Unofficial Preview North v St Kilda, round 1, 2020 (TODAY)

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KillaKanga

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Would be great to lift our 'run' (possibly not enough wins to call it a run yet but . . . ) to 4 wins in a row. Saints haven't beaten us since 2017. Also keen to stretch our run against Carlton to double figures. Hell in a perfect world we'd add +1 against all of them.

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Tarka_Dal

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Barring injuries, I would consider the following players a lock for round 1:

B Tarrant Williams

HB Pittard Daw

C Polec Higgins Dumont

HF Ziebell Larkey Thomas

F Brown Zurhaar

R Goldstein Cunnington Simpkin

I Anderson
 
Barring injuries, I would consider the following players a lock for round 1:

B Tarrant Williams

HB Pittard Daw

C Polec Higgins Dumont

HF Ziebell Larkey Thomas

F Brown Zurhaar

R Goldstein Cunnington Simpkin

I Anderson

I reckon Bailey Scott is a lock.
 
Barring injuries, I would consider the following players a lock for round 1:

B Daw Tarrant Williams

HB Pittard CHB Atley

C Polec Higgins Dumont

HF Ziebell Larkey Thomas

F Forward pocket Brown Zurhaar

R Goldstein Cunnington Simpkin

I
Fixed
Up for grabs 2 spots in the 18 plus 4 bench spots
CHB: Walker/Durdin
Forward pocket: Hosie/Turner/Garner/Mahony

4 bench spots
1 rotating 7th defender: McDonald/Ahern/Wood
2 mids: LDU/Jed/Bonar
1 rotating forward: Hosie/Turner/Garner/Mahony

Polec touch and go for round 1 opens the door for Hall
 
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Pykie

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I'm not sure you could definitively say any of Tarrant, Ziebell, Polec or Dumont are locks at the moment...

I'd be inclined to be leaving Polec out of most sides at the moment and I think if Ziebell wasn't the skipper, he'd be in the same boat.

A little over a month to the start of the season, Ziebell and Polec basically have had no training to this point...

Jack isn't the naturally fittest bloke in the world either...
 
B: Williams Tarrant Daw
HB: Pittard Walker Atley
C: Dumont Higgins Polec
HF: Ziebell Larkey Anderson
F: Thomas Brown Zurharr
R: Goldstein Cunnington Simpkin
I: MacMillan McDonald LDU Turner
E: Bonar Hall Garner Scott

That bench is just a gut feel based on coach bias and games played.
 

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Only 6 weeks to go and now I am starting to get toey.

A VERY rough round 1 draft:

FB: Geary - Carlisle - Wilkie
FF: Ziebell - Brown - Thomas

HB: Roberton - Howard - Webster
HF: Garner - Larkey - Zurhaar

C: Hill - Ross - Billings
C: Polec - Higgins - Dumont

HF: Gresham - Battle - Butler
HB: McDonald - Daw - Atley

F: Membrey - Ryder - Lonie
B: Pittard - Tarrant - Williams

R: Marshall - Steele - Hannebery
R: Goldstein - Cunnington - Simpkin

I: Dunstan - Clark - Jones - Savage
I: Anderson - Davies Uniake - Hall - MacMillan/Bonar
 
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Nice work.

Line by line saints remind me of us, a lot will depend on "which version" of some players turns up.

FB: Geary - Carlisle - Wilkie
FF: Ziebell - Brown - Thomas


Ziebell comes in underdone, Geary is a professional. Which Carlisle will turn up? On his day can go toe to toe with Brown. Wilkie had a good debut season but hopefully Thomas proves too slippery.

HB: Roberton - Howard - Webster
HF: Garner - Larkey - Zurhaar


Howard is an unknown to me and the hope would be Larkey is too strong. Roberton and Webster are both decent players capable of running off our guys if they're not respected.

In turn Garner and Zurhaar would make their lives very hard if there's volume of supply coming in.

C: Hill - Ross - Billings
C: Polec - Higgins - Dumont


Dumont-Ross nil all. Hill-Polec both unaccountable skillful runners - nil all. Higgins-Billings classy movers, Billings has improved his accumulation in the last year. Very even line.

HF: Gresham - Battle - Butler
HB: McDonald - Daw - Atley


Gresham too good for Luke if he gets going imo. Battle unlikely to line up forward. Atley should be able to cover Butler.

F: Membrey - Ryder - Lonie
B: Pittard - Tarrant - Williams


Ryder v3.0 is an unknown. Pittard and Williams will need to be on their game with Membrey and Lonie both capable of finding a decent amount of opportunity.

R: Marshall - Steele - Hannebery
R: Goldstein - Cunnington - Simpkin


On paper this line in our favour but who knows. Marshall a good emerging player who gave Goldie a bit of trouble last year. Cunners a classier player than Steele but the latter a solid inside mid himself. Which Hannebery will it be? For that matter, will Jy fulfill his preseason reputation?

I: Dunstan - Clark - Jones - Savage
I: Anderson - Davies Uniake - Hall - MacMillan/Bonar

Clark = LDU, Jones>Hall (for reliability of result), Anderson>Dunstan, Savage > Bonar (on demonstrated output) OR Savage = Macmillan.

