Rucks are overated

[ant22]

Time and time again I read criticisms about our ruck divisions being the main reason we have not won a flag- what a load of codswollop.

The 2 teams that dominated last season barely had a ruck division. Geelong have a good ruckman in ottens but blake was there main man last year and he is worse than fraser. Hawthorn had campbell and renouf, one bloke is a good ordinary footballer while the other is a kid learning the game. Yet the 3 sides with clearly the best ruckman finished outside the 8 and got flogged in the midfield.

I rate cox as one of the best players in the comp mainly because he gets it as much as the little blokes, uses it really well and goes forward, takes marks and kicks goals.

The pro-ruckers will go on about how we got smashed by keating in the 03 gf. I think we got smash because we had bucks and a bunch of working class mids v voss, lappin, aker, black and power. Good mids learn to rove to anyone pretty quickly.

They will talk about how ottens smashed us in the prelim. My view is that he smashed us not because his ability to give his team first use because I think out mids roved to him well that night and worked out that he would win most of the hitouts pretty early. He smashed us because bryan and richards could not even bloody keep up with him around the ground(something a fit fraser would have done)

The pro-ruckers will say west coast had the best ruckman in 06. Yes of course they did and as I have mentioned he is genuinally a good player(rucking aside) but they also had the best side with juddy, cousins and kerr in the guts. They also happened to lose the year before against what I consider to an inferior list with a signicantly inferior ruckman.

Some ruckman can be very good footballers but as the stats in the modern game will tell you its not so much in the hitouts that win the ball out of the middle(otherwise freo probably would have lead clearances last year) Its the mids and this has IMO been the biggest deficieny in our list over the last few years. If a team is getting smashed in hitouts its pretty easy to coach against as there is no rule about giving the opposition space at stop plays. A ruckman who cannot win his share of the footy is almost useless in the modern game.

After sat night people will jump up and down about how we still neglect this and that so on and so on(probably the same people who said we would win the flag a week earlier) The reality is we are were we are. I believe we have now addressed the 2 areas we were weak in over the last 2 drafts, the backline and the midfield. They are raw but they are talented. We will have weeks were they look a million bucks and people will come out and make over the top statements about how good we are. Then there are weeks they will look terrible and once again people(most likely the same people) will make over the top statements about how bad we are. IF people expect consistantly good footy week in week out this year then they will most likely be dissapointed, but that does not mean we are going backwards like some might suggest after friday nights glorified practise match.

We will not win the flag this year, Id love to say we will and I know there are a few on here who will say that attitudes like mine are the reason we have won 1 flag in 50 years blah blah blah, but if I had that much influence on winning and losing at collingwood I would probably be offered a job there so I am pretty sure my opinion wont change any results. But I do think we are about 11.45 on the premiership clock, so watch this space.........................

 

[mattys123]

I agree in part, Ruckmen are over rated in the fact that you dont need a great ruckmen to win a flag.

But you do need 2 ruckmen that are at least competent, and at the moment we have one on the whole list, and even he is a better ruck rover then ruckmen, thus our rucks are a problem if we want to win a flag.

 

[ant22]

I agree in part, Ruckmen are over rated in the fact that you dont need a great ruckmen to win a flag.

But you do need 2 ruckmen that are at least competent, and at the moment we have one on the whole list, and even he is a better ruck rover then ruckmen, thus our rucks are a problem if we want to win a flag.

I am fairly certain that if we swaped out entire list bar the ruckman with the lists of hawthorn or geelong we would have made the gf last year. If ruckman are as important as some on this site make out I dont think this would be the case. This is really my point and I wish I had of thought of it earlier has it would have saved me 10 mins or writing crap......

 

[mattys123]

You are probably right with the list swap, but I judge our potential to win a flag on our current list, and the team we will have in the next 3-4 years in our premiership window.

Our side, unlike Hawthorn or Geelong, does not have a star midfield, or a great defense, so we have to rely on our clearances and hardness at the ball to compete.

This gets taken away if we are constantly uncompetitive in the ruck, and the opposition is getting easy clearances out of the contested situations.

I kind of agree with your point, beacuse Ruckmen had no effect on last year's GF, but I also believe that because of our team makeup, if we dont have at least 2 competitive ruckmen in the next 3-4 years, we will not win a flag.

 

[Ickirus]

Even though Fraser hasn't lived up to the number 1 pick status, he still is a quality ruck. Most teams don't have great backup ruckmen, we are no exception. Ruckmen to a degree are overated as you pointed out the Hawks won with Cambell and Renouf, who are hardly A grade ruckmen. It's their midfield which was the core of their success, an A grade midfield is the most important ingredient in winning a flag. However getting a clear tap to advantage is invaluable, so in that respect rucks are are not overated.

