AFL Player # 3: Darcy Parish - Calf setback, another 2 weeks - 4/6

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Contract Status: Unrestricted free agent 2028 or 2029
My Boy Draft 2024: Pick 18, doug85
 
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DERO said:
I'm not getting emotional - I'm just pointing out a few things. I have been pretty polite too, although I did refer to Bruno's thesis as a word salad which was probably a bit rude. BrunoV knows I love him.
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Seem emotional to me. I think you are in love with Parish.

Let’s just agree I’m right and move on :)
 
Vander18 said:
Seem emotional to me. I think you are in love with Parish.

Let’s just agree I’m right and move on :)
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I'd tell you if I was emotional but you suggesting that I am emotional is annoying. Is being annoyed an emotion?

I also love Parish.
 

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owen87 said:
We don't have the right midfield mix, somewhere like Melbourne with a couple of big units in Petracca and Oliver in there would see Parish look pretty damn good IMO. Parish's best isn't as damaging as Merrett, but it's not accurate to say he has 'little' hurt factor either.

In 2021 which IMO is the best season Parish has had from an offensive point of view:

#4 in the league for i50s (excluding Gresham who only played 3 games) ahead of Merrett, Dangerfield, Dusty and behind only Petracca, Bontempelli and Zorko.
#19 in the league for Goal Assists; ahead of Greene, Selwood, Boak, Merrett, Heeney, Tim Kelly, Petracca & Oliver.
#3 in the league for Clearances (yes, I know Hardball gets are a thing and I agree that's his weakness) behind only Liberatore and Cunnington.
#5 for Score Involvements behind Petracca, Greene, Taylor Walker & Zorko. Ahead of guys like Bontempelli, Oliver, Merrett.
#19 for Metres Gained, most of the guys ahead of him being half-backs and outside midifelders, ahead of Josh Kelly, Merrett, Dangerfield, Oliver.

IMO he needs to commit to the same thing Merrett has; be the best defensive midfielder in the league. Set up defensive side of the stoppage, position yourself to block off or corral the opposition, the offensive side of his game will come anyway.
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How do his score involvements and goal assists compare with the Bont, Petracca, Zorko (and Gresham) group and others with the high i50 numbers? I know they aren't always going to be directly related, but do his i50s hurt the opposition is the question I'm trying to work out
 
DERO, below is my response. I use this in dark mode so the order is:

  • Grey / black text is my original
  • red text is your response
  • blue text is my reply

:kissingheart:


I believe it. I may be wrong but I certainly don't know my view not to be the truth.

You claimed that you did not come in here to comment when Parish was playing well was about relevance. This is untrue because you only pop up when Parish has a poor game or seemingly to pot Parish when you think he has played a bad game. I suspect we would have a similar view of his game against Port.

I said Parish is not relevant, because I don’t think there is any part of his game that warrants him being given midfield time over the likes of Caldwell, Hobbs, Perkins, etc which would be to improve the team. I’ve explained the basis for that view. I’ve seen little to nothing to suggest that anything Parish does is a result of his particular skill set that is not shared by numerous others currently on the list and who we and other clubs de-list. That was the point of my examples. To illustrate it another way, I believe you could take the top 20 midfielders from the second tier comps around the country (not on AFL lists) and that they would all get 30 possessions with little difficulty if given a pre-season and then allowed to bull hunt as mids. It’s the latter part that is key. They almost never get the opportunity, which, by the way, is not to say they should. I’m not advocating for some commie race to the bottom. I’m saying the AFL industry can’t really differentiate between players it anoints as stars and players who never even have careers. That raises a number of interesting and significant possibilities about the talent pool and recruiting generally. Just to end the point, my hunch is that there are years when at least 10 x 18 year olds each year who do not even get drafted who could do it (get 30 possessions if allowed to accumulate). It doesn’t really matter how you want to cut it. There would be about 50 ball magnets between the ages of 20 to 30 in the country not on AFL lists who could accumulate if given the opportunity. It's like guys who can bowl a cricket ball at 130 km/h, there are stacks of them in the lower leagues but it doesn't make them first class bowlers.

I doubt any mid is in the AFL system, other than Parish (I can’t think of anyone else who has his skill set), due to the ability to accumulate in and of itself. How could we be the only club? Have you seen the decisions made by our list management over 20 years?

As Howard said above, coaching / structure chooses the high possession accumulators. That is a fact or a truth, it’s not seriously debatable. Brodie is the best and more dramatic recent illustration. He goes from basically not playing to dominating and is then left out of the team. Worpel is another example as his ‘form’ has been much better since Tom Mitchell left (just like when it peaked when Mitchell broke his leg and didn’t play in Worpel’s second year, when he won their bnf or placed highly). He averages no less than 26.1 possessions in the 3 years he has played for Hawthorn in which Tom Mitchell did not also play. Look at how Matt Kennedy saved his career at Carlton. Finally got a run in the middle in the second half of 2021 to help out a battered and struggling Cripps. It coincided with career high average possessions at 20.2 – which is 21.2 if you remove the outlier when he got only 11 (I raise this because he may not have been playing in a ball hunting midfield role for the possessions to dip to that degree). First year under Voss his numbers spike at an average 24.5 possessions which is 6 more than his next best season (his run to the end 2021 aside). We know Carlton was playing an outnumber, clearance heavy game in 2022 – similar to the Dogs - which produces big midfield numbers. Kennedy then got injured in 2023 but Carlton has also now evolved its style a bit and Cerra has also hit his straps. They’ve added permanent Ollie Hollands and his brother. I doubt we’ll see Kennedy average above 20 again. To say that he wont because of his form ignores all of the facts (i.e. change in game style, his similarity to certain mids and the addition of more runners) in favour of assumptions about form or quality which cannot be proven short of a game by game, time on ground and position analysis. Even then, you’d need to speak to his coach to confirm that the role is the same very time.

Fyfe thanked whoever it was he thanked when he won his second Brownlow for covering for him – that’s the most high profile acknowledgement of a player being allowed to hunt. We know that Richmond played players whose job it was to cover for Dusty. You could even go back to our 2000 team in which Heffernan and Blumfield played very high midfield minutes for not much on the stat sheet because they were fundamentally defensive players (covering for the likes of Hird, Misiti and Mercuri who did as they pleased).

I see no reason Parish can’t be ‘not relevant’ (a lazy was of expressing the point) and having played a bad game at the same time. I only bother to rehash the point I have been making since 2017 or 2018 when he plays poorly because no one will take it seriously (because stat sheet). That’s not to say that I do it every time I think he plays poorly, either. But I have consistently expressed the point for about 6 years now (possibly even 7). Use the search function here if you don’t believe me.


This is how I make my case.

I place no value in possession accumulation. That happens to wipe out about two thirds of what Parish does. This is all of the running around, loose ball gets on the wing and half back. This is all the result of team structure / sides choosing the players they let accumulate. It can't be done by players who defend, either because they do it instinctively or because they are asked to defend. It's playing a role and is of no more significance or value than any other role on the ground almost all of which offer the opportunity for only a fraction of the accumulation. Problem is that it gets overrated because the champions are allowed to accumulate and we've never really readjusted how possession is viewed, certainly not since the 90s when I have clear memories of the game. If anything Supercoach has further distorted possession based analysis. Mids are not tagged or even run with and there is a lot more emphasis on retaining possession of the ball. So we're really dealing with possession inflation. Ball use is the key criteria for assessing the value of accumulated possession. Parish is a poor AFL kick, struggling to be average. No one is seriously going to argue that he is a better than average user of the ball, surely. That immediately calls into question the majority of his involvement.

Statistically Parish compares with other AFL mids. His kicking at times can be poor. I have posted comparisons in here previously. I don't care what you say regarding possessions, anyone that can get the football 40 times a game can play. The fact that many of these possessions are won at the coal face seems to be lost on you and you have instead diminished his by putting 2/3 down to accumulation.

To say that you don’t care what I say about possessions is to not engage my position in any substantive way.

I said in my post, there isn’t really a dispute about Parish other than whether you value possession accumulation or not. Your view is that there is something special about a midfielder getting the ball a lot. The simply reality is that for midfielders, there isn’t. That’s not to say that every AFL player can accumulate, they clearly can’t all do it but mids can and they do when given the opportunity to do so. The opportunity presents itself in degrees.

Tom Mitchell is no less adept at accumulating than he was in his Brownlow years. The difference is that since those years he has only once played for a team that has structured its ball movement around him as a last gasp attempt at squeezing another flag out of a premiership dynasty. In his first 2 seasons at the Hawks he averaged 35.8 and 35.3 possessions (latter was 2018 Brownlow). He missed 2019, due to his shattered leg and then averaged 25 possession on return in 2020. In 2021 he averaged 34.3 possession (which is Clarkson’s last season in charge). In 2022, the possession rate drops under Sam Mitchell who tries to ship him off before he has even coached a game (but it’s still an average of 28). The reliance on Mitchell at Collingwood in nothing like it was in 2017, 2018 and 2021 at Hawthorn (and his average has dropped to 25 – he got 30 possession or more 7 time in 23 and 9 times in 22). As another example, Trent Cotchin got much more of the ball on average between 2011 and 2016 than he did during the Tiger’s premiership era. 2017 was Cotchin’s 27th year. Surely we are not going to say that in the midst of his peak as a player that his innate capacity to accumulate decreased even as his team became a powerhouse.

Parish does not win the majority of his possession at the coal face – which is a stoppage or a contested ruck/maul situation (to use a Rugby term) and under direct physical pressure. I’m not interested in contested possession as a representation of getting the ball under physical contact / pressure because that stat is padded with loose ball gets (which is essentially another way of saying accumulated possession not the result of having the ball passed to you by a team mate). He wins the majority of his possession accumulating around the ground. When you talk about the coal face, it is to excuse poor disposal because of the impact of physical pressure. But that’s not what’s really happening. What am I supposed to make of the quick fire handballs, to avoid the physical heat, that don’t get to a team mate? He got the ball, so he can play, but it doesn’t matter that the team didn’t benefit from the possession, we just have to wait for a time when we are blessed for the cycle to put another Jobe inside so that we get something out of these opportunities? What about running from a stoppage and missing targets I50 not under more than the inferred pressure (having carried the ball from the centre bounce)? Too bad, hopefully circumstances conspire so that in 4 years time it’s a player who can kick the ball in this position? He’s not breaking the ball out of congestion so there should be no leeway afforded as it would be for the like of Danger, Judd, Fyfe, etc. He's not absorbing the pressure to free his team mates like Jobe, JPK, Dunkley did/do.


While I accept that he is smart and very good at accumulating I dont accept the net value of his presence changes anything for Essendon. I've got some spreadsheets sitting around somewhere that demonstrate that the volume and differential of clearances, possessions, etc is not reduced by Parish's absence. I'll dig them out.

Please dig these out.

Will do.


Problem 1 basically neutralises his ball handling. He can't absorb physical pressure enough to use his handling to handball in a damaging way, best illustrated by Greg Williams and Lachie Neale (as players of similar stature).

Greg Williams should have won three brownlow medals and Lachie Neil has two making them arguably two of the best mids to ever play. Most other midfileders will not measure up against these two as the are two exceptional players.

Exceptional is the standard for allowing a ball hunter to hunt in teams that are not dysfunctional. Anything less than exceptional produces a net loss for the team. Even then exceptional needs help from players who will do the defensive stuff. Who else has his skill set in the league and is afforded the leeway he gets to accumulate? Does Parish have a game that warrants mention if you reduce his possession rate by 25% to 33%? If we’re going to do this, other than it being necessary because we are stuck with the ludicrous contract we gave him that no club would consider taking on (they already didn’t), what is the argument for having Parish in the role over Caldwell, for example? Caldwell is more physical, quicker and a much better kick of the ball. The same could be said of Perkins.


That brings us back to ball use. When he is the one running ahead of the stoppage and hacking kicks forward we're not getting value for a clearance. Yes, Danger and Fyfe were/are guilty of dodgy kicks and so was Judd but they made clearances mortals can't through sheer power and speed and then carried the ball. They didn't need to run ahead of the stoppage to break away. The only other way a poor kick is effective inside is if he's doing a Jobe, wearing the pressure of 2 or 3 players to free a team mate in space, but Parish isn't doing that.

Danger,Judd and Fyfe are brownlow medalists and are extremely gifted athletes. Again, there aren't many of these and the comparison is a bit unfair. I also laugh when Parish gets compared with Dusty Martin who has three Norm Smith medals and a brownlow. We are measuring up against some of the best players of the last few decades. Of course they are better players than Parish.

