Originally posted by drexel
This also says to me he plays better without Wilson around. He seems to struggle crumbing at Wilsons feet because Wilson is too unpredictable sometimes. Haynes is a much better option as long as we have a CHF there aswell.
Maybe now that he is the last Matera, he is truly stepping up a notch to carry on the great Matera name.
He is in very good form atm, but i think the Wilson/Matera rule is a very long bow to draw- if anything, I would have thought Fido plays better when opposition players are double and triple teaming Willow.
If Matera won the coleman- well, it'd be unbelievable. Small forwards simply do not win it- to do so, he'd have to stay in excellent form and be lucky all year long. Currently, he definitely is on pace to win- 17 goals in 4 games is 4 and a quarter goals a game, which
theoretically would mean he'd be on track to kick about 93 for the season, which is undoubtedly a Coleman winning total- but it'd be a lot to expect him to stay in this sort of form all year. For me, I reckon the best way of measuring a small forward's game is their accuracy- if they are taking every opportunity they get, then they are doing their job- what impressed me about Fido yesterday is that he didn't just kick 5 goals, he kicked 5.1, including some very flukey shots.
On Haynes, I'm not quite sold yet. He does seem to have the attributes you'd expect of a decent FF, namely he's fast on the lead, a pretty safe pair of hands,and has a surprisingly long, surprisingly accurate kick. When you add to this his complete refusal to *ever* chase or tackle, yes he does look like your typical FF

. The only question for me is whether he's physically imposing enough- he frankly did not have that good game against the crows- his goals came late after the result was really beyond doubt. Personally, I like the idea of playing him as a second marking target in a full forward line composed of Matera, Wilson and Haynes, since at present I don't think he's big enough to physically dominate.