Mate, we didn't win the game...and one player who made some crucial turnovers by foot was Tucky...and uncharacteristically - Newy.
Tuck's error rate has been very low this year and it was again yesterday. According to Pro-Stats (the only stats worth reading bar Champion Data, and Pro-Stats are better) the following players all had more 'errors' than Tuck:
Johnson - 4
Foley - 8
King - 6
Newman - 11
Schulz - 7
Richardson - 11
Moore - 7
Brown - 6
Simmonds - 8
White - 7
Thursfield - 4
Edwards - 6
Hyde - 3
Reiwoldt - 3
That's 14 players who had more errors than Tuck, plus Tambling who had the same amount (2). It's easy to remember one or two glaring errors from a game and use them to confirm your pre-existing bias against a player, far more difficult to judge all the player's fairly and equally over a whole game.
The coaching staff would have been happy with Tuck's effort yesterday; he did his job better than anyone else who's played on Griffen so far this year.
Connors is just as hard as Tuck but a lot smarter and more skillful and he, along with Cotchin will be knocking the door down in a couple of weeks.
Neither of them have been near the centre of the ground at AFL level and it will be years before either are ready to fill the sort of time Tuck spends in there. He gets heavy knocks from head to toe week after week contesting the hard ball in the middle. He's not flashy, he's not highly skilled, just a good honest, dependable workhorse, and every midfield needs a few.
Cross is the Dogs' best onballer almost every week and he was again yesterday, but he seldom gets any accolades for doing the grunt work which the Cooney's and Griffen's of the world benefit from.
when it gets down to games against the top flight, errors and indesicions by unskilled players hurt you twofold.
The errors are listed above Cogga - do you still want to argue Tuck's errors hurt us? Game after game a player like Newman, Foley or King could have five times as many errors as Tuck, but you'd just go with your ingrained opinion, gloss over their errors because they look stylish while making them, then magnify Tuck's tenfold.
Yeah he did a good job on Griffin. But yeah when the heat was on, Griffin came to the fore.
He got a couple of clearances and a couple of kicks in the last quarter, hardly matchwinning stuff. Tuck kept him quiet and hurt him enough going the other way with some good consistent work across half forward and in the middle.