As above. This is the standard of players who are allowed to hunt. They are the games most destructive players or they absorb physical heat in close. It is not in dispute that Parish is nowhere near this level. I’m genuinely trying to work out if there is another Parish-like player in the league. The nearest I get are Jack McRae (an endurance animal and great kick) and Matt Crouch (because my impression of him was that he was much more an accumulator than a pure hardball winner even though he looks like one). Is there another one paced, weak inside mid with poor disposal who is given free reign?


This stuff is barely in dispute. It's the emphasis on accumulation which is.

He has no defensive game, no physical presence and no running power.

He is improving his defensive game runs ok but is not big enough to be a crash and bash midfielder. He is never going to have a physical game and was never going to have one because of his size.

What is so good about his game that he should have been given more than 150 games to start to do the defensive work? This is another point that is not actually in dispute. Nobody claims he is a star. If he is not a star then he defends. If he defends his possession rate drops by said 25% to 33%. What is he then, immaterial? Has Geelong ever relied on a player anything like him? Has any other side which has consistently played prelim finals?

What’s the point of him? How does he make the team better not in isolation but compared to the inclusion of a player who has the capacity to accumulate but who also does other things we actually need?


The industry has a way of validating players whose quality cant really be separated from players who dont make it. But when you look through it all there are contradictions that never get a satisfactory explanation. I call it the Mark McGough rule. It's the way a player can go from ANZAC day medal on debut to scrap heap in the blink of any eye.

Possum eyes McGough played a handful good games and never had any real consistency. He averaqed 14 touches over 40 games. Again this is another poor comparison. I watched Kyle Reimers kick 8 goals one day. Just saying.

You can’t fake his ANZAC day debut. If you want to rely on his averages as some reflection of his ball accumulating capacity you need to look at his time in the middle in every other game he played. He may also have been unprofessional and not of the fitness required. The player I remember was fit looking, certainly while still listed at Collingwood. How do you exclude role and game time as the reason his average drops?


What happened when we gave converted half forward Nick O'Brien a gig inside for the second half of 2015? Multiple games over 30 possessions or more, an average of about 25 possessions, followed by immediate delisting.

Nick O'Brien makes Darcy Parish look like Usain Bolt. He was way too slow and never averaged 25 touches. You might want to have a look at that.

O’Brien is the second best endurance athlete we had in the Stanton to Ambrose era. Only Ambrose could beat him in a time trial and Ambrose was extremely high quality (in that bracket second only to Blicavs and other semi-pro runners like Sharp at Brisbane). You’re right he didn’t average 25 possessions but he did get more than 30 twice in that 9 game run. I don’t concede the point in relation to his ability to accumulate that season until I know what positions he was playing in each game. When he returned to play VFL for us he was prolific. Much more so that the AFL players he played with and against.


Why does Jackson Hately get moved on from Adelaide? Because he is quantifiably worse than Matt Crouch? Did he ever get the opportunity to just hunt to pad his stats and have a career? Or was more being asked of him? We know clubs ask more of young players than they do of established senior players. We've been experiencing it for more than a decade and we've punished young players for the failings of their elders for just as long.

I don't even know who Jackson Hately is but looked him up. He played 28 games and averaged 18 touches as a mid.

Hately was one of the ‘big bodied’ mids of the 2018 draft. Prolific as a junior inside mid, and physical albeit one-paced / slow. I don’t think he played in the main midfield rotation once in his career. I mention him because to me he is a perfect illustration of how being in the right place at the right time is often more important than a player's ability. His problem was the spread and his defensive work. Why was that not also a problem for Matt Crouch? You’ll say it’s because Crouchgot more of the ball. I’ll say Hatley couldn’t get the ball because he was being asked to do other things Crouch wasn’t. All we can really say, then, is that Crouch was kept because he had more of an opportunity to accumulate.

It the inconsistency of the standard that is applied to old and young, which is something I have railed against since 2012/2013 when I really started following the VFL side. Geelong is a really good example of how young player are asked to match the elite standards of a quality senior core. Even then change is forced - see Menegola who has now been delisted but at a time he was clearly a better player than Bruhn and Clarke. They are able to continually integrate kids into a side to play very specific roles which are a fit for their characteristics. Unlike at Essendon, for example, where the standard requires them to iron out the inadequacy of their senior peers in addition to playing their own role.


Matt Crouch has played every game this year for Adelaide and picked up coaches vote in at least one game this year so he must be doing something right. I'm not as familiar wth where he is at but I know he has had OP issues.

I am pretty sure Crouch asked for a trade or that Adelaide has tried to trade him a few times. He couldn’t find a suitor. In the year he averaged 33 possessions, his best year by 0.4, he was All Australian 2017 and along with Heppell is the worst All Australian selection in history. He averaged 32.2 and 32.6 in 2018 and 2019 and then fell out of favour, while still averaging 26.1, 27.4 and 26.7 possessions. He has since been reinstated, at the same time Adelaide has fallen off a cliff, mind you, but at least he’s getting his 32 a week again. In the 11 games he has played in the last 2 seasons, Adelaide has lost 8 of them. Not causation but an interesting correlation because there is no hurt factor in their midfield game and Matt Crouch is as ineffective as it gets.

Coaches votes are a context free appeal to authority. I could care less.


What about Will Brodie? The one time he played consistently inside he dominated. How does he compare to Jarrod Lyons, Brad Crouch, Heppell, Jack Steele, Jobe, JPK, Priddis and Ziebell? Just to pluck more names including All Australians, club captains and a Brownlow Medallist.

Will Brodie had a really good year the year before last and has struggled to find the footy ever since.

So Brodie went from 24 games in 2022 at 26.8 possessions, 5.4 tackles and 5.7 clearances a piece to playing 5 games in the next season for no reason other than he was magically in form and then reverted to type? I know O’Meara played 21 games for Freo in 2023 but none for Freo in 2022. Fyfe also played more. Serong’s possession rate spiked to 30.7 in 2023 and Johnson played 18 games he didn’t play in 2022. They are all facts and support the argument about it being role-related. A reference to form of a player who was given 5 games the season after he dominated is speculation and has no weight.


Was Michael Barlow still a ball magnet when he was moved out of Freo to GC where he could hardly get a game?

Michael Barlow was a bloody good player but he was 28 or 29 and busted up when he was moved on wasn't he? Kind of like Jason Johnson was at 29.

He averaged between 22.9 and 27.9 possessions between 2010 and 2016. In his 2 seasons for the Suns he averaged 25.4 and 26 possessions. No decrease there. Barlow was then so cooked he played another 2 seasons for Werribee as a 33/34 year old.


Shane Tuck combined 25 hard ball gets with 10 tackles a week and got frozen out.

Shane Tuck average 17 touches and 2 tackles in his last year of football

No one gets 25 hardballs a week except maybe Matt Rowell. That was hyperbole. I recall there being a regular sentiment about Tuck querying why he could not get a game. I’ve looked at the records and his Wikipedia and I think it may be 2011 when he doesn’t play between round 11 and round 17. It was a KB hobbyhorse. I (miss) remember it as being more of a story than the records indicate. He had a purple patch between rounds 18 and 22 and then looses form in rounds 23 and 24 in 2011. Wikipedia says he was talked out of a decision to retire at the end of 2011. He was then prolific in 2012. I’m not going to look into it more than that. Happy to withdraw the Tuck example.


Kyle Martin was getting 45 touches a week and kicking 3 to 5 goals in the VFL. Never got a look.

I don't even know who Kyle Martin is.

He was prolific at VFL level to a degree that not even AFL players have matched.


We're seeing it now with Tom Mitchell. In the space of 20 months 2 clubs have treated him like waking up next to an undesirable hookup the morning after.

Tom Mitchell has a brownlow and about 130 votes. He had a pretty solid year last year at Collingwood and has missed a bit this year due to injury - actually a bit like Parish TBH. That said, he getting on a bit (31 next month) so you'd expect him to decline a bit. Parish is in his prime.

See above re Mitchell.


Essendon specialises in treating these players as stars. It's why I'm so conscious of it.

So who else do we specialise in treating like a star? Also, how do we treat these players like stars?

Heppell who is another accumulator Dodoro and co mistook for an inside midfielder. Stanton and Zaharakis. We’d still be trying to play Melksham in the middle if he hadn’t left.


In my opinion you mark Parish too harshly . He is not elite but he is a very good player who had a pretty s**t game against Port. He'll bounce back.

As I said above. I can’t distinguish what he does from a structural function. He will bounce back from poor and irrelevant to just irrelevant.
 
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BrunoV said:
DERO, below is my response. I use this in dark mode so the order is:

  • Grey / black text is my original
  • red text is your response
  • blue text is my reply

:kissingheart:


I believe it. I may be wrong but I certainly don't know my view not to be the truth.

You claimed that you did not come in here to comment when Parish was playing well was about relevance. This is untrue because you only pop up when Parish has a poor game or seemingly to pot Parish when you think he has played a bad game. I suspect we would have a similar view of his game against Port.

I said Parish is not relevant, because I don’t think he there is any part of his game that warrants him being given midfield time over the likes of Caldwell, Hobbs, Perkins, etc which would be to improve the team. I’ve explained the basis for that view. I’ve seen little to nothing to suggest that anything Parish does is a result of his particular skill set that is not shared by numerous others currently on the list and who we and other clubs de-list. That was the point of my examples. To illustrate it another way, I believe you could take the top 20 midfielders from the second tier comps around the country (not on AFL lists) and that they would all get 30 possessions with little difficulty if given a pre-season and then allowed to bull hunt as mids. It’s the latter part that is key. They almost never get the opportunity, which, by the way, is not to say they should. I’m not advocating for some commie race to the bottom. I’m saying the AFL industry can’t really differentiate between players it anoints as stars and players who never even have careers. That raises a number of interesting and significant possibilities about the talent pool and recruiting generally. Just to end the point, my hunch is that there are years when at least 10 18 year olds each year who do not even get drafted who could do it (get 30 possessions if allowed to accumulate). It doesn’t really matter how you want to cut it. There would be about 50 ball magnets between the ages of 10 to 30 in the country not on AFL lists who could accumulate if given the opportunity. I doubt any mid is in the AFL system, other than Parish (I can’t think of anyone else who has his skill set), due to the ability to accumulate in and of itself. How could we be the only club? Have you seen the decisions made by our list management over 20 years?

As Howard said above, coaching / structure chooses the high possession accumulators. That is a fact or a truth, it’s not seriously debatable. Brodie is the best and more dramatic recent illustration. He goes from basically not playing to dominating and is then left out of the team. Worpel is another example as his ‘form’ has been much better since Tom Mitchell left (just like when it peaked when Mitchell broke his leg and didn’t play in Worpel’s second year when he won their bnf or placed highly). He averages no less than 26.1 possessions in the 3 years he has played for Hawthorn in which Tom Mitchell did not also play. He was in and out of the side when Mitchell was there. Look at how Matt Kennedy saved his career at Carlton. Finally got a run in the middle in the second half of 2021 to help out a battered and struggling Cripps. It coincided with career high average possessions at 20.2 – which is 21.2 if you remove the outlier when he got only 11 (I raise this because he may not have been playing in a ball hunting midfield role for the possessions to dip to that degree). First year under Voss his numbers spike at an average 24.5 possessions which is 6 more than his next best season. We know Carlton was playing an outnumber, clearance heavy game in 2022 – similar to the Dogs (which produces big midfield numbers). Kennedy then got injured in 2023 but Carlton has also now evolved its style a bit and Cerra has also hit his straps. They’ve added permanent Ollie Hollands and his brother. I doubt we’ll see Kennedy average above 20 again. To say that he wont because of his form ignores all of the facts (i.e. change in game style, his similarity to certain mids and the addition of more runners) in favour of assumptions about form or quality which cannot be proven short of a game by game, time on ground and position analysis. Even then, you’d need to speak to his coach to confirm that the role is the same very time.

Fyfe thanked whoever it was he thanked when he won his second Brownlow for covering for him – that’s the most high profile acknowledgement of a player being allowed to hunt. We know that Richmond played players whose job it was to cover for Dusty. You could even go back to our 2000 team in which Heffernan and Blumfield played very high midfield minutes for not much on the stat sheet because they were fundamentally defensive players (covering for the likes of Hird, Misiti and Mercuri who did as they pleased).

I see no reason Parish can’t be ‘not relevant’ (a lazy was of expressing the point) and having played a bad game at the same time. I only bother to rehash the point I have been making since 2017 or 2018 when he plays poorly because no one will take it seriously (because stat sheet). That’s not to say that I do it every time I think he plays poorly, either. But I have consistently expressed the point for about 6 years now (possibly even 7). Use the search function here if you don’t believe me.


This is how I make my case.

