Ellis / Vlastuin / Conca

[The Goon]

Tough call to make, lot's of crystal ball gazing.

Conca looks the goods and his going down in the final showed just how important he's become to the team. Building a lot of consistency at the moment but not sure he'll ever be a game breaker. Having said that he reminds me of the type of player that never rates highly on media / opposition radars, but they always wonder after the game how he did so much damage. I wouldn't be surprised if he's the kind that's better at 34 than 24. If the boy can get his body right though he could well go up another level very quickly.

At times this year Ellis was indecently good for a second year player. Can't recall the games but several times I remember his outside run and carry tearing the opposition apart for a half or so. Get another pre season or two into him and he could be the fourth musketeer. He actually reminds me of watching Cotch back in 2010, you could see him do amazing things for a patch here and there but he just couldn't put it together for a game or season. Of the three I reckon he's shown the most promise so far.

Much as I love what I've seen from Flossy it's far too early to tell what he'll become. He's obviously got the smarts and intent, and seems to have that knack of making the right decisions, but after a flying start he was obviously worn down by the year. I can't wait to see him this year after another pre season under his belt.

 

[Hank Heavenly]

I would just look at the most successful midfield in recent history and hope we can get somthing similar...

Voss - Vlas
Aker - Dusty
Black - Cotch
Lappin - Ellis
Power - Conca

Plus we have lids....

 

[RunningBounce]

Conca I think could easily be the best out of all three (but so could the other two, yes i'm a fence sitter. How did you know?) and there are some pretty interesting stats that suggest he's likely to breakout this season should he *touchwood* stay on the track for the whole year. He was the only midfielder at the club to rate above average for goals, score assists and score involvements. He also won 53% of his disposals in the forward half and when he was involved in a chain the Tigers scored 35% of the time; once again the highest at the club (minimum five games played). I think he's unfairly maligned for his kicking both by opposition fans and Richmond fans and his retention rate inside 50 was 16th in the AFL and second best at Richmond so I think that idea is plain false. His inside work is something we badly missed against Carlton, ranked 7th at the club for clearances in the Home and Away games but recorded the third-highest scoring percentage of the top 10 so big ticks there as well. You can see how he's slowly moved from a half-back role to his current role through his efficiency and CP% stats.
---------Eff%----CP%
2011----77.4----32.2
2012----74.5----35.5
2013----65.4----38.6

tl;dr- good players, much upside.

Great post! Thanks.

Couldn't agree more with your thoughts on Flossy and Ellis, so I removed them from the quoted bit, to trim it down.

Two thoughts on the Conca analysis:

Given the stats on his 2013 season show he is good in the forward half, and we know he is good at pressure acts and inside grunt, could Conca be the Jake King upgrade?

I reckon the perception that his kicking can be better is at least partly due to the fact that he often grabs a contested footy and just bangs it long with a hurried kick that was characteristic of Tucky.

 

[Ralll]

All 3 could be great players for a long time with slightly different gamestyles, but I think Vlas has more strength across all facets of the game than the other 2.
So Vlas for me.

 

[TheAnt]

Great post! Thanks.
Given the stats on his 2013 season show he is good in the forward half, and we know he is good at pressure acts and inside grunt, could Conca be the Jake King upgrade?

I think if Banfield can re-capture some of his earlier form for the Lions he'd fit into that role

 

[NZ_Tiger]

For me it's Vlaustin. Poise is seriously underrated in Aussie Rules and any sport for that matter and he showed it in spades. I will take poise over pace every day of the week. You cannot teach that. He's close to my favourite player already. If one or both of Ellis and Conca become better players then all the better because I know for a fact that Tigger will be a gun.

But as THE_GUN said, if guys like Helbig, McDonough etc come one, then we're really in business. I really like the looks of McDonough. I was really surprised they dropped him after his debut game last year. I thought he put in a really solid game and deserved another week despite it being close to finals. I'm sure they had their reasons. Do yourselves a favour and check out the video about him on the RFC website.
http://www.richmondfc.com.au/video/2014-01-08/mcdonoughs-plan-for-2014

When they put Kade Simpson on him, the swung to Cartlon. Was sad we didn't use him in the GWS game as that would have given him a decent shot at players at a similar stage to himself.

Malthouse certainly exploited his first game. Cunning old bugger.

 

[CotchIsKing]

The great thing about these three and in fact a lot of our mids is that they're not locked into a position.

