Opinion Lions list analysis, Strengths, weaknesses, targets for 2017

[SRH17]

He did seem to step up towards the end of last year

Still soft as butter

 

[lionshine]

I expect Cutler to be one of our better players in 2017 and beyond. Provides us with so much attacking drive with his speed/line breaking ability and his long kick. I love his willingness and confidence to take the game on as well. Hopefully he can have an injury free year in 2017 and if he can consistently play at his best I think he will start to gain recognition league wide as a quality, young player. His game against the Suns at the Gabba in 2016 was probably the best of his career. He found the footy, gained meterage, and kicked 2 goals. Would love to see him produce games like that week in, week out and I definitely think he has it in him.

 

[jjami15]

Cutler, like so many our younger player, shows that he can play. He looks to understand the requirements needed to become a player in regards to his professionalism it's all about between his ears and taking that next step. For so long we've heard the 'we are young excuse' and as I also said of McStay with that now not cutting it hopefully we see continued improvement for Cutler. Having the off-field staff we have now his footy education would have improved you would think.

 

[Len S]

Might cause some problems going in but it would come back out twice as fast.I don't think we can get away with playing 3 talls.If McStay can't command a position in our back line he doesn't get a game IMO.

McStay is a very similar type and style of player to Pert and Roos...both of who were played on the wing early on, prior to moving in to key posts.McStay is one of the best 2 or 3 disposers of the football on the list.He would be damaging in this role.All he needs is confidence.. agree with Schwabby on this.Like all our young players, he has suffered greatly from the lack of leadership,mentoring and the remotest hint of development and game plans.

 

[Fatcat08]

I'm interested in how cutler will go with the direct style of feedback leading teams advocates. In the few reserves games I watched in the past 2-3 years he's been none too happy, almost to the point of ignoring feedback from other players and coaching staff during games. I'd imagine he's gotten over that in the last year or so and thats manifested in his development, just hoping he embraces it further rather than goes back to old habits of thinking others are wrong in their feedback.

I really like him as a player and he's got a skillset that you don't see from a lot of guys in the league with his sort of height. The pace and kicking skills certainly make him a tough matchup in our back half. If he can become a Heath Shaw style run and carry rebounder it makes him a real weapon when you're doing that at 192cm. I see the name Kade Kolodjashnij bandied around the traps as someone who could be that tall running defender who makes the next step this coming season, personally I see Cutler not far behind him.

 

[mikey127]

27. Darcy Gardiner

 

[jackess]

27. Darcy Gardiner

Strength: whipping boy

I think once we play a team defence he'll be invaluable to our backline. Unfortunately our back 6 were put under way too much pressure this year and he didn't handle it well.

 

[Dalions]

Darcy probably needs to back himself a bit more and take some marks. He tends to get himself into a spoiling mindset and even when he has metres on an opponent he will spoil rather than mark.
When playing on the smaller guys he tends to be a bit slow and when on the bigger guys he is probably a bit short. He is a bit of an in between size for key position these days.
Needs to have a big year. Having said that though, I think he will play regular senior footy.
But i do rate him a bit more than others i think.

 

[knaf]

Strengths: Aggressive and physical approach

Weakness : not always being able to channel aggressive and physical approach appropriately

I like him.

 

[matwt73]

Strength: whipping boy

I think once we play a team defence he'll be invaluable to our backline. Unfortunately our back 6 were put under way too much pressure this year and he didn't handle it well.

Great passion, hard not to like his attitude, but there is the sneaking suspicion that it masks (or fails to mask) some on field deficiencies and a pretty low ceiling. Darcy is not a player I am expecting to see a great deal of personal improvement from over 2017, though I do agree with jackess that he will function much better in a more functional back line. I think he will be a useful role-player but will never get beyond a fringe 22 player. He is one that, as the team gets better, I might expect to get left behind.
Needs to channel his passion.

 

[jackess]

Great passion, hard not to like his attitude, but there is the sneaking suspicion that it masks (or fails to mask) some on field deficiencies and a pretty low ceiling. Darcy is not a player I am expecting to see a great deal of personal improvement from over 2017, though I do agree with jackess that he will function much better in a more functional back line. I think he will be a useful role-player but will never get beyond a fringe 22 player. He is one that, as the team gets better, I might expect to get left behind.
Needs to channel his passion.

People have said he's too slow to play small and too short to play tall but he still plays a vital role in being able to cover both but he has work on his strengths. When he plays tall he needs to be able to run off his opponent and be used when we rebound and when he plays small he has to drop off and go third up in marking contests.

 

[mikey127]

28. Lewis Taylor

 

[SizeMatters]

Taylor really needs to learn to stick tackles a lot better. I suspect it's a lot to do with technique more than anything.

 

[mikey127]

With Squizzy I know we will get comments about the whole running in circles thing. I wonder if that had to do with being unsure of the game plan.

 

[POBT]

I see Gardiner and Taylor as being at similar stages of their career. I think all of us agree that they've shown a bit at senior level - enough to be pencilled for round 1 spots IMO. The question in my mind is whether that's because we've got a really weak squad and that "showing something" is simply enough to get a game each week. While I'm not sure either would get a game at a better club based on exposed form, I also think that both might have come on a bit more if they were at stronger clubs. It is part of the vicious cycle of being a poor team that it is harder to develop young players in that environment and I think a lot of our players suffer from that.

