Been thinking this too. Charlie imo is meant to play Jsos role, rotating mid and forward, he's stronger and more athletic, also has a better tank. Was drafted as as a midfielder that pushes forward and also had one of the best contested marks going around, which is clearly a standout. He's transformed into a tall forward, even though hes actually rather short for a KPF, and quite clearly he loves pushing up the ground and using his kicking skills. In my opinion having him play up the ground would just let him off the chain because he's not going to have someone like Dylan grimes playing on him who beats him in strength, at the very worst he might get someone like De Boer, who would more likely go to one of our full time mids. Charlie is a nightmare match up for most blokes to defend, and if hes pushing around as a mid and then roams forward, all of the sudden theres an unplanned defender going to him in the heat of the match. Basketballers use the pick and roll to get great match ups, we should do the same...If Charlie is running loose up the field and pushes forward and ends up being defended by the mid who's on him or someone like Jayden Short or Rory Laird, its a goal. He's too big and athletic for any of those blokes to defend him. Dusty and Danger have made this a staple of their game, they push forward and end up having someone like Zaharakis defending them 1 on 1 and take complete advantage of it. Charlie has the ridiculous talent to get by as a full time forward, but he isn't Mckay where he can just stand in a pack and clunk a mark, he needs to run and jump at the ball, he needs space to beat his defenders. Eventually others like Degoey will play more midfield minutes and they will be exploiting good match ups when they push forward, and if McKay and McGovern can hold down the fort in the forward line there's no reason we couldn't try it.
I forget which coach it was that said it, might have been Amos... whoever it was, there was a video in pre season talking about how the boys are tracking, and he said that Charlie had been running in the middle every now and then in match sim, and he just wouldn't stop getting the ball so they were keeping him in there for much longer than expected this pre season because he was just killing everyone. This could have something to do with why he's not finding his spots as a forward as much this year... but not really the point. Clearly if he is racking up the ball going against blokes like Cripps, Kennedy, Murph, Dow etc... career Midfielders... he clearly has the natural ball finding that we could test it out for a game of two while Levi's found some form. I've watched games back from last year and at times Charlie is playing in the middle and he gets 3 or 4 touches in a couple of minutes, really effective touches too.
I wouldn't be fussed with all this stuff about playing too tall either because in reality... our small forwards have next to 0 impact on games most of the time right now, these development stages are where we should be finding out how we can utilize players and for me Charlie is our most versatile player. Gibbons got tried as a forward, hasn't worked out and they pushed him into the middle and exploded on the weekend. All this stuff about Charlie carrying a niggle... this and that... whenever he's on the field hes been one of our top runners... so that just suggests he isn't finding good spots because we have 2-3 other key forwards running and leading into each others space. So i'd say its worth playing him between the arcs for a full game to see how it goes.