The lineups are reasonable even imo. The points of difference should it go our way are Goldstein's more advanced stage in the ruck and the physicality posed by Garner and Zurhaar. Plus Daw immediately picking up where he left off in 2018.

The factors that could swing it the other way might be unexpectedly strong showings from Ryder and Howard 1st up in their key positions plus Butler and Lonie getting off the leash due to our defence not concentrating.
 

Pykie

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Nice work.

Line by line saints remind me of us, a lot will depend on "which version" of some players turns up.



Ziebell comes in underdone, Geary is a professional. Which Carlisle will turn up? On his day can go toe to toe with Brown. Wilkie had a good debut season but hopefully Thomas proves too slippery.



Howard is an unknown to me and the hope would be Larkey is too strong. Roberton and Webster are both decent players capable of running off our guys if they're not respected.

In turn Garner and Zurhaar would make their lives very hard if there's volume of supply coming in.



Dumont-Ross nil all. Hill-Polec both unaccountable skillful runners - nil all. Higgins-Billings classy movers, Billings has improved his accumulation in the last year. Very even line.



Gresham too good for Luke if he gets going imo. Battle unlikely to line up forward. Atley should be able to cover Butler.



Ryder v3.0 is an unknown. Pittard and Williams will need to be on their game with Membrey and Lonie both capable of finding a decent amount of opportunity.



On paper this line in our favour but who knows. Marshall a good emerging player who gave Goldie a bit of trouble last year. Cunners a classier player than Steele but the latter a solid inside mid himself. Which Hannebery will it be? For that matter, will Jy fulfill his preseason reputation?



Clark = LDU, Jones>Hall (for reliability of result), Anderson>Dunstan, Savage > Bonar (on demonstrated output) OR Savage = Macmillan.

The lineups are reasonable even imo. The points of difference should it go our way are Goldstein's more advanced stage in the ruck and the physicality posed by Garner and Zurhaar. Plus Daw immediately picking up where he left off in 2018.

The factors that could swing it the other way might be unexpectedly strong showings from Ryder and Howard 1st up in their key positions plus Butler and Lonie getting off the leash due to our defence not concentrating.


Good summary.

The biggest advantage for us most weeks is going to be Larkey...

Having watched a lot of him this pre-season, he's ready to explode, I don't think he's too far away from reaching something similar to Brown's level.

Which as a result will probably see Brown drop a bit statistically as I think the ball is going to go through Larkey more and Brown less than it has been.

Teams will continue to play their #1 defender on Brown, when actually I think Larkey probably proves to be the more dangerous all-round forward in our side in 2020.

I can see Brown kicking 55-60 goals this year and Larkey kicking 45+, I think he's primed for that good of a year. (That puts him up there with Finlayson, Walker and Membrey statistically from last year) and probably the best #2 KPF forward in the comp along with the Darling/Kennedy combo.


If Ryder has pulled his finger out and Hill as an outside option in behind a reasonbly strong contested ball side (Steele, Ross etc) is what concerns me from that StK side.
 

Pykie

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I only considered Tef's proposed lineup but yeh if fully fit Bailey is in. In this example at the expense of any bench player except for Jed.

Yeah, I don't see Anderson and Bonar playing in the same side, I'd be opting for Scott as a point of difference for a run and carry option off the bench, to be rotating with Dumont/Polec hypothetically.
 
I only considered Tef's proposed lineup but yeh if fully fit Bailey is in. In this example at the expense of any bench player except for Jed.

He's fully fit and starting on a wing having been given an iconic number at the club.
 

Pykie

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Pre-season form is going to dictate all of these 50/50's.

If any of Bonar, Anderson, Scott, LDU or Hall come out and have a few 25+ disposal games in the practice matches, they will ink themselves into Rnd 1.

Likewise if any of them have a few sub 15 disposal type games, they are probably starting the year in the VFL.

The same goes for Garner and that small forward role.

If any of Mahony, Turner, Garner, Hosie slot a few or show a bit in the pre-season games, they will get the Rnd 1 slot.
 

Pykie

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We need to pump games into LDU

Once he gets used to the pace he will be dominant, playing vfl won’t help that

LDU is in my round 1 side at the minute.

It's up to him to perform in the pre-season games though.

He killed the first half of the intraclub 2 weeks ago, didn't play last week. Unconfirmed why he missed at this stage....

Golden ticket is over, he gets no special treatment over the likes of Scott, Bonar, Anderson etc who all also need AFL games for development.

If he consistently performs he will play the whole year. It's up to him.

The same also applies to TT in some respects. He had 5 x sub 8 disposal games and 14 x sub 12 disposal games last season. He'd want to at least halve that number this year, as I think if he gets similar ball to last year he may spend some time in the VFL.
 

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Right now I’d be going with this:

B: Pittard – Tarrant – Williams
HB: Atley – Daw – McDonald
C: Scott – Cunnington – Polec
HF: Thomas – Larkey – Zurhaar
F: Ziebell – Brown - Garner
R: Goldstein – Higgins – Simpkin
Int: Dumont – Anderson – Davies-Uniacke – Hall

However I could see Walker in the back line as a KPD with Taz, Daw as a third tall with Atley, Pittard and McDonald rounding out that group. I could also easily see either Turner or Mahoney replacing Garner up front.

Macmillan, Bonar, Tyson, Wood, Durdin and Ahern there or there abouts too.
 
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