Max was critical in the GF, love his whole modus operandi, but how much has he left? Is this his last season? Age wise he's youngish. Body wise??
It's early days and he has a knack of making it by GF day.
Rookey won't last much longer, his body is showing signs of breaking down. Surprised that he managed to play as many games in the previous few seasons as he has - always seems to be picking up little niggles here and there.
I think it'll be interesting to see how he slots into the current forward setup once he returns (assuming Pods is still featuring). I think we've definitely missed his presence within the forward line, particular his pressure on opposition 'quarterbacks'. For all the talk surrounding the new forwards (Pods and Duncan), neither has picked up Rooke's slack. I'd argue that the addition of Pods/3 talls setup (pun unintended) maximizes the need for Rooke's role. The flipside to our new height advantage is the opportunity for an opposition defense to run off our forwards at will. Our talls (Moons, Hawkins, and Pods) and current mid-sized forwards (Dog, Duncan, even Chappy) won't help an awful lot in that regard. This problem is exacerbated by the absence of Varcoe, and the current rotation system between the midfield and forward line that many of our smalls are involved in at the moment (Byrnes, Ablett, Chappy at times - their primary roles aren't as well defined in a defensive sense while in the forward half).
And this is all without taking into account his ability to both create space for the talls to lead into as well as split contests to create crumbing opportunities for the smalls.