Heath Shaw's role

[shawthing09]

A lot of people have asked for him to be moved to a wing or midfield. I don't think he is clean enough in the hands and at ground level for this. I do think he is too valuable to have been lead away from the ball all day.

I think the solution is pretty simple. Watch how Hawthorn and Hodge handled it when Geelong tried to get Hodge's opponent to lead off him. Hodge just directed one of the other flankers to go with him and stayed in the defensive 50 and took the loose man. It allowed Hodge to play the role Heath plays for us without letting his opponent take him away from the play. The worst case scenario was his opponent would take a mark 70ish out on the flank and see Hodge on one of the other fowards and someone like Mooney one out with his direct opponent.

Both Hodge and Heater are great readers of the ball coming in and excellent at coming across as the third man up, aswell as being great one on one. So the guy on the flank has the choice of kicking to a one on one with a very good defender. Or going to a big bloke with the likelyhood of Heater being the third man up to kill the contest. It also means if we do win the ball in our defensive 50 we can make use of Heater as the link man to set up the rebound.

 

[frantelle]

its not quite that simple
alot of times heaths opponent just went to the goal square

not to mention if we allow that to keep happening once the oppo get the ball attacking side of the centre they are guaranteed an inside 50, i dont like that idea. also teams can theoretically get favourable match ups for them by doing this. i think we should always try and put heath on a dangerous forward and if the oppo want to put someone else down there on him we just get someone else to match up on them, therefore crowding their forward line and opening ours a little more

 

[The 10th Letter]

It's an interesting comparison you're making and it brings our defensive setup into question. I think Heath suffered this year not entirely due to his own performance or inability to break tags, but largely because of our game plan and structure.

We've got a decent mix of developing defenders, but throughout the season we never seemed all that cohesive in our defensive 50. The loss of Clement last year, with Wakelin on his last legs and Presti unable to get on the park hasn't helped and as such the development and expectations of players such as O'Brien, Brown, Shaw and Goldsack have been fast tracked.

Our inability to shut down the prime key forwards of the competition - namely Franklin and Fevola - was blatantly obvious. This can be drawn back to a simple lack of options for these players along with a bad game plan for shutting down opposition forwards. No other team in the competition attempts to play Franklin and Fevola one out, yet we persisted with this method and paid the penalty.

As far as Shaw goes, rather than expecting him to develop the ability to break such tags, we should either reassess our strategy in the back half or reassess Heath's role because he's too good a player to sacrifice in such a manner. Heath gets taken out of the play as easilly as he does largely due to adherring to Malthouse's strict expectation of accountability.

As far as becoming our Luke Hodge, Heath has the potential but has a way to go before being at Hodge's level. At this stage we have to remember that Hodge plays that role as well as he does because he is capable in the air and on the ground; with his courage and elite disposal complimenting these attributes. Heath Shaw has comparable courage, but isn't as adept in the air and taking nothing away from Heath - who uses the ball exceptionally well more often than not - but his disposal isn't as damaging as Luke Hodge.

It's definitely an option though and currently there is no better outfit to model some of our tactics on than Hawthorn.