I place no value in possession accumulation. That happens to wipe out about two thirds of what Parish does. This is all of the running around, loose ball gets on the wing and half back. This is all the result of team structure / sides choosing the players they let accumulate. It can't be done by players who defend, either because they do it instinctively or because they are asked to defend. It's playing a role and is of no more significance or value than any other role on the ground almost all of which offer the opportunity for only a fraction of the accumulation. Problem is that it gets overrated because the champions are allowed to accumulate and we've never really readjusted how possession is viewed, certainly not since the 90s when I have clear memories of the game. If anything Supercoach has further distorted possession based analysis. Mids are not tagged or even run with and there is a lot more emphasis on retaining possession of the ball. So we're really dealing with possession inflation. Ball use is the key criteria for assessing the value of accumulated possession. Parish is a poor AFL kick, struggling to be average. No one is seriously going to argue that he is a better than average user of the ball, surely. That immediately calls into question the majority of his involvement.

Statistically Parish compares with other AFL mids. His kicking at times can be poor. I have posted comparisons in here previously. I don't care what you say regarding possessions, anyone that can get the football 40 times a game can play. The fact that many of these possessions are won at the coal face seems to be lost on you and you have instead diminished his by putting 2/3 down to accumulation.

To say that you don’t care what I say about possessions is to not engage my position in any substantive way.

I said in my post, there isn’t really a dispute about Parish other than whether you value possession accumulation or not. Your view is that there is something special about a midfielder getting the ball a lot. The simply reality is that for midfielders, there isn’t. That’s not to say that every AFL player can accumulate, they clearly can’t all do it but mids can and they do when given the opportunity to do so. The opportunity presents itself in degrees.

Tom Mitchell is no less adept at accumulating than he was in his Brownlow years. The difference is that since those years he has only once played for a team that has structured its ball movement around him as a last gasp attempt at squeezing another flag out of a premiership dynasty. In his first 2 seasons at the Hawks he averaged 35.8 and 35.3 possessions (latter was 2018 Brownlow). He missed 2019, due to his shattered leg and then averaged 25 possession on return in 2020. In 2021 he averaged 34.3 possession (which is Clarkson’s last season in charge). In 2022, the possession rate drops under Sam Mitchell who tries to ship him off before he has even coached a game (but it’s still an average of 28). The reliance on Mitchell at Collingwood in nothing like it was in 2017, 2018 and 2021 at Hawthorn (and his average has dropped to 25 – he got 30 possession or more 7 time in 23 and 9 times in 22). As another example, Trent Cotchin got much more of the ball on average between 2011 and 2016 than he did during the Tiger’s premiership era. 2017 was Cotchin’s 27th year. Surely we are not going to say that in the midst of his peak as a player that his capacity to accumulate decreased even as his team became a powerhouse.

Parish does not win the majority of his possession at the coal face – which is a stoppage or a contested ruck/maul situation (to use a Rugby term) and under direct physical pressure. I’m interested in contested possession as a representation of getting the ball under physical contact / pressure because that stat is padded with loose ball gets (which is essentially another way of saying accumulated possession not the result of having the ball passed to you by a team mate). He wins the majority of his possession accumulating around the ground. When you talk about the coal face, it is to excuse poor disposal because of the impact of physical pressure. But that’s not what’s really happening. What am I supposed to make of the quick fire handballs that don’t get to a team mate? He got the ball so he can play but it doesn’t matter that the team didn’t benefit from the possession, we just have to wait for a time when we are blessed for the cycle to put another Jobe inside so that we get something out of these opportunities? What about running from a stoppage and missing targets I50 not under more than the inferred pressure (having carried the ball from the centre bounce)? Too bad, hopefully circumstances conspire so that in 4 years time it’s a player who can kick the ball in this position? He’s not breaking the ball out of congestion so there should be no leeway afforded as it would be for the like of Danger, Judd, Fyfe, etc.


While I accept that he is smart and very good at accumulating I dont accept the net value of his presence changes anything for Essendon. I've got some spreadsheets sitting around somewhere that demonstrate that the volume and differential of clearances, possessions, etc is not reduced by Parish's absence. I'll dig them out.

Please dig these out.

Will do.


Problem 1 basically neutralises his ball handling. He can't absorb physical pressure enough to use his handling to handball in a damaging way, best illustrated by Greg Williams and Lachie Neale (as players of similar stature).

Greg Williams should have won three brownlow medals and Lachie Neil has two making them arguably two of the best mids to ever play. Most other midfileders will not measure up against these two as the are two exceptional players.

Exceptional is the standard for allowing a ball hunter to hunt in teams that are not dysfunctional. Anything less than exceptional produces a net loss for the team. Even then exceptional needs help from players who will do the defensive stuff. Who else has his skill set in the league and is afforded the leeway he gets to accumulate? Does Parish have a game that warrants mention if you reduce his possession rate by 25% to 33%? If we’re going to do this, other than it being necessary because we are stuck with the ludicrous contract we gave him that no club would consider taking on (they already didn’t), what is the argument for having Parish in the role over Caldwell, for example? Caldwell is more physical, quicker and a much better kick of the ball. The same could be said of Perkins.


That brings us back to ball use. When he is the one running ahead of the stoppage and hacking kicks forward we're not getting value for a clearance. Yes, Danger and Fyfe were/are guilty of dodgy kicks and so was Judd but they made clearances mortals can't through sheer power and speed and then carried the ball. They didn't need to run ahead of the stoppage to break away. The only other way a poor kick is effective inside is if he's doing a Jobe, wearing the pressure of 2 or 3 players to free a team mate in space, but Parish isn't doing that.

Danger,Judd and Fyfe are brownlow medalists and are extremely gifted athletes. Again, there aren't many of these and the comparison is a bit unfair. I also laugh when Parish gets compared with Dusty Martin who has three Norm Smith medals and a brownlow. We are measuring up against some of the best players of the last few decades. Of course they are better players than Parish.

As above. This is the standard of players who are allowed to hunt. They are the games most destructive players or they absorb physical heat in close. It is not in dispute that Parish is nowhere near this level. I’m genuinely trying to work out if there is another Parish in the league. The nearest you get are Jack McRae (an endurance animal and great kick) and Matt Crouch (because my impression of him was that he was much more an accumulator than a pure hardball winner even though he looks like one). Is there another one paced, weak inside mid with poor disposal who is given free reign?


This stuff is barely in dispute. It's the emphasis on accumulation which is.

He has no defensive game, no physical presence and no running power.

He is improving his defensive game runs ok but is not big enough to be a crash and bash midfielder. He is never going to have a physical game and was never going to have one because of his size.

What is so good about his game that he should have been given more than 150 games to start to do the defensive work? This is another point that is not actually in dispute. Nobody claims he is a star. If he is not a stat then he defends. If he defends his possession rate drops by said 25% to 33%. What is he then, immaterial? Has Geelong ever relied on a player anything like him? Has any other side which has consistently played prelim finals?

What’s the point of him? How does he make the team better not in isolation but compared to the inclusion of a player who has the capacity to accumulate but who also does other things we actually need?


The industry has a way of validating players whose quality cant really be separated from players who dont make it. But when you look through it all there are contradictions that never get a satisfactory explanation. I call it the Mark McGough rule. It's the way a player can go from ANZAC day medal on debut to scrap heap in the blink of any eye.

Possum eyes McGough played a handful good games and never had any real consistency. He averaqed 14 touches over 40 games. Again this is another poor comparison. I watched Kyle Reimers kick 8 goals one day. Just saying.

You can’t fake his ANZAC day debut. If you want to rely on his averages as some reflection of his ball accumulating capacity you need to look at his time in the middle in every other game he played. He may also have been unprofessional and not of the fitness required. The player I remember was fit looking, certainly while still listed at Collingwood. How do you exclude role and game time as the reason his average drops?


What happened when we gave converted half forward Nick O'Brien a gig inside for the second half of 2015? Multiple games over 30 possessions or more, an average of about 25 possessions, followed by immediate delisting.

Nick O'Brien makes Darcy Parish look like Usain Bolt. He was way too slow and never averaged 25 touches. You might want to have a look at that.

O’Brien is the second best endurance we had in the Stanton to Ambrose era. Only Ambrose could beat him in a time trial. You’re right he didn’t average 25 possessions but he did get more than 30 twice in that 9 game run. I don’t concede the point in relation to his ability to accumulate that season until I know what positions he was playing in each game. When he returned to play VFL for us he was prolific. Much more so that the AFL players he played with and against.


Why does Jackson Hately get moved on from Adelaide? Because he is quantifiably worse than Matt Crouch? Did he ever get the opportunity to just hunt to pad his stats and have a career? Or was more being asked of him? We know clubs ask more of young players than they do of established senior players. We've been experiencing it for more than a decade and we've punished young players for the failings of their elders for just as long.

I don't even know who Jackson Hately is but looked him up. He played 28 games and averaged 18 touches as a mid.

Hately was one of the ‘big bodied’ mids of the 2018 draft. Prolific as a junior inside mid, and physical albeit one-paced / slow. I don’t think played in the main midfield rotation once in his career. I mention him because to me he is a perfect illustration of how being in the right place at the right time is often more important than your ability. His problem was the spread and his defensive. Why was that not also a problem for Matt Crouch? You’ll say it’s because Matt Crouch got more of the ball. I’ll say Hatley couldn’t get the ball because he was being asked to do other things Crouch wasn’t. All we can really say, then, is that Crouch was kept because he had more of an opportunity to accumulate.

It the inconsistency of the standard that is applied to old and young, which is something I have railed against since 2012/2013 when I really started following the VFL side. Geelong is a really good example of how young player are asked to match the elite standards of a quality senior core. They are able to continually integrate kids into a side to play very specific roles which are a fit for their characteristics. Unlike at Essendon, for example, where the standard requires them to iron out the inadequacy of their senior peers.


Matt Crouch has played every game this year for Adelaide and picked up coaches vote in at least one game this year so he must be doing something right. I'm not as familiar wth where he is at but I know he has had OP issues.

I am pretty sure Crouch asked for a trade or that Adelaide has tried to trade him a few time. He couldn’t find a suitor. In the year he averaged 33 possessions, he best year by 0.4, he was All Australian 2017 and along with Heppell is the worst All Australian selection in history. He averaged 32.2 and 32.6 in 2018 and 2019 and then fell out of favour, while still averaging 26.1, 27.4 and 26.7 possessions. He has since been reinstated, at the same time Adelaide has fallen off a cliff, mind you, but at least he’s getting his 32 a week again. In the 11 games he has played in the last 2 seasons Adelaide has lost 8 of them. Not causation but an interesting correlation because there is no hurt factor in their midfield game and Matt Crouch is as ineffective as it gets.

Coaches votes are a context free appeal to authority. I could care less.


What about Will Brodie? The one time he played consistently inside he dominated. How does he compare to Jarrod Lyons, Brad Crouch, Heppell, Jack Steele, Jobe, JPK, Priddis and Ziebell? Just to pluck more names including All Australians, club captains and a Brownlow Medallist.

Will Brodie had a really good year the year before last and has struggled to find the footy ever since.

So Brodie went from 24 games in 2022 at 26.8 possessions, 5.4 tackles and 5.7 clearances a piece to playing 5 games in the next season for no reason other than he was magically in form and then reverted to type? I know O’Meara played 21 games for Freo in 2023 but none for Freo in 2022. Fyfe also played more. Serong’s possession rate spiked to 30.7 in 2023 and Johnson played 18 games he didn’t play in 2023. They are all facts and support the argument about it being role-related. A reference to form of a player who was given 5 games the season after he dominated is speculation and has no weight.


Was Michael Barlow still a ball magnet when he was moved out of Freo to GC where he could hardly get a game?

Michael Barlow was a bloody good player but he was 28 or 29 and busted up when he was moved on wasn't he? Kind of like Jason Johnson was at 29.

He averaged between 22.9 and 27.9 possessions between 2010 and 2016. In his 2 seasons for the Suns he averaged 25.4 and 26 possessions. No decrease there. He also then returned to the VFL where he continued to be prolific. Barlow was then so cooked he played another 2 seasons for Werribee as a 33/34 year old.


Shane Tuck combined 25 hard ball gets with 10 tackles a week and got frozen out.

Shane Tuck average 17 touches and 2 tackles in his last year of football

No one gets 25 hardballs a week except maybe Matt Rowell. That was hyperbole. I recall there being a regular sentiment about Tuck querying why he could not get a game. I’ve looked at the records and his Wikipedia and I think it may be 2011 when he doesn’t play between round 11 and round 17. It was a KB hobbyhorse. I remember it as being more of a story than the records indicate. He has a purple patch between rounds 18 and 22 and then looses form in rounds 23 and 24 in 2011. Wikipedia says he was talked out of a decision to retire at the end of 2011 and was then prolific in 2012. I’m not going to look into it more than that. Happy to withdraw the Tuck example.