I reckon Dizz and Squiz plateaued somewhat last year:

- Taylor looked bereft of confidence, fitness and clarity of role. For Taylor, I think the improvement will firstly come from finding a way to overcome his physical weaknesses. He's not the first slightly built short guy to play footy and so he needs to develop a workaround method of tackling and the ability to stay in a contest, not necessarily to make it a strength but instead to reduce it as a weakness. Right now, his lack of physicality is a real liability for us as he loses contests and drops off tackles with regularity. Too often last year that resulted in a rebound 50, allowed the opposition to break away from a stoppage or caused our zone to break down. I'm not concerned about the attacking side of his game because he's such a natural footballer but, like Mayes and a couple of others, he needs to learn a way to win or neutralise the contest when it's his turn. If that happens, I reckon his game will click into place pretty quickly.

- With Gardiner, his lack of genuine improvement is probably caused by a lack of preparation and footy continuity. It seems as though he's been either out with injury, returning from injury or playing with injury since his debut. That is not going to allow a player to build confidence in their game. I've said before that I hope he plays tall this year. I just don't see him suited to a small defender role and I'd really like to see him against tall forwards - if not the gorillas then perhaps the 194-196cm guys who are the next level down. I'd like him to build a bigger engine so he can move with a Darling or Gunston type and obviously, unless he's in a pure stopper role against the best tall forwards, he needs to add contested marking and perhaps a bit of offensive thrust to his game. Having said all of that, with his injury history to date, 22 games would be a great outcome and I'm pretty confident that natural improvement will come with that continuity.

 

[Jivlain]

With Squizzy I know we will get comments about the whole running in circles thing. I wonder if that had to do with being unsure of the game plan.

I think quite often we were a bit short on players in space too.

 

[dlanod]

I think quite often we were a bit short on players in space too.

We were also in on players a bit short too.

 

[WhiteLionFeva]

I think quite often we were a bit short on players in space too.

That was definitely an issue but I also think it was a style of play that proved successful for him at under rage level but was never going to cut it in the AFL - too much pressure and too little time and space generally. I still reckon with the right coaching he can develop a game that will suit. Definitely has the skills and just needs to learn how to use his evasive skills to advantage without overdoing it. The defensive pressure has been an issue with a lot of our players, not just Squizzy.

 

[Fatcat08]

- Taylor looked bereft of confidence, fitness and clarity of role. For Taylor, I think the improvement will firstly come from finding a way to overcome his physical weaknesses. He's not the first slightly built short guy to play footy and so he needs to develop a workaround method of tackling and the ability to stay in a contest, not necessarily to make it a strength but instead to reduce it as a weakness. Right now, his lack of physicality is a real liability for us as he loses contests and drops off tackles with regularity.

Pardon my cherry picking. When i watch him tackle I see his major issue in tackling is that he doesn't try to tackle like a smaller guy in that he tries to keep his legs planted on the ground and stop the tackler. He's just too slight to do this. He needs to focus on slowing down the guy with the ball at a minimum, which basically means he needs to almost leap into the guy he's tackling and leave his feet, put all his weight on the guy he's trying to stop. At worst case he's going to considerably slow down the guy he's tackling. That means instead of string to reverse the momentum of the bloke he's tackling, hes basically just holding on against his own bodyweight and reverse momentum.

Allan Langer used to do this sort of thing back in the day in Rugby league, he used himself almost as a a slow down barrier, rather than trying to stop the guy. Of course it works a bit differently with AFL but with so many people round the ball, hes likely to get help pretty quickly if he was to do something like this.

 

[SizeMatters]

The thing with Taylor is that he is just never really in a position to tackle that often. He gets about 2 or 3 missed tackles a game and maybe 1 tackle that he actually sticks. So lets say roughly 3-5 chances of a tackle throughout a whole game playing in his position is fairly weak output. That's what it seems like when I watch him play anyway. It's either his role to stay clear of opposition players/contests or he just doesn't read the play that well from a defensive stand point. I mean he does seagull nearly all his touches...

 

[jackess]

Taylor skirts around the outside of packs and avoids contests in general. This alone would mean he doesn't record many tackles per game even if he could land a tackle.

 

[POBT]

You're at your worst when you're trying to be provocative, SM.

 

[SizeMatters]

I think Taylor would benefit the most out of our list with the incoming coaching changes. A few tinkers here and there and we should have ourselves a decent little footballer. Just needs some consistency in his feedback from coaches after he had some let's just say unfavourable dealings with the past coaching panel.... Apparently anyway.

 

[SizeMatters]

You're at your worst when you're trying to be provocative, SM.

I'm not trying to cause any trouble here. Sorry to those who thought I was.

 

[xplo]

Squizzy certainly needs to be more annoying to opposition when they have the ball.

But he lost the keys to his game last year. He's low to the ground which is an advantage for picking it up, and his first 3-4 steps are very quick. If those steps were aimed towards our goal, he'd often be through 2/3rds of the defenders before they had a glove on him.

It doesn't solve all your problems, but it puts pressure on the remaining defenders in front of him. People over commit and stuff starts happening.

Unfortunately, he lost confidence and almost always rolled backwards after getting it, keeping all the defenders in front of him. Most of the time he'd end up basically 'tagging out' for someone else to try to get it forward. There's not much future in that.

Small guys who stay in the game aren't all quickest at their club - Harvey, Milne, Betts , Luke Power, etc - but they all do something in that first 2 seconds with the ball that defenders aren't expecting. An angle, a trap, a fake etc.

Squizzy needs to find that again. Reckon Fagan will help him.