Vlastuin obviously followed the path this year of Ellis in 2012 and Conca in 2011 playing off half-back and I think he graduated so he'll be able to receive a place in the midfield for this year. To me he's more of a Hodge then anything. Excellent reader of the play, was ranked seventh at the club for intercept possessions (even though he missed 5 games) and then his composure was superb; when he was involved in a chain we scored 28% of the time which was the second-highest of any defender at the club (I'm going to assume Houli is first). He also went at 66% disposal efficiency under physical pressure which is the most of any player at Richmond who averaged at least 15 disposals, to underline this Cotchin went at 39% under physical pressure. He also was ranked elite by Champion Data for applying pressure- ranked 11th in pressure acts per game of any general defender to play at least 10 games. We've really landed a beauty in him and he's obviously a natural leader.

Ellis is a true outside player for the moment but obviously is working his guts out to build his inside game. However he does use his running capacity to full advantage by gaining space and burning off players which made him a great link-up/overlap player. Ranked second at the club for marks, third for uncontested marks and fourth for effective kicks after round 5. I think although he needs to improve his inside game for him to shake a tag, it could be best for him to remain as a wingman just because of the spread he provides us with. Against North we had no Houli and it was kinda even early on and then Ellis went down and our overlap run just got utterly shut-down with Hine dominating Lids, so he's super important structure wise.

Conca I think could easily be the best out of all three (but so could the other two, yes i'm a fence sitter. How did you know?) and there are some pretty interesting stats that suggest he's likely to breakout this season should he *touchwood* stay on the track for the whole year. He was the only midfielder at the club to rate above average for goals, score assists and score involvements. He also won 53% of his disposals in the forward half and when he was involved in a chain the Tigers scored 35% of the time; once again the highest at the club (minimum five games played). I think he's unfairly maligned for his kicking both by opposition fans and Richmond fans and his retention rate inside 50 was 16th in the AFL and second best at Richmond so I think that idea is plain false. His inside work is something we badly missed against Carlton, ranked 7th at the club for clearances in the Home and Away games but recorded the third-highest scoring percentage of the top 10 so big ticks there as well. You can see how he's slowly moved from a half-back role to his current role through his efficiency and CP% stats.
---------Eff%----CP%
2011----77.4----32.2
2012----74.5----35.5
2013----65.4----38.6

tl;dr- good players, much upside.

Outstanding post.

 

[bigange]

I've got the highest hopes for Vlaustin. Reckon he could become an absolute star of the competition.

Conca will be a better than average inside mid.

Ellis on his way to becoming a very, very good player.

But Vlas just looks to have those little attributes all of the stars have.

We're bloody lucky to have all three of them !!!

 

[theflea]

Great post! Thanks.

Couldn't agree more with your thoughts on Flossy and Ellis, so I removed them from the quoted bit, to trim it down.

Two thoughts on the Conca analysis:

Given the stats on his 2013 season show he is good in the forward half, and we know he is good at pressure acts and inside grunt, could Conca be the Jake King upgrade?

I reckon the perception that his kicking can be better is at least partly due to the fact that he often grabs a contested footy and just bangs it long with a hurried kick that was characteristic of Tucky.

I actually think he does the opposite in that he tries to thread the needle too much.

 

[nut]

Ellis is the modern day midfielder....

 

[RunningBounce]

I actually think he does the opposite in that he tries to thread the needle too much.

Yeah, I've seen him turn a few over doing that too. Usually those dinky, off-a-step, centring passes into F50. If he starts nailing them...

Back to the topic of Ellis vs Vlaustin vs Conca, I'd be interested to hear opinions on who is the best user of the footy.

Ellis, for mine. He kicks some amazing 40m passes that are pinpoint accurate and never get higher than 6 feet from the ground.

 

[Calcium Man]

Yeah, I've seen him turn a few over doing that too. Usually those dinky, off-a-step, centring passes into F50. If he starts nailing them...

Back to the topic of Ellis vs Vlaustin vs Conca, I'd be interested to hear opinions on who is the best user of the footy.

Ellis, for mine. He kicks some amazing 40m passes that are pinpoint accurate and never get higher than 6 feet from the ground.

Vlastuin is the best kick simply because he is best decision maker of the 3 of them. Just always makes the best decisions.

 

[Hipster Doofus]

It's brilliant to see that they're so many varying opinions among supporters, shows how they all bring something different and vital to the team.