Kyle Martin was getting 45 touches a week and kicking 3 to 5 goals in the VFL. Never got a look.

I don't even know who Kyle Martin is.

He was prolific at VFL level to a level that not even AFL players have matched.


We're seeing it now with Tom Mitchell. In the space of 20 months 2 clubs have treated him like waking up next to an undesirable hookup the morning after.

Tom Mitchell has a brownlow and about 130 votes. He had a pretty solid year last year at Collingwood and has missed a bit this year due to injury - actually a bit like Parish TBH. That said, he getting on a bit (31 next month) so you'd expect him to decline a bit. Parish is in his prime.

See above re Mitchell.


Essendon specialises in treating these players as stars. It's why I'm so conscious of it.

So who else do we specialise in treating like a star? Also, how do we treat these players like stars?

Heppell who is another accumulator Dodoro and co mistook for an inside midfielder. Stanton and Zaharakis. We’d still be trying to play Melksham in the middle if he hadn’t left.


In my opinion you mark Parish too harshly . He is not elite but he is a very good player who had a pretty s**t game against Port. He'll bounce back.

As I said above. I can’t distinguish what he does from a structural function. He will bounce back from poor and irrelevant to just irrelevant.
Click to expand...
TLDR
 
yodellinhank said:
How do his score involvements and goal assists compare with the Bont, Petracca, Zorko (and Gresham) group and others with the high i50 numbers? I know they aren't always going to be directly related, but do his i50s hurt the opposition is the question I'm trying to work out
Click to expand...

Can't be bothered doing everyone;

2021 numbers - Bont is 2 years older than Parish so 24 vs 26 for whatever relevance that has;

i50s - 6.62 vs 5.96
GA - 0.92 vs 0.91
SI - 7.38 vs 7.61
MG - 541.65 vs 465.30
Clearances - 5.54 vs 7.52

Parish a fair way behind on metres gained but ahead on clearances isn't overly surprising IMO given Bont has Liberatore to do the grunt work for him.

I rate Bont as pretty much the most damaging midfielder in the game and Parish isn't lagging too far behind him on a lot of those measures. He doesn't kick as many goals as Bont does, and I don't think anyone would argue he's a better player than Bontempelli, but Bontempelli is also the guy you'd want as your #1 midfielder, whereas Parish at #2 or #3 is a pretty solid deal. Unfortunately our #1 is Merrett who's also on the smaller side and means we have an imbalanced midfield setup if you're trying to play both in there at once.
 
BrunoV said:
DERO, below is my response. I use this in dark mode so the order is:

  • Grey / black text is my original
  • red text is your response
  • blue text is my reply

:kissingheart:


I believe it. I may be wrong but I certainly don't know my view not to be the truth.

You claimed that you did not come in here to comment when Parish was playing well was about relevance. This is untrue because you only pop up when Parish has a poor game or seemingly to pot Parish when you think he has played a bad game. I suspect we would have a similar view of his game against Port.

I said Parish is not relevant, because I don’t think he there is any part of his game that warrants him being given midfield time over the likes of Caldwell, Hobbs, Perkins, etc which would be to improve the team. I’ve explained the basis for that view. I’ve seen little to nothing to suggest that anything Parish does is a result of his particular skill set that is not shared by numerous others currently on the list and who we and other clubs de-list. That was the point of my examples. To illustrate it another way, I believe you could take the top 20 midfielders from the second tier comps around the country (not on AFL lists) and that they would all get 30 possessions with little difficulty if given a pre-season and then allowed to bull hunt as mids. It’s the latter part that is key. They almost never get the opportunity, which, by the way, is not to say they should. I’m not advocating for some commie race to the bottom. I’m saying the AFL industry can’t really differentiate between players it anoints as stars and players who never even have careers. That raises a number of interesting and significant possibilities about the talent pool and recruiting generally. Just to end the point, my hunch is that there are years when at least 10 18 year olds each year who do not even get drafted who could do it (get 30 possessions if allowed to accumulate). It doesn’t really matter how you want to cut it. There would be about 50 ball magnets between the ages of 10 to 30 in the country not on AFL lists who could accumulate if given the opportunity. I doubt any mid is in the AFL system, other than Parish (I can’t think of anyone else who has his skill set), due to the ability to accumulate in and of itself. How could we be the only club? Have you seen the decisions made by our list management over 20 years?

As Howard said above, coaching / structure chooses the high possession accumulators. That is a fact or a truth, it’s not seriously debatable. Brodie is the best and more dramatic recent illustration. He goes from basically not playing to dominating and is then left out of the team. Worpel is another example as his ‘form’ has been much better since Tom Mitchell left (just like when it peaked when Mitchell broke his leg and didn’t play in Worpel’s second year when he won their bnf or placed highly). He averages no less than 26.1 possessions in the 3 years he has played for Hawthorn in which Tom Mitchell did not also play. He was in and out of the side when Mitchell was there. Look at how Matt Kennedy saved his career at Carlton. Finally got a run in the middle in the second half of 2021 to help out a battered and struggling Cripps. It coincided with career high average possessions at 20.2 – which is 21.2 if you remove the outlier when he got only 11 (I raise this because he may not have been playing in a ball hunting midfield role for the possessions to dip to that degree). First year under Voss his numbers spike at an average 24.5 possessions which is 6 more than his next best season. We know Carlton was playing an outnumber, clearance heavy game in 2022 – similar to the Dogs (which produces big midfield numbers). Kennedy then got injured in 2023 but Carlton has also now evolved its style a bit and Cerra has also hit his straps. They’ve added permanent Ollie Hollands and his brother. I doubt we’ll see Kennedy average above 20 again. To say that he wont because of his form ignores all of the facts (i.e. change in game style, his similarity to certain mids and the addition of more runners) in favour of assumptions about form or quality which cannot be proven short of a game by game, time on ground and position analysis. Even then, you’d need to speak to his coach to confirm that the role is the same very time.

Fyfe thanked whoever it was he thanked when he won his second Brownlow for covering for him – that’s the most high profile acknowledgement of a player being allowed to hunt. We know that Richmond played players whose job it was to cover for Dusty. You could even go back to our 2000 team in which Heffernan and Blumfield played very high midfield minutes for not much on the stat sheet because they were fundamentally defensive players (covering for the likes of Hird, Misiti and Mercuri who did as they pleased).

I see no reason Parish can’t be ‘not relevant’ (a lazy was of expressing the point) and having played a bad game at the same time. I only bother to rehash the point I have been making since 2017 or 2018 when he plays poorly because no one will take it seriously (because stat sheet). That’s not to say that I do it every time I think he plays poorly, either. But I have consistently expressed the point for about 6 years now (possibly even 7). Use the search function here if you don’t believe me.


This is how I make my case.

I place no value in possession accumulation. That happens to wipe out about two thirds of what Parish does. This is all of the running around, loose ball gets on the wing and half back. This is all the result of team structure / sides choosing the players they let accumulate. It can't be done by players who defend, either because they do it instinctively or because they are asked to defend. It's playing a role and is of no more significance or value than any other role on the ground almost all of which offer the opportunity for only a fraction of the accumulation. Problem is that it gets overrated because the champions are allowed to accumulate and we've never really readjusted how possession is viewed, certainly not since the 90s when I have clear memories of the game. If anything Supercoach has further distorted possession based analysis. Mids are not tagged or even run with and there is a lot more emphasis on retaining possession of the ball. So we're really dealing with possession inflation. Ball use is the key criteria for assessing the value of accumulated possession. Parish is a poor AFL kick, struggling to be average. No one is seriously going to argue that he is a better than average user of the ball, surely. That immediately calls into question the majority of his involvement.

Statistically Parish compares with other AFL mids. His kicking at times can be poor. I have posted comparisons in here previously. I don't care what you say regarding possessions, anyone that can get the football 40 times a game can play. The fact that many of these possessions are won at the coal face seems to be lost on you and you have instead diminished his by putting 2/3 down to accumulation.

To say that you don’t care what I say about possessions is to not engage my position in any substantive way.

I said in my post, there isn’t really a dispute about Parish other than whether you value possession accumulation or not. Your view is that there is something special about a midfielder getting the ball a lot. The simply reality is that for midfielders, there isn’t. That’s not to say that every AFL player can accumulate, they clearly can’t all do it but mids can and they do when given the opportunity to do so. The opportunity presents itself in degrees.

Tom Mitchell is no less adept at accumulating than he was in his Brownlow years. The difference is that since those years he has only once played for a team that has structured its ball movement around him as a last gasp attempt at squeezing another flag out of a premiership dynasty. In his first 2 seasons at the Hawks he averaged 35.8 and 35.3 possessions (latter was 2018 Brownlow). He missed 2019, due to his shattered leg and then averaged 25 possession on return in 2020. In 2021 he averaged 34.3 possession (which is Clarkson’s last season in charge). In 2022, the possession rate drops under Sam Mitchell who tries to ship him off before he has even coached a game (but it’s still an average of 28). The reliance on Mitchell at Collingwood in nothing like it was in 2017, 2018 and 2021 at Hawthorn (and his average has dropped to 25 – he got 30 possession or more 7 time in 23 and 9 times in 22). As another example, Trent Cotchin got much more of the ball on average between 2011 and 2016 than he did during the Tiger’s premiership era. 2017 was Cotchin’s 27th year. Surely we are not going to say that in the midst of his peak as a player that his capacity to accumulate decreased even as his team became a powerhouse.

Parish does not win the majority of his possession at the coal face – which is a stoppage or a contested ruck/maul situation (to use a Rugby term) and under direct physical pressure. I’m not interested in contested possession as a representation of getting the ball under physical contact / pressure because that stat is padded with loose ball gets (which is essentially another way of saying accumulated possession not the result of having the ball passed to you by a team mate). He wins the majority of his possession accumulating around the ground. When you talk about the coal face, it is to excuse poor disposal because of the impact of physical pressure. But that’s not what’s really happening. What am I supposed to make of the quick fire handballs that don’t get to a team mate? He got the ball so he can play but it doesn’t matter that the team didn’t benefit from the possession, we just have to wait for a time when we are blessed for the cycle to put another Jobe inside so that we get something out of these opportunities? What about running from a stoppage and missing targets I50 not under more than the inferred pressure (having carried the ball from the centre bounce)? Too bad, hopefully circumstances conspire so that in 4 years time it’s a player who can kick the ball in this position? He’s not breaking the ball out of congestion so there should be no leeway afforded as it would be for the like of Danger, Judd, Fyfe, etc.


While I accept that he is smart and very good at accumulating I dont accept the net value of his presence changes anything for Essendon. I've got some spreadsheets sitting around somewhere that demonstrate that the volume and differential of clearances, possessions, etc is not reduced by Parish's absence. I'll dig them out.

Please dig these out.

Will do.


Problem 1 basically neutralises his ball handling. He can't absorb physical pressure enough to use his handling to handball in a damaging way, best illustrated by Greg Williams and Lachie Neale (as players of similar stature).

Greg Williams should have won three brownlow medals and Lachie Neil has two making them arguably two of the best mids to ever play. Most other midfileders will not measure up against these two as the are two exceptional players.

Exceptional is the standard for allowing a ball hunter to hunt in teams that are not dysfunctional. Anything less than exceptional produces a net loss for the team. Even then exceptional needs help from players who will do the defensive stuff. Who else has his skill set in the league and is afforded the leeway he gets to accumulate? Does Parish have a game that warrants mention if you reduce his possession rate by 25% to 33%? If we’re going to do this, other than it being necessary because we are stuck with the ludicrous contract we gave him that no club would consider taking on (they already didn’t), what is the argument for having Parish in the role over Caldwell, for example? Caldwell is more physical, quicker and a much better kick of the ball. The same could be said of Perkins.


That brings us back to ball use. When he is the one running ahead of the stoppage and hacking kicks forward we're not getting value for a clearance. Yes, Danger and Fyfe were/are guilty of dodgy kicks and so was Judd but they made clearances mortals can't through sheer power and speed and then carried the ball. They didn't need to run ahead of the stoppage to break away. The only other way a poor kick is effective inside is if he's doing a Jobe, wearing the pressure of 2 or 3 players to free a team mate in space, but Parish isn't doing that.

Danger,Judd and Fyfe are brownlow medalists and are extremely gifted athletes. Again, there aren't many of these and the comparison is a bit unfair. I also laugh when Parish gets compared with Dusty Martin who has three Norm Smith medals and a brownlow. We are measuring up against some of the best players of the last few decades. Of course they are better players than Parish.