Our midfield was and still is not good enough, for now, back in 2002/03 we had a strong inside contingent of guys like Bucks, Burns, O'bree, Licuria, and Holland and as a result won quite a few clearances, the problem back then is we really had no speedy outside mids that had elite disposal. Now fast forward to the present where we lack the inside ball winning players and have players such as Pendles and Swan who do alot of outside work, and guys like Leon and Didak who have excellent disposal and are getting their fair share of ball now as well.

I don't think we will win the flag this year as we lack the elite midfield that is needed. A lot of our premiership chances in the near future rides on guys like Stanley, Beams, Sidebottom, Wellingham and McCarthy developing into some A grade mids, hopefully some of these guys can do just that.

 

[smiddaz123]

You can escape with bad rucks if you have a midfield of Ablett, Bartel, Corey, Ling and Selwood.

Sadly we don't, so we need the rucks.

 

[smiddaz123]

Double post.

 

[Frankie23]

This many sound crazy but what if you played 4 onballers in the centre compared to the oppositions 3 and ruckman??

You would just have an extra player reading the tap, if rucks are not that important them why wouldn't you play like this?? (seriously!!! haha)

You would have the extra man not contesting the actual contest but playing on the ruck and pressuring the ruck, waiting for the tap down...

You never know, one day it might just happen lol

 

[PieLebo87]

I agree...

08 - Bateman, Crawford, Hodge, Mitchell, Sewell
07 - Corey, GAblett, Selwood, Ling, Bartel
06 - Braun, Cousins, Kerr, Judd, Selwood
05 - Goodes, Williams, Bolton, Kirk, Fosdike (26pos, 7 tackles that day)
04 - Burgoynes, Carr, Cornes, James, Wanganeen
01, 02, 03 - Akermanis, Black, Voss, Power, Lappin and more

We really gotta hope that 2010, 2011 and onwards its Pendlebury, Swan, Thomas, Beams, Sidebottom. These guys NEED to become elite for us to win a Premiership. (Not so much Swanny, as he has reached his peak as just below elite)

 

[Ron]

Bullshit.

i have two games for you to watch, 2002 Grand Final and 2007 prelim final. Those two games the reason we lost was because of the ruck, if we had a half decent ruck combination in those games we win both of them.

 

[mdc]

Some food for thought;

- If you look at the data for the last 5 years, the correlation between hit-outs and wins is something like: for every 4 extra hit-outs above the AFL average, your team can expect to gain 1 extra win.

To those saying hit-outs are useless or whatever - the data suggests you're plain wrong. By the same token though, the correlation is not that strong where it's impossible to win without a good tap ruckman or vice-versa.

Basically, a good tap ruckman is still very useful, but football is an 18 man game. Going from a shit tap ruckman to a good one is not going to propel you from bottom 8 to top 4. It could, however, be the difference between a 5 point loss and a win

 

[Kirby]

^ I think what mdc points out statistically is pretty much my view. A dominant tap ruckman does make a difference but the difference is not huge. Having said that, losing a grand final by under 2 goals is pretty bloody devastating!

 

[Trojan82]

A good tap ruckman is useless unless he is also good around the ground. MDC points out that a good tap ruckman can be the difference between 1 or two games a year. But I am certain that tap ruckman must also be good around the ground.

On the flipside a bad tap ruckman who is great around the ground (Ala Josh) can be incredibly beneficial.

There are 18 players on the ground. All must be accountable. All must be prepared to do the 1%'ers for the team, even the ruckman.

If a good tap ruckman wins you 1 or 2 games a year but he is horrible (Or at least unaccountable) around the ground he will no doubt lose you 1 or 2 games a year at least.

Ruckman are overrated, they are not the be-all and end-all. The great ruckmen are few and far between and no team can rely on them solely to win games. Collingwood need Bryan or Wood to step up and be more accountable around the ground, preferably Wood because his rucking is miles better than Bryan's however if Bryan overnight becomes a team player (ala Medhurst when he came to Collingwood (probably not the right comparison but you know what I mean)) then we will be 1 or two games better off at the end of the year. And that can mean the difference between top 4 and 10th - 5th position.

 

[Old Spice]

They're a neccesary evil. If you put Swan in the ruck against Renouf, I'm pretty sure Renouf would get some nice tap outs to advantage. You simply have to put in giants because another team will, and if you don't you'll be gobbled up in no time flat.

Of course once you pop in two giants, it becomes less clean and therefore you can wonder what their value is when the tap can end up anywhere. Problem is you can't evade that necessity.

Some rucks are good in terms of taps, eg. Lade to Burgoyne (especially in stoppages) but the around the ground work is really where it's at. Most rucks, even the tallest (Sandilands) and best (Cox) often have little control over the balls direction in a tap, but the difference is important as MDC suggests above. What makes the Cox's, Hille's, Petrie's and Josh's good ruckmen is their ability to make the general play.

