Regarding youngsters:
Some people are on some strong sh|t if they expect the youngsters to perform well on consistent basis. These are inexperienced kids whose form will fluctuate from week to week, quarter to quarter. We seriously cannot expect the likes of Hentschel, Bock and Jericho to be strong contributors week in week out. Not even the talent at St. Kilda performed on consistent basis. If they did, Saints would have made the finals in the last 3 years. We are in this situation now because we failed to blood youngsters 2 years ago and now we are trying to cramp in as many as possible in a last roll of the dice attempt to fast track a rebuilding process.
We must play these kids and take the good with the bad. Do we expect Bock or Hentschel to come in and keep Lloyd scoreless or do we expect Jericho to get heap of possesions, marks and kick a bag of 5 + goals. This will take time. We have to accept the good and the bad. Personally, tonight I thought Bock did reasonably well. I was impressed with a couple of his contests. A couple of times he found him self opposed to Lloyd and he did a fantastic job of not letting Lloyd take a mark. He provided a bit of rebound out of the backline and managed to kick a goal. While Lucas kicked 3 on Hentschel, Trent still did a reasonable job. We probably have the most inexperinced backile in the league ATM and if midfield gets slaughtered, we are very vulnerable and expectedly so. Even when we have our best backline on the park and our midfield get beaten ourr backline will get beaten. The backline is as goos as the midfield and is things start falling apart in the midfield the backline will be under pressure. Personally, I thought the youngsters in the backline did a pretty good job considering the pressure they are under.
We have to be prepared to pay the youngsters and we will either sink or swim with them but one way or the other its a good move for the long term future of the club.