As above. This is the standard of players who are allowed to hunt. They are the games most destructive players or they absorb physical heat in close. It is not in dispute that Parish is nowhere near this level. I’m genuinely trying to work out if there is another Parish in the league. The nearest you get are Jack McRae (an endurance animal and great kick) and Matt Crouch (because my impression of him was that he was much more an accumulator than a pure hardball winner even though he looks like one). Is there another one paced, weak inside mid with poor disposal who is given free reign?


This stuff is barely in dispute. It's the emphasis on accumulation which is.

He has no defensive game, no physical presence and no running power.

He is improving his defensive game runs ok but is not big enough to be a crash and bash midfielder. He is never going to have a physical game and was never going to have one because of his size.

What is so good about his game that he should have been given more than 150 games to start to do the defensive work? This is another point that is not actually in dispute. Nobody claims he is a star. If he is not a star then he defends. If he defends his possession rate drops by said 25% to 33%. What is he then, immaterial? Has Geelong ever relied on a player anything like him? Has any other side which has consistently played prelim finals?

What’s the point of him? How does he make the team better not in isolation but compared to the inclusion of a player who has the capacity to accumulate but who also does other things we actually need?


The industry has a way of validating players whose quality cant really be separated from players who dont make it. But when you look through it all there are contradictions that never get a satisfactory explanation. I call it the Mark McGough rule. It's the way a player can go from ANZAC day medal on debut to scrap heap in the blink of any eye.

Possum eyes McGough played a handful good games and never had any real consistency. He averaqed 14 touches over 40 games. Again this is another poor comparison. I watched Kyle Reimers kick 8 goals one day. Just saying.

You can’t fake his ANZAC day debut. If you want to rely on his averages as some reflection of his ball accumulating capacity you need to look at his time in the middle in every other game he played. He may also have been unprofessional and not of the fitness required. The player I remember was fit looking, certainly while still listed at Collingwood. How do you exclude role and game time as the reason his average drops?


What happened when we gave converted half forward Nick O'Brien a gig inside for the second half of 2015? Multiple games over 30 possessions or more, an average of about 25 possessions, followed by immediate delisting.

Nick O'Brien makes Darcy Parish look like Usain Bolt. He was way too slow and never averaged 25 touches. You might want to have a look at that.

O’Brien is the second best endurance athlete we had in the Stanton to Ambrose era. Only Ambrose could beat him in a time trial and Ambrose was extremely high quality (in that bracket second only to Blicavs and other runners like Sharp at Brisbane). You’re right he didn’t average 25 possessions but he did get more than 30 twice in that 9 game run. I don’t concede the point in relation to his ability to accumulate that season until I know what positions he was playing in each game. When he returned to play VFL for us he was prolific. Much more so that the AFL players he played with and against.


Why does Jackson Hately get moved on from Adelaide? Because he is quantifiably worse than Matt Crouch? Did he ever get the opportunity to just hunt to pad his stats and have a career? Or was more being asked of him? We know clubs ask more of young players than they do of established senior players. We've been experiencing it for more than a decade and we've punished young players for the failings of their elders for just as long.

I don't even know who Jackson Hately is but looked him up. He played 28 games and averaged 18 touches as a mid.

Hately was one of the ‘big bodied’ mids of the 2018 draft. Prolific as a junior inside mid, and physical albeit one-paced / slow. I don’t think played in the main midfield rotation once in his career. I mention him because to me he is a perfect illustration of how being in the right place at the right time is often more important than your ability. His problem was the spread and his defensive. Why was that not also a problem for Matt Crouch? You’ll say it’s because Matt Crouch got more of the ball. I’ll say Hatley couldn’t get the ball because he was being asked to do other things Crouch wasn’t. All we can really say, then, is that Crouch was kept because he had more of an opportunity to accumulate.

It the inconsistency of the standard that is applied to old and young, which is something I have railed against since 2012/2013 when I really started following the VFL side. Geelong is a really good example of how young player are asked to match the elite standards of a quality senior core. They are able to continually integrate kids into a side to play very specific roles which are a fit for their characteristics. Unlike at Essendon, for example, where the standard requires them to iron out the inadequacy of their senior peers.


Matt Crouch has played every game this year for Adelaide and picked up coaches vote in at least one game this year so he must be doing something right. I'm not as familiar wth where he is at but I know he has had OP issues.

I am pretty sure Crouch asked for a trade or that Adelaide has tried to trade him a few time. He couldn’t find a suitor. In the year he averaged 33 possessions, he best year by 0.4, he was All Australian 2017 and along with Heppell is the worst All Australian selection in history. He averaged 32.2 and 32.6 in 2018 and 2019 and then fell out of favour, while still averaging 26.1, 27.4 and 26.7 possessions. He has since been reinstated, at the same time Adelaide has fallen off a cliff, mind you, but at least he’s getting his 32 a week again. In the 11 games he has played in the last 2 seasons Adelaide has lost 8 of them. Not causation but an interesting correlation because there is no hurt factor in their midfield game and Matt Crouch is as ineffective as it gets.

Coaches votes are a context free appeal to authority. I could care less.


What about Will Brodie? The one time he played consistently inside he dominated. How does he compare to Jarrod Lyons, Brad Crouch, Heppell, Jack Steele, Jobe, JPK, Priddis and Ziebell? Just to pluck more names including All Australians, club captains and a Brownlow Medallist.

Will Brodie had a really good year the year before last and has struggled to find the footy ever since.

So Brodie went from 24 games in 2022 at 26.8 possessions, 5.4 tackles and 5.7 clearances a piece to playing 5 games in the next season for no reason other than he was magically in form and then reverted to type? I know O’Meara played 21 games for Freo in 2023 but none for Freo in 2022. Fyfe also played more. Serong’s possession rate spiked to 30.7 in 2023 and Johnson played 18 games he didn’t play in 2023. They are all facts and support the argument about it being role-related. A reference to form of a player who was given 5 games the season after he dominated is speculation and has no weight.


Was Michael Barlow still a ball magnet when he was moved out of Freo to GC where he could hardly get a game?

Michael Barlow was a bloody good player but he was 28 or 29 and busted up when he was moved on wasn't he? Kind of like Jason Johnson was at 29.

He averaged between 22.9 and 27.9 possessions between 2010 and 2016. In his 2 seasons for the Suns he averaged 25.4 and 26 possessions. No decrease there. He also then returned to the VFL where he continued to be prolific. Barlow was then so cooked he played another 2 seasons for Werribee as a 33/34 year old.


Shane Tuck combined 25 hard ball gets with 10 tackles a week and got frozen out.

Shane Tuck average 17 touches and 2 tackles in his last year of football

No one gets 25 hardballs a week except maybe Matt Rowell. That was hyperbole. I recall there being a regular sentiment about Tuck querying why he could not get a game. I’ve looked at the records and his Wikipedia and I think it may be 2011 when he doesn’t play between round 11 and round 17. It was a KB hobbyhorse. I remember it as being more of a story than the records indicate. He has a purple patch between rounds 18 and 22 and then looses form in rounds 23 and 24 in 2011. Wikipedia says he was talked out of a decision to retire at the end of 2011 and was then prolific in 2012. I’m not going to look into it more than that. Happy to withdraw the Tuck example.


Kyle Martin was getting 45 touches a week and kicking 3 to 5 goals in the VFL. Never got a look.

I don't even know who Kyle Martin is.

He was prolific at VFL level to a level that not even AFL players have matched.


We're seeing it now with Tom Mitchell. In the space of 20 months 2 clubs have treated him like waking up next to an undesirable hookup the morning after.

Tom Mitchell has a brownlow and about 130 votes. He had a pretty solid year last year at Collingwood and has missed a bit this year due to injury - actually a bit like Parish TBH. That said, he getting on a bit (31 next month) so you'd expect him to decline a bit. Parish is in his prime.

See above re Mitchell.


Essendon specialises in treating these players as stars. It's why I'm so conscious of it.

So who else do we specialise in treating like a star? Also, how do we treat these players like stars?

Heppell who is another accumulator Dodoro and co mistook for an inside midfielder. Stanton and Zaharakis. We’d still be trying to play Melksham in the middle if he hadn’t left.


In my opinion you mark Parish too harshly . He is not elite but he is a very good player who had a pretty s**t game against Port. He'll bounce back.

As I said above. I can’t distinguish what he does from a structural function. He will bounce back from poor and irrelevant to just irrelevant.
Click to expand...
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TBH I don’t really like Parish that much.
 
BrunoV said:
DERO, below is my response. I use this in dark mode so the order is:

  • Grey / black text is my original
  • red text is your response
  • blue text is my reply

:kissingheart:


I believe it. I may be wrong but I certainly don't know my view not to be the truth.

You claimed that you did not come in here to comment when Parish was playing well was about relevance. This is untrue because you only pop up when Parish has a poor game or seemingly to pot Parish when you think he has played a bad game. I suspect we would have a similar view of his game against Port.

I said Parish is not relevant, because I don’t think he there is any part of his game that warrants him being given midfield time over the likes of Caldwell, Hobbs, Perkins, etc which would be to improve the team. I’ve explained the basis for that view. I’ve seen little to nothing to suggest that anything Parish does is a result of his particular skill set that is not shared by numerous others currently on the list and who we and other clubs de-list. That was the point of my examples. To illustrate it another way, I believe you could take the top 20 midfielders from the second tier comps around the country (not on AFL lists) and that they would all get 30 possessions with little difficulty if given a pre-season and then allowed to bull hunt as mids. It’s the latter part that is key. They almost never get the opportunity, which, by the way, is not to say they should. I’m not advocating for some commie race to the bottom. I’m saying the AFL industry can’t really differentiate between players it anoints as stars and players who never even have careers. That raises a number of interesting and significant possibilities about the talent pool and recruiting generally. Just to end the point, my hunch is that there are years when at least 10 18 year olds each year who do not even get drafted who could do it (get 30 possessions if allowed to accumulate). It doesn’t really matter how you want to cut it. There would be about 50 ball magnets between the ages of 10 to 30 in the country not on AFL lists who could accumulate if given the opportunity. I doubt any mid is in the AFL system, other than Parish (I can’t think of anyone else who has his skill set), due to the ability to accumulate in and of itself. How could we be the only club? Have you seen the decisions made by our list management over 20 years?

As Howard said above, coaching / structure chooses the high possession accumulators. That is a fact or a truth, it’s not seriously debatable. Brodie is the best and more dramatic recent illustration. He goes from basically not playing to dominating and is then left out of the team. Worpel is another example as his ‘form’ has been much better since Tom Mitchell left (just like when it peaked when Mitchell broke his leg and didn’t play in Worpel’s second year when he won their bnf or placed highly). He averages no less than 26.1 possessions in the 3 years he has played for Hawthorn in which Tom Mitchell did not also play. He was in and out of the side when Mitchell was there. Look at how Matt Kennedy saved his career at Carlton. Finally got a run in the middle in the second half of 2021 to help out a battered and struggling Cripps. It coincided with career high average possessions at 20.2 – which is 21.2 if you remove the outlier when he got only 11 (I raise this because he may not have been playing in a ball hunting midfield role for the possessions to dip to that degree). First year under Voss his numbers spike at an average 24.5 possessions which is 6 more than his next best season. We know Carlton was playing an outnumber, clearance heavy game in 2022 – similar to the Dogs (which produces big midfield numbers). Kennedy then got injured in 2023 but Carlton has also now evolved its style a bit and Cerra has also hit his straps. They’ve added permanent Ollie Hollands and his brother. I doubt we’ll see Kennedy average above 20 again. To say that he wont because of his form ignores all of the facts (i.e. change in game style, his similarity to certain mids and the addition of more runners) in favour of assumptions about form or quality which cannot be proven short of a game by game, time on ground and position analysis. Even then, you’d need to speak to his coach to confirm that the role is the same very time.

Fyfe thanked whoever it was he thanked when he won his second Brownlow for covering for him – that’s the most high profile acknowledgement of a player being allowed to hunt. We know that Richmond played players whose job it was to cover for Dusty. You could even go back to our 2000 team in which Heffernan and Blumfield played very high midfield minutes for not much on the stat sheet because they were fundamentally defensive players (covering for the likes of Hird, Misiti and Mercuri who did as they pleased).

I see no reason Parish can’t be ‘not relevant’ (a lazy was of expressing the point) and having played a bad game at the same time. I only bother to rehash the point I have been making since 2017 or 2018 when he plays poorly because no one will take it seriously (because stat sheet). That’s not to say that I do it every time I think he plays poorly, either. But I have consistently expressed the point for about 6 years now (possibly even 7). Use the search function here if you don’t believe me.


