- May 6, 2009
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I agree there is a good chance Brown will come in this week. A move I am perfectly happy with. I take your point that Battle and Carlisle are both not suited to naturally taking the number one power forward however this has us in a good position in having Brown at our disposal.
Your definition of what a CHB/FB/HBF has to be is too rigid. It comes with the assumption that you cannot have more than three defenders with height. Richmond won a flag with the model of four tall defenders in Rance/Astbury/Grimes/Broad.
Adelaide played off in a grannie with 5 x defenders above 190 in Hartigan/Kelly/Talia/Lever/Otten. Geelong play Blicavs/Kolo/Taylor/Henry.
Added to this is the bonus that Wilkie is highly capable of playing on tall, medium or small forwards.
Battle playing on a wing against the crows is not evidence that we have too many talls. It is evidence that they see him as a versatile talent who has plenty to offer.
I think those examples of tall backlines are good- but those talls were/are far better at ground level than brown, carlisle, battle and wilkie.
Brown, jake and battle are all great- but all have turning circles like a barge and offer nowhere near the legspeed or ground ball contest that guys like lever/kelly/talia or kolo/taylor/blitz offer.
I don't see any possibility that 4 of our back 6 spots can be taken by brown, battle, jake and wilkie.
Too slow and top heavy I think.
As you agree with me that battle and jake aren't suited to taking the number 1 tall fwd- simply removing brown from this mix and replacing him with someone more agile doesn't fix this.
FB needs to be a tall- whether its brown or someone else.
So you would need to look at swapping out 1 of battle, jake or wilkie from the back 6 to redress this too slow and top heavy imbalance.
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