back. In this case, I'd prefer Medhurst, Didak and a few others doing the kicking. But when we've been slowed up, and we're forced to hit a target on the lead, I think the ball should be in the hands of Pendlebury and Leon.