Dr Tigris
Brownlow Medallist
There's going to be a huge reliance on Prestia, Lynch, Taranto and Hopper being fit and in form.
The defence looks ok and I wonder if Short will look better without Rioli there.
If Nank, Taranto, Prestia and Hopper are all fit and firing the midfield will at least win some ball. It could be competitive. It's very, very one paced though and there's not much creativity or defensive resilience in there.
A couple of injuries and they're going to be a mess though cause apart from the very vanilla Ross or Sonsie who looked out of his depth they're relying on 1st or 2nd year players. Surely Dow is finished. I wonder if Rioli can go through there for the odd burst to give them some spark.
The forward line looks really poor and that's assuming Lynch is back to his best.
The challenge really is to maintain training standards and development for the kids when the onfield smashings come. Cause even though I don't agree with the "they won't win a game" stuff there will be smashings at different points.
Pretty good summing up.
Ross is better than you think - not a star but probably B grader.
The midfield, if fit, will get the ball and make the team competitive. The defence is good, genuinely solid. Without Lynch and Bolton there is no forward line. With Lynch it'll work OK-ish. So best case is a team that is competitive, strong defensively, but will struggle to score and stop rebound and run and carry footy. Likely to win a few games, but unlikely to scare the top 8.
If we get a lot of injuries again, then it'll be very ugly.
If the younger guys already in the squad develop well the team will be a lot stronger - added pace and skill. That's a fairly large if though.