FM0226
Team Captain
Liz, while I agree that Leo is probably still in our best 22, I thought he had struggled, especially defensively, ever since the mid-point of the 2007 season (which co-incidently is a Collingwood game where Rocca kicked 3.4). I didn't watch the Geelong game, so I couldn't comment on that game (though S.Johnson kicked 3.3 that game - Leo's opponent?). He had a decent/good game against Freo. In the Carlton game, if I remember correctly CB mainly took Waite? Fev kicked 2.4 while Fischer kicked 3.0 (I think he played on both). And he was dreadful against Lynch in the West Coast game because he out-ran Leo (as he did in game 1). And when he came back in the Hawthorn game, even though we belt them all over the park, his direct opponent, Boyle, kicked 1.4 - some of them are very easy shots as well) and I guess we don't need to talk about the Collingwood game anymore.
And even earlier in the season, he struggled against Lynch, Gehrig, Ebert and A.Edwards. I will include injuries because there's very little someone can offer when they are injured and at Leo's age, it's only going to be more of, but to me, Leo have only managed 7,8 decent-good games in 23 games we played in 2007, and in those games you would struggle to name one proven player that he had beaten. And I'm very surprised that he earned so many votes even at that stage (I thought most of which would have gone to Kirk and Malceski - and Tahrg in the games that he played befored he got injured).
Against top eight opponents last year, I can only recall Leo winning one of his duel against his opponents - Tim Boyle in the first game. While he still offers his consistent rebounds from the back, he seems to have become even more of a liability as a KP defender (which to be fair, he was only meant to be a stop-gap measure).
With C.Bolton doing so well last year and the return of LRT which was absolutely important in our 2005 and 2006 runs. I really want to see Leo out of the key positions and the leadership with it because Bolton is clearly the leader in defence. To me, he was always the least influential of the three captains, and with the emergence of CB, I'm really surprised that he's still holding onto the captaincy.
