Shooooltzey
Debutant
- Oct 22, 2021
- 111
- 431
- AFL Club
- Geelong
You guys are all looking at this the wrong way. It wasn't Sav's responsibility to kick goals in 2021. So judging him on his goal output is just completely ridiculous. The game has evolved and thinking that it is a forwards job to purely kick goals nowadays is an incredibly poor interpretation. If Scott was judging his performance based off his goals tally he should honestly be sacked.
A forwards job in the modern game is to create opportunities. You guys want him to be this intelligent leading forward who reliably finishes of the work of others up the field. There isn't anything wrong with that role but it certainly doesn't suit Sav's strengths and weaknesses.
Sav's role for the majority of this season was to position himself at the marking contest down the line and if the ball was kicked down the line it was his job to do everything in his power to get the ball to come to ground at a bare minimum whilst providing ruck minutes whilst Stanley needed a rest. And I believe he did a terrific job at doing this in 2021. There isn't much opportunity to kick goals doing this aside from taking huge pack marks inside 50.
Now what's so special about Sav which gives him the scope to become an elite forward and create many opportunities. Its his athleticism. I certainly don't think we have seen the best of Sav due to a lack of experience and injuries. However we have seen glimpses of a rare ability to leap and take huge pack marks or bring the ball to ground and follow it up bulldozing anyone in his path.
I certainly agree that he is far from an elite forward. But his goal tally isn't the thing I would be looking for him to develop in the next year or two. Firstly I would want to see him show of his athleticism more consistently and confidently and improve his decision making by hand after using is combination of size and athleticism to release the outside runners. Developing these areas would drastically increase the amount of scoring opportunities he is creating each game.
This is the reason why Scott has said publicly that he thinks Sav can be a really special player one day and the reason why GWS really wanted him to be involved in the Cameron trade. I would like to see us persist with him for at least 2 more seasons and hope we see some rapid development in that time. He has played 55 games and is going into his 6th season so now is the time we start to see him stand up. But wanting him out the door right now is an incredibly flawed opinion in my opinion.
A forwards job in the modern game is to create opportunities. You guys want him to be this intelligent leading forward who reliably finishes of the work of others up the field. There isn't anything wrong with that role but it certainly doesn't suit Sav's strengths and weaknesses.
Sav's role for the majority of this season was to position himself at the marking contest down the line and if the ball was kicked down the line it was his job to do everything in his power to get the ball to come to ground at a bare minimum whilst providing ruck minutes whilst Stanley needed a rest. And I believe he did a terrific job at doing this in 2021. There isn't much opportunity to kick goals doing this aside from taking huge pack marks inside 50.
Now what's so special about Sav which gives him the scope to become an elite forward and create many opportunities. Its his athleticism. I certainly don't think we have seen the best of Sav due to a lack of experience and injuries. However we have seen glimpses of a rare ability to leap and take huge pack marks or bring the ball to ground and follow it up bulldozing anyone in his path.
I certainly agree that he is far from an elite forward. But his goal tally isn't the thing I would be looking for him to develop in the next year or two. Firstly I would want to see him show of his athleticism more consistently and confidently and improve his decision making by hand after using is combination of size and athleticism to release the outside runners. Developing these areas would drastically increase the amount of scoring opportunities he is creating each game.
This is the reason why Scott has said publicly that he thinks Sav can be a really special player one day and the reason why GWS really wanted him to be involved in the Cameron trade. I would like to see us persist with him for at least 2 more seasons and hope we see some rapid development in that time. He has played 55 games and is going into his 6th season so now is the time we start to see him stand up. But wanting him out the door right now is an incredibly flawed opinion in my opinion.