This is how I make my case.

I place no value in possession accumulation. That happens to wipe out about two thirds of what Parish does. This is all of the running around, loose ball gets on the wing and half back. This is all the result of team structure / sides choosing the players they let accumulate. It can't be done by players who defend, either because they do it instinctively or because they are asked to defend. It's playing a role and is of no more significance or value than any other role on the ground almost all of which offer the opportunity for only a fraction of the accumulation. Problem is that it gets overrated because the champions are allowed to accumulate and we've never really readjusted how possession is viewed, certainly not since the 90s when I have clear memories of the game. If anything Supercoach has further distorted possession based analysis. Mids are not tagged or even run with and there is a lot more emphasis on retaining possession of the ball. So we're really dealing with possession inflation. Ball use is the key criteria for assessing the value of accumulated possession. Parish is a poor AFL kick, struggling to be average. No one is seriously going to argue that he is a better than average user of the ball, surely. That immediately calls into question the majority of his involvement.

Statistically Parish compares with other AFL mids. His kicking at times can be poor. I have posted comparisons in here previously. I don't care what you say regarding possessions, anyone that can get the football 40 times a game can play. The fact that many of these possessions are won at the coal face seems to be lost on you and you have instead diminished his by putting 2/3 down to accumulation.

To say that you don’t care what I say about possessions is to not engage my position in any substantive way.

I said in my post, there isn’t really a dispute about Parish other than whether you value possession accumulation or not. Your view is that there is something special about a midfielder getting the ball a lot. The simply reality is that for midfielders, there isn’t. That’s not to say that every AFL player can accumulate, they clearly can’t all do it but mids can and they do when given the opportunity to do so. The opportunity presents itself in degrees.

Tom Mitchell is no less adept at accumulating than he was in his Brownlow years. The difference is that since those years he has only once played for a team that has structured its ball movement around him as a last gasp attempt at squeezing another flag out of a premiership dynasty. In his first 2 seasons at the Hawks he averaged 35.8 and 35.3 possessions (latter was 2018 Brownlow). He missed 2019, due to his shattered leg and then averaged 25 possession on return in 2020. In 2021 he averaged 34.3 possession (which is Clarkson’s last season in charge). In 2022, the possession rate drops under Sam Mitchell who tries to ship him off before he has even coached a game (but it’s still an average of 28). The reliance on Mitchell at Collingwood in nothing like it was in 2017, 2018 and 2021 at Hawthorn (and his average has dropped to 25 – he got 30 possession or more 7 time in 23 and 9 times in 22). As another example, Trent Cotchin got much more of the ball on average between 2011 and 2016 than he did during the Tiger’s premiership era. 2017 was Cotchin’s 27th year. Surely we are not going to say that in the midst of his peak as a player that his capacity to accumulate decreased even as his team became a powerhouse.

Parish does not win the majority of his possession at the coal face – which is a stoppage or a contested ruck/maul situation (to use a Rugby term) and under direct physical pressure. I’m not interested in contested possession as a representation of getting the ball under physical contact / pressure because that stat is padded with loose ball gets (which is essentially another way of saying accumulated possession not the result of having the ball passed to you by a team mate). He wins the majority of his possession accumulating around the ground. When you talk about the coal face, it is to excuse poor disposal because of the impact of physical pressure. But that’s not what’s really happening. What am I supposed to make of the quick fire handballs that don’t get to a team mate? He got the ball so he can play but it doesn’t matter that the team didn’t benefit from the possession, we just have to wait for a time when we are blessed for the cycle to put another Jobe inside so that we get something out of these opportunities? What about running from a stoppage and missing targets I50 not under more than the inferred pressure (having carried the ball from the centre bounce)? Too bad, hopefully circumstances conspire so that in 4 years time it’s a player who can kick the ball in this position? He’s not breaking the ball out of congestion so there should be no leeway afforded as it would be for the like of Danger, Judd, Fyfe, etc.


While I accept that he is smart and very good at accumulating I dont accept the net value of his presence changes anything for Essendon. I've got some spreadsheets sitting around somewhere that demonstrate that the volume and differential of clearances, possessions, etc is not reduced by Parish's absence. I'll dig them out.

Please dig these out.

Will do.


Problem 1 basically neutralises his ball handling. He can't absorb physical pressure enough to use his handling to handball in a damaging way, best illustrated by Greg Williams and Lachie Neale (as players of similar stature).

Greg Williams should have won three brownlow medals and Lachie Neil has two making them arguably two of the best mids to ever play. Most other midfileders will not measure up against these two as the are two exceptional players.

Exceptional is the standard for allowing a ball hunter to hunt in teams that are not dysfunctional. Anything less than exceptional produces a net loss for the team. Even then exceptional needs help from players who will do the defensive stuff. Who else has his skill set in the league and is afforded the leeway he gets to accumulate? Does Parish have a game that warrants mention if you reduce his possession rate by 25% to 33%? If we’re going to do this, other than it being necessary because we are stuck with the ludicrous contract we gave him that no club would consider taking on (they already didn’t), what is the argument for having Parish in the role over Caldwell, for example? Caldwell is more physical, quicker and a much better kick of the ball. The same could be said of Perkins.


That brings us back to ball use. When he is the one running ahead of the stoppage and hacking kicks forward we're not getting value for a clearance. Yes, Danger and Fyfe were/are guilty of dodgy kicks and so was Judd but they made clearances mortals can't through sheer power and speed and then carried the ball. They didn't need to run ahead of the stoppage to break away. The only other way a poor kick is effective inside is if he's doing a Jobe, wearing the pressure of 2 or 3 players to free a team mate in space, but Parish isn't doing that.

Danger,Judd and Fyfe are brownlow medalists and are extremely gifted athletes. Again, there aren't many of these and the comparison is a bit unfair. I also laugh when Parish gets compared with Dusty Martin who has three Norm Smith medals and a brownlow. We are measuring up against some of the best players of the last few decades. Of course they are better players than Parish.

As above. This is the standard of players who are allowed to hunt. They are the games most destructive players or they absorb physical heat in close. It is not in dispute that Parish is nowhere near this level. I’m genuinely trying to work out if there is another Parish in the league. The nearest you get are Jack McRae (an endurance animal and great kick) and Matt Crouch (because my impression of him was that he was much more an accumulator than a pure hardball winner even though he looks like one). Is there another one paced, weak inside mid with poor disposal who is given free reign?


This stuff is barely in dispute. It's the emphasis on accumulation which is.

He has no defensive game, no physical presence and no running power.

He is improving his defensive game runs ok but is not big enough to be a crash and bash midfielder. He is never going to have a physical game and was never going to have one because of his size.

What is so good about his game that he should have been given more than 150 games to start to do the defensive work? This is another point that is not actually in dispute. Nobody claims he is a star. If he is not a star then he defends. If he defends his possession rate drops by said 25% to 33%. What is he then, immaterial? Has Geelong ever relied on a player anything like him? Has any other side which has consistently played prelim finals?

What’s the point of him? How does he make the team better not in isolation but compared to the inclusion of a player who has the capacity to accumulate but who also does other things we actually need?


The industry has a way of validating players whose quality cant really be separated from players who dont make it. But when you look through it all there are contradictions that never get a satisfactory explanation. I call it the Mark McGough rule. It's the way a player can go from ANZAC day medal on debut to scrap heap in the blink of any eye.

Possum eyes McGough played a handful good games and never had any real consistency. He averaqed 14 touches over 40 games. Again this is another poor comparison. I watched Kyle Reimers kick 8 goals one day. Just saying.

You can’t fake his ANZAC day debut. If you want to rely on his averages as some reflection of his ball accumulating capacity you need to look at his time in the middle in every other game he played. He may also have been unprofessional and not of the fitness required. The player I remember was fit looking, certainly while still listed at Collingwood. How do you exclude role and game time as the reason his average drops?


What happened when we gave converted half forward Nick O'Brien a gig inside for the second half of 2015? Multiple games over 30 possessions or more, an average of about 25 possessions, followed by immediate delisting.

Nick O'Brien makes Darcy Parish look like Usain Bolt. He was way too slow and never averaged 25 touches. You might want to have a look at that.

O’Brien is the second best endurance athlete we had in the Stanton to Ambrose era. Only Ambrose could beat him in a time trial and Ambrose was extremely high quality (in that bracket second only to Blicavs and other runners like Sharp at Brisbane). You’re right he didn’t average 25 possessions but he did get more than 30 twice in that 9 game run. I don’t concede the point in relation to his ability to accumulate that season until I know what positions he was playing in each game. When he returned to play VFL for us he was prolific. Much more so that the AFL players he played with and against.


Why does Jackson Hately get moved on from Adelaide? Because he is quantifiably worse than Matt Crouch? Did he ever get the opportunity to just hunt to pad his stats and have a career? Or was more being asked of him? We know clubs ask more of young players than they do of established senior players. We've been experiencing it for more than a decade and we've punished young players for the failings of their elders for just as long.

I don't even know who Jackson Hately is but looked him up. He played 28 games and averaged 18 touches as a mid.

Hately was one of the ‘big bodied’ mids of the 2018 draft. Prolific as a junior inside mid, and physical albeit one-paced / slow. I don’t think played in the main midfield rotation once in his career. I mention him because to me he is a perfect illustration of how being in the right place at the right time is often more important than your ability. His problem was the spread and his defensive. Why was that not also a problem for Matt Crouch? You’ll say it’s because Matt Crouch got more of the ball. I’ll say Hatley couldn’t get the ball because he was being asked to do other things Crouch wasn’t. All we can really say, then, is that Crouch was kept because he had more of an opportunity to accumulate.

It the inconsistency of the standard that is applied to old and young, which is something I have railed against since 2012/2013 when I really started following the VFL side. Geelong is a really good example of how young player are asked to match the elite standards of a quality senior core. They are able to continually integrate kids into a side to play very specific roles which are a fit for their characteristics. Unlike at Essendon, for example, where the standard requires them to iron out the inadequacy of their senior peers.


Matt Crouch has played every game this year for Adelaide and picked up coaches vote in at least one game this year so he must be doing something right. I'm not as familiar wth where he is at but I know he has had OP issues.

I am pretty sure Crouch asked for a trade or that Adelaide has tried to trade him a few time. He couldn’t find a suitor. In the year he averaged 33 possessions, he best year by 0.4, he was All Australian 2017 and along with Heppell is the worst All Australian selection in history. He averaged 32.2 and 32.6 in 2018 and 2019 and then fell out of favour, while still averaging 26.1, 27.4 and 26.7 possessions. He has since been reinstated, at the same time Adelaide has fallen off a cliff, mind you, but at least he’s getting his 32 a week again. In the 11 games he has played in the last 2 seasons Adelaide has lost 8 of them. Not causation but an interesting correlation because there is no hurt factor in their midfield game and Matt Crouch is as ineffective as it gets.

Coaches votes are a context free appeal to authority. I could care less.


What about Will Brodie? The one time he played consistently inside he dominated. How does he compare to Jarrod Lyons, Brad Crouch, Heppell, Jack Steele, Jobe, JPK, Priddis and Ziebell? Just to pluck more names including All Australians, club captains and a Brownlow Medallist.

Will Brodie had a really good year the year before last and has struggled to find the footy ever since.

So Brodie went from 24 games in 2022 at 26.8 possessions, 5.4 tackles and 5.7 clearances a piece to playing 5 games in the next season for no reason other than he was magically in form and then reverted to type? I know O’Meara played 21 games for Freo in 2023 but none for Freo in 2022. Fyfe also played more. Serong’s possession rate spiked to 30.7 in 2023 and Johnson played 18 games he didn’t play in 2023. They are all facts and support the argument about it being role-related. A reference to form of a player who was given 5 games the season after he dominated is speculation and has no weight.


Was Michael Barlow still a ball magnet when he was moved out of Freo to GC where he could hardly get a game?

Michael Barlow was a bloody good player but he was 28 or 29 and busted up when he was moved on wasn't he? Kind of like Jason Johnson was at 29.

He averaged between 22.9 and 27.9 possessions between 2010 and 2016. In his 2 seasons for the Suns he averaged 25.4 and 26 possessions. No decrease there. He also then returned to the VFL where he continued to be prolific. Barlow was then so cooked he played another 2 seasons for Werribee as a 33/34 year old.


Shane Tuck combined 25 hard ball gets with 10 tackles a week and got frozen out.

