But Richo wasn't a gun 1 on 1 defender. We'd be robbing Peter to pay Paul, significantly weakening our defence for probably not much gain in offense as Rance already provides a hell of a lot of drive out of the back half as is.
Richo was the leading goalkicker at the club for a decade and a half when he was moved to the wing, it was very much seen as robbing Peter to pay Paul, while deep into his 30's it was widely questioned whether he still had the athleticism to play the role, or whether his often dodgy field kicking would mean he is way more liability than asset up field.
Rance isn't Richo.
Astbury, Chaplin and Grimes aren't good enough on their own to hold the defence.
Chaplin's not in my side for the same reason Houli and Grigg aren't - I don't think they're good enough or anywhere near hard enough to play in a side which seriously challenges for a flag. They've all been allowed to get away with being far too soft.
I'd argue that Astbury has actually shown more than Rance did as a pure key defender at a similar stage of his development. Rance obviously had some great qualities, but it took a lot of work on the aerial contested stuff and his balance before he was considered solid defensively.
If we ever needed to swing Rance back to defense mid-game, it's always an option.
We're such a 'sliced white bread' unit at the moment under Hardwick, we need to develop a lot more ways to give opposition coaches headaches.
Playing a bloke like Rance in a roaming running role, you've created a situation where anyone who can run with him will get smashed in the air, anyone who can match him in the air won't keep up for long.
If he's taking 15 marks a game, winning clearances against smaller bodies and getting 30+ possessions, many of them link-up handballs through the corridor, he's a king-size headache.
Also Griffiths has been tried at CHB and was woeful in that position, barely had an impact at VFL level trying to play that role. Having just put a solid 12 months of development into him as CHF/ruck sending him back to defence again will just stuff him around even more.
Fair point, he hasn't excelled in the role, he ended up there because I'd like to see us smaller and classier in attack (just the two talls with one of them the resting ruck) and I'd like to see Chaplin spend a lot of time in the VFL.
Shits me to tears having watched Bowden and Newman play short, safe, sideways and selfish for so long, we finally get through that era where it was utterly impossible to have a quality, fast rebounding defence with them playing there, then we go and pay overs to import another one and let him get away with it too.