Conca has probably been the most underwhelming, but that's only because of the way Ellis and Floss kinda burst out of nowhere last season. That being said Conca is probably the most crucial to team success because he's an inside scrapper but also a hard runner. With the deft skills that he occasionally shows when he gets a sustained run at it, injuries permitting; then I can see Conca becoming the most complete midfielder and most crucial out of these three young stars to our push for sustained contention at the flag. He does everything you want from a midfielder, and he's as vital a cog as any moving forward.

I love Ellis's outside run, great mark, terrific kick, even better work ethic Pushes himself further than most, loves the club as well.

Vlastuin is just all class and grunt, leadership personified. I'm not sure what his best role is or will be, but he's got the poise to be effective at whatever challenges the club throws at him, as exemplified by his performances in the back pocket and wing last year when he shocked us all with his willingness, skills and desire.

I love all three of them.

 

["The Roar Is Back"]

IMO Ellis was our 4th best midfielder behind Cotchin , Jackson , Lids and I expect to be close if not only behind Cotchin by the end of 2014 .
His 2013 season playing on a wing was as good as season we have seen from a RFC player for some time and is a position we have struggled with .
Quickly rising in my favorite list .
For mine Vlas and Conca are yet to make the transition into genuine midfielder , due to age and injury respectively and for that reason I think it is premature to judge their standing .

 

[theflea]

We learnt that the dees 3k time trial time was I think about 3.37m( I remember the 37sec bit the 3m might be wrong.). I assume ellis is our winner, so does anyone know what times he does?

 

[Top_4_Tiger]

Back to the topic of Ellis vs Vlaustin vs Conca, I'd be interested to hear opinions on who is the best user of the footy.

Vlastuin is the best kick over all distances IMO.

Conca has shown moments of brilliance and moments of clangers, not too dissimilar to Shane Edwards (with a higher base level and hit rate).

Ellis is more conservative, safe, straight long 45 metre kicks, but hasn't shown as much creativity as the other two yet and also is prone to the occasional blind hook kick.

 

[TheAnt]

We learnt that the dees 3k time trial time was I think about 3.37m( I remember the 37sec bit the 3m might be wrong.). I assume ellis is our winner, so does anyone know what times he does?

Every 100 metres would have to go within around 2 seconds of world record 100 metre sprint time so I doubt it haha. It was 9.37 i'm pretty sure. Maybe RFC_Official knows Ellis' time?

 

[sregit]

Vlastuin is the best kick over all distances IMO.

Conca has shown moments of brilliance and moments of clangers, not too dissimilar to Shane Edwards (with a higher base level and hit rate).

Ellis is more conservative, safe, straight long 45 metre kicks, but hasn't shown as much creativity as the other two yet and also is prone to the occasional blind hook kick.

I am glad you mentioned Shane Edwards as I think if a couple of the younger midfield types come on, then it may be Edwards aswell as King who may find themselves replaced. What do others think? If RFC don't have at least another two or three players come into the midfield or small forward roles then we will not improve enough to get to the elite status.

I don't know which midfield types will break into the side but it must happen or we stagnate.

 

[captain cotch 9]

Ellis is a 150m player

 

[TheAnt]

Ellis is a 150m player

So he gets the ball in the back-pocket of the MCG and kicks a goal?

 

[El Tigre]

So he gets the ball in the back-pocket of the MCG and kicks a goal?

Like Grigg is a 150m player. Kicks it back 50m, runs 25m back. Gets the pass back, kicks it 50m to the opposite wing. Runs sideways 25m. Gets it back and then handballs it off.

(Griggs not that bad, just we have a team improving around him)

 

[theflea]

Every 100 metres would have to go within around 2 seconds of world record 100 metre sprint time so I doubt it haha. It was 9.37 i'm pretty sure. Maybe RFC_Official knows Ellis' time?

Ha of course my bad!! I couldn't remember what the minute number was but the 3 popped into my head!

 

[captain cotch 9]

So he gets the ball in the back-pocket of the MCG and kicks a goal?

Yer righto smart arse. By a 150m player I mean when he gets it he moves the ball a long way. Either by run and carry or a booming kick.

 

[JAKLAUGHING]

And when he runs to the inter change bench as well...

 

[TheAnt]

Yer righto smart arse. By a 150m player I mean when he gets it he moves the ball a long way. Either by run and carry or a booming kick.

Haha I assumed so, settle.