Shane Tuck average 17 touches and 2 tackles in his last year of football

No one gets 25 hardballs a week except maybe Matt Rowell. That was hyperbole. I recall there being a regular sentiment about Tuck querying why he could not get a game. I’ve looked at the records and his Wikipedia and I think it may be 2011 when he doesn’t play between round 11 and round 17. It was a KB hobbyhorse. I remember it as being more of a story than the records indicate. He has a purple patch between rounds 18 and 22 and then looses form in rounds 23 and 24 in 2011. Wikipedia says he was talked out of a decision to retire at the end of 2011 and was then prolific in 2012. I’m not going to look into it more than that. Happy to withdraw the Tuck example.


Kyle Martin was getting 45 touches a week and kicking 3 to 5 goals in the VFL. Never got a look.

I don't even know who Kyle Martin is.

He was prolific at VFL level to a level that not even AFL players have matched.


We're seeing it now with Tom Mitchell. In the space of 20 months 2 clubs have treated him like waking up next to an undesirable hookup the morning after.

Tom Mitchell has a brownlow and about 130 votes. He had a pretty solid year last year at Collingwood and has missed a bit this year due to injury - actually a bit like Parish TBH. That said, he getting on a bit (31 next month) so you'd expect him to decline a bit. Parish is in his prime.

See above re Mitchell.


Essendon specialises in treating these players as stars. It's why I'm so conscious of it.

So who else do we specialise in treating like a star? Also, how do we treat these players like stars?

Heppell who is another accumulator Dodoro and co mistook for an inside midfielder. Stanton and Zaharakis. We’d still be trying to play Melksham in the middle if he hadn’t left.


In my opinion you mark Parish too harshly . He is not elite but he is a very good player who had a pretty s**t game against Port. He'll bounce back.

As I said above. I can’t distinguish what he does from a structural function. He will bounce back from poor and irrelevant to just irrelevant.
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One thing is for sure, this post is very patriotic.
 

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People are forgetting how good he is and his latest injury setbacks. Has been more defensive this year up until last week as well.
 
Mikevk123 said:
People are forgetting how good he is and his latest injury setbacks. Has been more defensive this year up until last week as well.
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He’d only played the one game before Port though - and defensively he was crap against them. Granted wasn’t alone and he doesn’t look 100%.

If the cupboard wasn’t bare I wouldn’t mind seeing him take a week off
 
Vander18 said:
Give it a read and engage with it.

A lot of thought has gone into it and, agree or disagree with it, it’s an interesting, thought provoking post.
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Yes it was a bit of a smart ass reply but having been up from 3am for work it was a fraction long to take in at that stage.

On top of that despite Bruno and myself butting heads at times I generally agree with the basics he is trying to get across on Parish and the list in general.
I know where he is coming from because I have been reading his posts for 10 years. Despite not agreeing with some of his opinions I rate him as a poster and have nominated him for poster of the year several times.
 
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Vander18 said:
The Parish situation is so very Essendon.

Firstly, I’m not Parish basher - he can find footy and he has nice hands and distribution. As a 3rd/4th mid in a good group he’d be fine. But at Essendon we’ve, as always, completely overrated our own talent.

He’s got a 6 year contract but he can’t:
  • Absorb contact and release outside mid (think Bont/Cripps)
  • Get through the front of stoppages (JHF or Rozee spring to mind)
  • Hurt teams with his kicking (Merrett)

He also can’t really run by AFL midfield standards so he is a total liability in defensive transition. It’s not that he won’t....he can’t. He has neither above average speed or eendurance.

He’s a solid B grade mid who we have remunerated like a star. Have said it a million times - we missed the memo re how footy is played in the 2020’s and what traits/skills actually matter.

To compound all of this, we have have managed to compile a midfield group with similar traits. All decent players but horrible as a collective. Now we have finally started to address it by playing Durham and Perkins as mids but we are left with Caldwell and Hobbs playing less midfield time than they should. Parish of course still gobbles up big midfield minutes.

Should never have done a 6 year deal, it was madness. The right move was a trade if one was on the table - we could have started to meaningfully address our midfield issues.

What to do now? Club clearly not prepared to bite the bullet and either restrict his midfield minutes or not play him. Only way I see a trade is if we eat his salary - can’t see club doing that either.

Don’t know where it goes from here....we’ve created a real barrier for ourselves in terms of moving the club forward. We need to be absolutely ruthless if we want to address it but I just don’t see that mindset from anyone within the club.
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Is re-signing Parish Dodoro's most important contract in his new role as contract person? I agree we need to be ruthless, but if 6 years is the precedent we really are screwed.

I don't blame Parish for that. He just became a father. Dodoro though, the guy who can apparently stare down anyone, should never have moved past 3 years.

And some posters reckon no-one came knocking for Parish - even less reason to give more than three. Feels like Scott wanted to keep him.
 
ghostdog said:
Is re-signing Parish Dodoro's most important contract in his new role as contract person? I agree we need to be ruthless, but if 6 years is the precedent we really are screwed.

I don't blame Parish for that. He just became a father. Dodoro though, the guy who can apparently stare down anyone, should never have moved past 3 years.

And some posters reckon no-one came knocking for Parish - even less reason to give more than three. Feels like Scott wanted to keep him.
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Sheesh - can’t begrudge Parish getting paid. We are all out there hustling trying to earn a dollar.

How it got to 6 years? No idea, baffling. Then the obfuscation of it’s not 5 years as initially advised, it’s actually 6! Very odd.

Agree, you’d have to think Scott was onboard with it.
 
BrunoV said:
DERO, below is my response. I use this in dark mode so the order is:

  • Grey / black text is my original
  • red text is your response
  • blue text is my reply

:kissingheart:


I believe it. I may be wrong but I certainly don't know my view not to be the truth.

You claimed that you did not come in here to comment when Parish was playing well was about relevance. This is untrue because you only pop up when Parish has a poor game or seemingly to pot Parish when you think he has played a bad game. I suspect we would have a similar view of his game against Port.

I said Parish is not relevant, because I don’t think there is any part of his game that warrants him being given midfield time over the likes of Caldwell, Hobbs, Perkins, etc which would be to improve the team. I’ve explained the basis for that view. I’ve seen little to nothing to suggest that anything Parish does is a result of his particular skill set that is not shared by numerous others currently on the list and who we and other clubs de-list. That was the point of my examples. To illustrate it another way, I believe you could take the top 20 midfielders from the second tier comps around the country (not on AFL lists) and that they would all get 30 possessions with little difficulty if given a pre-season and then allowed to bull hunt as mids. It’s the latter part that is key. They almost never get the opportunity, which, by the way, is not to say they should. I’m not advocating for some commie race to the bottom. I’m saying the AFL industry can’t really differentiate between players it anoints as stars and players who never even have careers. That raises a number of interesting and significant possibilities about the talent pool and recruiting generally. Just to end the point, my hunch is that there are years when at least 10 x 18 year olds each year who do not even get drafted who could do it (get 30 possessions if allowed to accumulate). It doesn’t really matter how you want to cut it. There would be about 50 ball magnets between the ages of 20 to 30 in the country not on AFL lists who could accumulate if given the opportunity. It's like guys who can bowl a cricket ball at 130 km/h, there are stacks of them in the lower leagues but it doesn't make them first class bowlers.

I doubt any mid is in the AFL system, other than Parish (I can’t think of anyone else who has his skill set), due to the ability to accumulate in and of itself. How could we be the only club? Have you seen the decisions made by our list management over 20 years?

As Howard said above, coaching / structure chooses the high possession accumulators. That is a fact or a truth, it’s not seriously debatable. Brodie is the best and more dramatic recent illustration. He goes from basically not playing to dominating and is then left out of the team. Worpel is another example as his ‘form’ has been much better since Tom Mitchell left (just like when it peaked when Mitchell broke his leg and didn’t play in Worpel’s second year, when he won their bnf or placed highly). He averages no less than 26.1 possessions in the 3 years he has played for Hawthorn in which Tom Mitchell did not also play. Look at how Matt Kennedy saved his career at Carlton. Finally got a run in the middle in the second half of 2021 to help out a battered and struggling Cripps. It coincided with career high average possessions at 20.2 – which is 21.2 if you remove the outlier when he got only 11 (I raise this because he may not have been playing in a ball hunting midfield role for the possessions to dip to that degree). First year under Voss his numbers spike at an average 24.5 possessions which is 6 more than his next best season (his run to the end 2021 aside). We know Carlton was playing an outnumber, clearance heavy game in 2022 – similar to the Dogs - which produces big midfield numbers. Kennedy then got injured in 2023 but Carlton has also now evolved its style a bit and Cerra has also hit his straps. They’ve added permanent Ollie Hollands and his brother. I doubt we’ll see Kennedy average above 20 again. To say that he wont because of his form ignores all of the facts (i.e. change in game style, his similarity to certain mids and the addition of more runners) in favour of assumptions about form or quality which cannot be proven short of a game by game, time on ground and position analysis. Even then, you’d need to speak to his coach to confirm that the role is the same very time.

Fyfe thanked whoever it was he thanked when he won his second Brownlow for covering for him – that’s the most high profile acknowledgement of a player being allowed to hunt. We know that Richmond played players whose job it was to cover for Dusty. You could even go back to our 2000 team in which Heffernan and Blumfield played very high midfield minutes for not much on the stat sheet because they were fundamentally defensive players (covering for the likes of Hird, Misiti and Mercuri who did as they pleased).

I see no reason Parish can’t be ‘not relevant’ (a lazy was of expressing the point) and having played a bad game at the same time. I only bother to rehash the point I have been making since 2017 or 2018 when he plays poorly because no one will take it seriously (because stat sheet). That’s not to say that I do it every time I think he plays poorly, either. But I have consistently expressed the point for about 6 years now (possibly even 7). Use the search function here if you don’t believe me.


This is how I make my case.

I place no value in possession accumulation. That happens to wipe out about two thirds of what Parish does. This is all of the running around, loose ball gets on the wing and half back. This is all the result of team structure / sides choosing the players they let accumulate. It can't be done by players who defend, either because they do it instinctively or because they are asked to defend. It's playing a role and is of no more significance or value than any other role on the ground almost all of which offer the opportunity for only a fraction of the accumulation. Problem is that it gets overrated because the champions are allowed to accumulate and we've never really readjusted how possession is viewed, certainly not since the 90s when I have clear memories of the game. If anything Supercoach has further distorted possession based analysis. Mids are not tagged or even run with and there is a lot more emphasis on retaining possession of the ball. So we're really dealing with possession inflation. Ball use is the key criteria for assessing the value of accumulated possession. Parish is a poor AFL kick, struggling to be average. No one is seriously going to argue that he is a better than average user of the ball, surely. That immediately calls into question the majority of his involvement.

Statistically Parish compares with other AFL mids. His kicking at times can be poor. I have posted comparisons in here previously. I don't care what you say regarding possessions, anyone that can get the football 40 times a game can play. The fact that many of these possessions are won at the coal face seems to be lost on you and you have instead diminished his by putting 2/3 down to accumulation.

To say that you don’t care what I say about possessions is to not engage my position in any substantive way.

I said in my post, there isn’t really a dispute about Parish other than whether you value possession accumulation or not. Your view is that there is something special about a midfielder getting the ball a lot. The simply reality is that for midfielders, there isn’t. That’s not to say that every AFL player can accumulate, they clearly can’t all do it but mids can and they do when given the opportunity to do so. The opportunity presents itself in degrees.

Tom Mitchell is no less adept at accumulating than he was in his Brownlow years. The difference is that since those years he has only once played for a team that has structured its ball movement around him as a last gasp attempt at squeezing another flag out of a premiership dynasty. In his first 2 seasons at the Hawks he averaged 35.8 and 35.3 possessions (latter was 2018 Brownlow). He missed 2019, due to his shattered leg and then averaged 25 possession on return in 2020. In 2021 he averaged 34.3 possession (which is Clarkson’s last season in charge). In 2022, the possession rate drops under Sam Mitchell who tries to ship him off before he has even coached a game (but it’s still an average of 28). The reliance on Mitchell at Collingwood in nothing like it was in 2017, 2018 and 2021 at Hawthorn (and his average has dropped to 25 – he got 30 possession or more 7 time in 23 and 9 times in 22). As another example, Trent Cotchin got much more of the ball on average between 2011 and 2016 than he did during the Tiger’s premiership era. 2017 was Cotchin’s 27th year. Surely we are not going to say that in the midst of his peak as a player that his innate capacity to accumulate decreased even as his team became a powerhouse.