You can't isolate success or lack of it to ruckmen, but it is surely another position around the ground that can make the difference in important games.

 

[Dave The Man]

I agree in part, Ruckmen are over rated in the fact that you dont need a great ruckmen to win a flag.

But you do need 2 ruckmen that are at least competent, and at the moment we have one on the whole list, and even he is a better ruck rover then ruckmen, thus our rucks are a problem if we want to win a flag.

Agreed with that you don't have to have a Dominat Ruckman to win a flag but you need to get rucks who still won't get Flogged

 

[Palmer Stoat]

This is a post Weaver wrote a while back on the value of ruckmen.

Hitouts to advantage are ones that a teammate picks up with enough time to dispose of the ball. They are super-rare. A hitout to the correct side of the pack where you have a 2-1 to your favour and you use your numbers to win a contested clearance don't show up.

A bounday throw in in the forward line where your ruckman hits the ball back to the bounday and prevents it from coming into the corridor ... isn't not shown as too advantage.

What the stats don't show ...

Kick Ins - The ruckman is often the get out of jail target on the kickins. Even if he doesn't make he can bring the ball to ground, or drag people with him to free up space elsewhere. Similarly he is a key part of defending kickins.

Hitouts - Even if hitouts to advantage are rare, you shouldn't underestimate the value of forcing a neutral situation. We praise people who lay tackles because they deny the opposition the ball and force a ball-up. Well a ruckman does that 20 times a game via denying his opponent a clear hitout.

Zoneing - Most ruckmen drop a kick behind play. You park him in the centre square and it becomes almost impossible for your opponent to centre the ball. You park him on the wing and most teams look up, get nervous and either go short or switch play.

Defending - most ruckmen will drop back into the hole in front of the leading forwards. They will deny the lead down the corridor forcing opponents to attack the pockets. He should also be the man behind the goal line denying any opposition players a leap at any shots falling short. Not to mention that hitout from a bounce near the goals than conceedes a point - that is not a hitout to advantage.

Loose man - Even in a man-on-man game the ruckman is likely to be free. Even if he doesn't get the footy, he can take up positions which draw men too him and help create the loose man. He only has to jog into CHF and he will often draw the CHB off his man and create a chance to attack.

Hitouts are completly overrated. But a fit, smart, experienced, footy smart ruckman is the Queen on the AFL chess board. With 100+ stoppages a game (centre bounces, throw-ins, bounces, kick-ins) they are the key part of most strategies and set-plays. A good ruckman can spend 100 minutes off-camera, dropping 50m behind the play and moving from side to side and having a genuine effect on how a game is played.

I think he gets at why you can't just judge a ruckman on hitouts.

However, I'd also add that we got smashed by Keating in the 02 GF because he spiked the ball clear of the packs, nullifying our ability at stoppages, which at the time was very good. I completely disagree with notions that Keating's ruck dominance in both GFs wasn't a major factor in Brisbane's wins.

Also, arguments that an A-grade ruckman isn't mandatory in a flag team are probably right. But then, Geelong have been the dominant team over the past two seasons without an A-grade key forward of any description... Does that mean key forwards aren't important? Nope. Sydney had -- relatively speaking -- a workmanlike midfield. Does that mean midfield quality is overrated when you're trying to build a premiership team? Nope. Hawthorn had a decidedly average fullback last year, but still won. Should we disregard the quality of our key backs, then, in our quest for a flag? Nope.

The truth is, there's probably not a single position on the ground where it's mandatory that you have an A-grade performer before you can win a flag. Flawed forward line? Well, a superlative midfield (WCE, Geelong) may be able to compensate. Fallible defence? Smart tactics like zoning and a powerful midfield can make up for it (Hawthorn), and so on.

Could we win a flag with our current ruck division? Well, if we excel in other areas of the ground, maybe. Of course, you can always turn that kind of argument around: if we excel in the ruck we may be able to compensate for deficiencies in the clearance-winning ability of our onballers.

Your ruck division doesn't have to be Cox and Ottens to win a flag, just as your CHF doesn't have to be Carey. But it sure wouldn't hurt.

 

[Trojan82]

^^Great post. Find it hard to disagree with any of it.

 

[loki04]

A good ruckman can win you games, a decent one can break even a bad one can lose you games.
They are not overrated you need a good pair to win a flag, they give your mids 1st use, as well as opening space and kicking goals when going forward.

We lost the 02/03 GF because our rucks weren't good enough, we lost the 07 prelim because our rucks were crap I could go on but you get the drift.

The Hawks ruck set up is a break even all they have to do is break even and let there hard nut mids win the contested footy.