Regular readers will know of my non rating of Joe Daniher and our forward line in general, and again last night I thought he was terrible at defence and ok as a big forward......just ok.....The number of contests he doesn't even compete in is so disappointing.
Anyway I thought, as a conversation point here's what I would have done as coach, selector and football know all.
We should have not recruited Joe.
We should have saved our money instead for an A grade midfielder.
We should have moved the best marking big man in the league(Harris Andrews) to full forward, freeing Jack Payne to play key defence. So our defensive unit would be Payne, Adams, Darcy, Starce, Kiddy, Noah, Rich, Froggy.
Up forward Andrews would play out of the goal square, with two roaming forwards in McStay and Hippy taking marks on the wing and being targets down the line. Andrews would be so much better defensively than the setup we currently roll with. Andrews influence over guys like Charlie and other small forwards would be super positive.
Of course added to this we wouldn't be trying to create a new gun midfielder out of our current stocks, even though we may have one or two in the form of dev etc because we'd be in the market for that A grader with the Daniher cash. With Lyons, and Zorks getting to the end, we need to renew. We have some good internal talent but I would have gone for an A grade mid for Joe any day.
However, the horse has bolted and we've got Joe. I just hope he can kick some bags, tackle, lose the brain fart moments, contest marking contests, not fade out in big games etc and he can become the player his immense talent deserves. I hope to be proved wrong but to me he's a slightly improved version of his Essendon years.
Anyway I thought, as a conversation point here's what I would have done as coach, selector and football know all.
We should have not recruited Joe.
We should have saved our money instead for an A grade midfielder.
We should have moved the best marking big man in the league(Harris Andrews) to full forward, freeing Jack Payne to play key defence. So our defensive unit would be Payne, Adams, Darcy, Starce, Kiddy, Noah, Rich, Froggy.
Up forward Andrews would play out of the goal square, with two roaming forwards in McStay and Hippy taking marks on the wing and being targets down the line. Andrews would be so much better defensively than the setup we currently roll with. Andrews influence over guys like Charlie and other small forwards would be super positive.
Of course added to this we wouldn't be trying to create a new gun midfielder out of our current stocks, even though we may have one or two in the form of dev etc because we'd be in the market for that A grader with the Daniher cash. With Lyons, and Zorks getting to the end, we need to renew. We have some good internal talent but I would have gone for an A grade mid for Joe any day.
However, the horse has bolted and we've got Joe. I just hope he can kick some bags, tackle, lose the brain fart moments, contest marking contests, not fade out in big games etc and he can become the player his immense talent deserves. I hope to be proved wrong but to me he's a slightly improved version of his Essendon years.