Parish does not win the majority of his possession at the coal face – which is a stoppage or a contested ruck/maul situation (to use a Rugby term) and under direct physical pressure. I’m not interested in contested possession as a representation of getting the ball under physical contact / pressure because that stat is padded with loose ball gets (which is essentially another way of saying accumulated possession not the result of having the ball passed to you by a team mate). He wins the majority of his possession accumulating around the ground. When you talk about the coal face, it is to excuse poor disposal because of the impact of physical pressure. But that’s not what’s really happening. What am I supposed to make of the quick fire handballs, to avoid the physical heat, that don’t get to a team mate? He got the ball, so he can play, but it doesn’t matter that the team didn’t benefit from the possession, we just have to wait for a time when we are blessed for the cycle to put another Jobe inside so that we get something out of these opportunities? What about running from a stoppage and missing targets I50 not under more than the inferred pressure (having carried the ball from the centre bounce)? Too bad, hopefully circumstances conspire so that in 4 years time it’s a player who can kick the ball in this position? He’s not breaking the ball out of congestion so there should be no leeway afforded as it would be for the like of Danger, Judd, Fyfe, etc. He's not absorbing the pressure to free his team mates like Jobe, JPK, Dunkley did/do.


While I accept that he is smart and very good at accumulating I dont accept the net value of his presence changes anything for Essendon. I've got some spreadsheets sitting around somewhere that demonstrate that the volume and differential of clearances, possessions, etc is not reduced by Parish's absence. I'll dig them out.

Please dig these out.

Will do.


Problem 1 basically neutralises his ball handling. He can't absorb physical pressure enough to use his handling to handball in a damaging way, best illustrated by Greg Williams and Lachie Neale (as players of similar stature).

Greg Williams should have won three brownlow medals and Lachie Neil has two making them arguably two of the best mids to ever play. Most other midfileders will not measure up against these two as the are two exceptional players.

Exceptional is the standard for allowing a ball hunter to hunt in teams that are not dysfunctional. Anything less than exceptional produces a net loss for the team. Even then exceptional needs help from players who will do the defensive stuff. Who else has his skill set in the league and is afforded the leeway he gets to accumulate? Does Parish have a game that warrants mention if you reduce his possession rate by 25% to 33%? If we’re going to do this, other than it being necessary because we are stuck with the ludicrous contract we gave him that no club would consider taking on (they already didn’t), what is the argument for having Parish in the role over Caldwell, for example? Caldwell is more physical, quicker and a much better kick of the ball. The same could be said of Perkins.


That brings us back to ball use. When he is the one running ahead of the stoppage and hacking kicks forward we're not getting value for a clearance. Yes, Danger and Fyfe were/are guilty of dodgy kicks and so was Judd but they made clearances mortals can't through sheer power and speed and then carried the ball. They didn't need to run ahead of the stoppage to break away. The only other way a poor kick is effective inside is if he's doing a Jobe, wearing the pressure of 2 or 3 players to free a team mate in space, but Parish isn't doing that.

Danger,Judd and Fyfe are brownlow medalists and are extremely gifted athletes. Again, there aren't many of these and the comparison is a bit unfair. I also laugh when Parish gets compared with Dusty Martin who has three Norm Smith medals and a brownlow. We are measuring up against some of the best players of the last few decades. Of course they are better players than Parish.

As above. This is the standard of players who are allowed to hunt. They are the games most destructive players or they absorb physical heat in close. It is not in dispute that Parish is nowhere near this level. I’m genuinely trying to work out if there is another Parish-like player in the league. The nearest I get are Jack McRae (an endurance animal and great kick) and Matt Crouch (because my impression of him was that he was much more an accumulator than a pure hardball winner even though he looks like one). Is there another one paced, weak inside mid with poor disposal who is given free reign?


This stuff is barely in dispute. It's the emphasis on accumulation which is.

He has no defensive game, no physical presence and no running power.

He is improving his defensive game runs ok but is not big enough to be a crash and bash midfielder. He is never going to have a physical game and was never going to have one because of his size.

What is so good about his game that he should have been given more than 150 games to start to do the defensive work? This is another point that is not actually in dispute. Nobody claims he is a star. If he is not a star then he defends. If he defends his possession rate drops by said 25% to 33%. What is he then, immaterial? Has Geelong ever relied on a player anything like him? Has any other side which has consistently played prelim finals?

What’s the point of him? How does he make the team better not in isolation but compared to the inclusion of a player who has the capacity to accumulate but who also does other things we actually need?


The industry has a way of validating players whose quality cant really be separated from players who dont make it. But when you look through it all there are contradictions that never get a satisfactory explanation. I call it the Mark McGough rule. It's the way a player can go from ANZAC day medal on debut to scrap heap in the blink of any eye.

Possum eyes McGough played a handful good games and never had any real consistency. He averaqed 14 touches over 40 games. Again this is another poor comparison. I watched Kyle Reimers kick 8 goals one day. Just saying.

You can’t fake his ANZAC day debut. If you want to rely on his averages as some reflection of his ball accumulating capacity you need to look at his time in the middle in every other game he played. He may also have been unprofessional and not of the fitness required. The player I remember was fit looking, certainly while still listed at Collingwood. How do you exclude role and game time as the reason his average drops?


What happened when we gave converted half forward Nick O'Brien a gig inside for the second half of 2015? Multiple games over 30 possessions or more, an average of about 25 possessions, followed by immediate delisting.

Nick O'Brien makes Darcy Parish look like Usain Bolt. He was way too slow and never averaged 25 touches. You might want to have a look at that.

O’Brien is the second best endurance athlete we had in the Stanton to Ambrose era. Only Ambrose could beat him in a time trial and Ambrose was extremely high quality (in that bracket second only to Blicavs and other semi-pro runners like Sharp at Brisbane). You’re right he didn’t average 25 possessions but he did get more than 30 twice in that 9 game run. I don’t concede the point in relation to his ability to accumulate that season until I know what positions he was playing in each game. When he returned to play VFL for us he was prolific. Much more so that the AFL players he played with and against.


Why does Jackson Hately get moved on from Adelaide? Because he is quantifiably worse than Matt Crouch? Did he ever get the opportunity to just hunt to pad his stats and have a career? Or was more being asked of him? We know clubs ask more of young players than they do of established senior players. We've been experiencing it for more than a decade and we've punished young players for the failings of their elders for just as long.

I don't even know who Jackson Hately is but looked him up. He played 28 games and averaged 18 touches as a mid.

Hately was one of the ‘big bodied’ mids of the 2018 draft. Prolific as a junior inside mid, and physical albeit one-paced / slow. I don’t think he played in the main midfield rotation once in his career. I mention him because to me he is a perfect illustration of how being in the right place at the right time is often more important than a player's ability. His problem was the spread and his defensive work. Why was that not also a problem for Matt Crouch? You’ll say it’s because Crouchgot more of the ball. I’ll say Hatley couldn’t get the ball because he was being asked to do other things Crouch wasn’t. All we can really say, then, is that Crouch was kept because he had more of an opportunity to accumulate.

It the inconsistency of the standard that is applied to old and young, which is something I have railed against since 2012/2013 when I really started following the VFL side. Geelong is a really good example of how young player are asked to match the elite standards of a quality senior core. Even then change is forced - see Menegola who has now been delisted but at a time he was clearly a better player than Bruhn and Clarke. They are able to continually integrate kids into a side to play very specific roles which are a fit for their characteristics. Unlike at Essendon, for example, where the standard requires them to iron out the inadequacy of their senior peers in addition to playing their own role.


Matt Crouch has played every game this year for Adelaide and picked up coaches vote in at least one game this year so he must be doing something right. I'm not as familiar wth where he is at but I know he has had OP issues.

I am pretty sure Crouch asked for a trade or that Adelaide has tried to trade him a few times. He couldn’t find a suitor. In the year he averaged 33 possessions, his best year by 0.4, he was All Australian 2017 and along with Heppell is the worst All Australian selection in history. He averaged 32.2 and 32.6 in 2018 and 2019 and then fell out of favour, while still averaging 26.1, 27.4 and 26.7 possessions. He has since been reinstated, at the same time Adelaide has fallen off a cliff, mind you, but at least he’s getting his 32 a week again. In the 11 games he has played in the last 2 seasons, Adelaide has lost 8 of them. Not causation but an interesting correlation because there is no hurt factor in their midfield game and Matt Crouch is as ineffective as it gets.

Coaches votes are a context free appeal to authority. I could care less.


What about Will Brodie? The one time he played consistently inside he dominated. How does he compare to Jarrod Lyons, Brad Crouch, Heppell, Jack Steele, Jobe, JPK, Priddis and Ziebell? Just to pluck more names including All Australians, club captains and a Brownlow Medallist.

Will Brodie had a really good year the year before last and has struggled to find the footy ever since.

So Brodie went from 24 games in 2022 at 26.8 possessions, 5.4 tackles and 5.7 clearances a piece to playing 5 games in the next season for no reason other than he was magically in form and then reverted to type? I know O’Meara played 21 games for Freo in 2023 but none for Freo in 2022. Fyfe also played more. Serong’s possession rate spiked to 30.7 in 2023 and Johnson played 18 games he didn’t play in 2022. They are all facts and support the argument about it being role-related. A reference to form of a player who was given 5 games the season after he dominated is speculation and has no weight.


Was Michael Barlow still a ball magnet when he was moved out of Freo to GC where he could hardly get a game?

Michael Barlow was a bloody good player but he was 28 or 29 and busted up when he was moved on wasn't he? Kind of like Jason Johnson was at 29.

He averaged between 22.9 and 27.9 possessions between 2010 and 2016. In his 2 seasons for the Suns he averaged 25.4 and 26 possessions. No decrease there. Barlow was then so cooked he played another 2 seasons for Werribee as a 33/34 year old.


Shane Tuck combined 25 hard ball gets with 10 tackles a week and got frozen out.

Shane Tuck average 17 touches and 2 tackles in his last year of football

No one gets 25 hardballs a week except maybe Matt Rowell. That was hyperbole. I recall there being a regular sentiment about Tuck querying why he could not get a game. I’ve looked at the records and his Wikipedia and I think it may be 2011 when he doesn’t play between round 11 and round 17. It was a KB hobbyhorse. I (miss) remember it as being more of a story than the records indicate. He had a purple patch between rounds 18 and 22 and then looses form in rounds 23 and 24 in 2011. Wikipedia says he was talked out of a decision to retire at the end of 2011. He was then prolific in 2012. I’m not going to look into it more than that. Happy to withdraw the Tuck example.


Kyle Martin was getting 45 touches a week and kicking 3 to 5 goals in the VFL. Never got a look.

I don't even know who Kyle Martin is.

He was prolific at VFL level to a degree that not even AFL players have matched.


We're seeing it now with Tom Mitchell. In the space of 20 months 2 clubs have treated him like waking up next to an undesirable hookup the morning after.

Tom Mitchell has a brownlow and about 130 votes. He had a pretty solid year last year at Collingwood and has missed a bit this year due to injury - actually a bit like Parish TBH. That said, he getting on a bit (31 next month) so you'd expect him to decline a bit. Parish is in his prime.

See above re Mitchell.


Essendon specialises in treating these players as stars. It's why I'm so conscious of it.

So who else do we specialise in treating like a star? Also, how do we treat these players like stars?

Heppell who is another accumulator Dodoro and co mistook for an inside midfielder. Stanton and Zaharakis. We’d still be trying to play Melksham in the middle if he hadn’t left.


In my opinion you mark Parish too harshly . He is not elite but he is a very good player who had a pretty s**t game against Port. He'll bounce back.

As I said above. I can’t distinguish what he does from a structural function. He will bounce back from poor and irrelevant to just irrelevant.
Click to expand...
It’s true that structure and role create greater opportunity for the accumulators of our game to rack up numbers.

While making 10 tackles against St Kilda Parish got 25 possessions, not 35. Maybe that’s what it looks like when he isn’t just ball hunting.

You’ve been posting about this for years. I agree Parish isn’t damaging. But I will always fundamentally disagree that these types of players could be entirely replaced by 30 guys outside the AFL.

Everyone’s favourite example Mitch Hibberd didn’t get to be an inside accumulator at AFL level. But tell you what we did see when he was near the bobbling ball in his AFL time. Fumbles and panic. He was so far off the pace it wasn’t funny.

Playing that role is definitely sets you up to get the footy but it’s not the cakewalk you think it is. Mitchell and Parish are incomplete but some aspects of their skill sets are elite.

You’ve taken an accurate insight and blown it up too broadly I reckon.

Having said that I’d much rather a Butters or a Tom Green.
 
Vander18 said:
Sheesh - can’t begrudge Parish getting paid. We are all out there hustling trying to earn a dollar.

How it got to 6 years? No idea, baffling. Then the obfuscation of it’s not 5 years as initially advised, it’s actually 6! Very odd.

Agree, you’d have to think Scott was onboard with it.
Click to expand...
I would agree. Scott rates him going forward more than some of us do 😎
 
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