Player Watch Brandon Zerk-Thatcher

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Speaking of, what happened to the Dougal Howard trade? Couple of clubs were linked to him briefly.
 
Shaucob_Burjan said:
Confirming our backline:

Our tall defenders

Aliir: intercept defender, poor 1:1

Esava: intercept defender, poor 1:1

BZT: not an intercept defender, cannot defend first/second option talls, might be able to take third talls

McKenzie: decent 1:1, height of a midfielder
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I don't think Esava is that bad 1:1. He gave Tex a bath last year even in all their 1 on 1s.

At the very least he has the scope to be good in that role.
 

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WillemDaDrew said:
I remember the meltdowns when we traded him out which essentially gave us Bergman so we certainly dodged a bullet there.
I wouldn’t be surprised if XD gets buried in the same AFL graveyard.
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Bergman was with #12 that we downgraded our natural #10 to in the Howard and Ryder trade. We also received #18 (Georgiades). This valued Howard at approximately pick 30. This

Bergman and Georgiades are both possible flight risks when out of contract next. It was even speculated both would leave this year. Bergman has similar disposal quality questions to Duursma. Georgiades has regressed since debut and now recovering from an ACL.

Howard is better than Ratugolea referring to the same stat Jonts likes to quote.
 
Launchpad McQuack said:
Bergman was with #12 that we downgraded our natural #10 to in the Howard and Ryder trade. We also received #18 (Georgiades). This valued Howard at approximately pick 30. This

Bergman and Georgiades are both possible flight risks when out of contract next. It was even speculated both would leave this year. Bergman has similar disposal quality questions to Duursma. Georgiades has regressed since debut and now recovering from an ACL.

Howard is better than Ratugolea referring to the same stat Jonts likes to quote.
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They were flight risks this year and signed for 2 and 4 respectively. Not sure the flight risk path is coming from. If they keep improving they will net us two first rounders each the way these stupid trades are happening. We just have to say they’re great, loved and we don’t want them to go
 
philthy05 said:
Dons fans keep going on about that their midfield is so s**t and yada yada, and to look at that list it’s lower teams defenders on that goals conceded list right so that supports what they say….

…

But there was 10 teams either lower or comparable on the ladder to essendon and zerk leads it by a fair margin.

So at some stage dons fans need to stop relying on that as a crutch to explain why he was so poor.

North and west coast midfields were not just subjectively, but objectively miles worse than essendons, yet their key defenders are not on that list. Zerk conceded many many many more goals than their defenders.




See above


If “bad midfield” explains his poor performance… why are the teams with far worse performing midfields backmen not exposed as bad as zerk?
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Jimmy Unchained said:
I think the West Coast and North defenders are helped by games played.

Games played by West Coast and North Melbourne Key Defenders:
Tom Barrass (14)
Rhett Bazzo (11)
Josh Rotham (13)
Ben McKay (19)
Aidan Corr (19)
Griffin Logue (15)

I don't think it's fair to use the ladder to assess the bomber's defence; the whole team was very poor defensively. I've cherry-picked some stats, but keep the below in mind.

Essendon defensive profile (Port in brackets)
4th most i50 conceded (10th)
4th most marks conceded (16th)
5th most marks i50 conceded (12th)
17th for spoils from defenders (4th)
14th for intercepts (8th)

Either the midfield isn't providing enough pressure for the defence to work with, or the defenders are not coming across to help as often as they should. In the GWS game, it looked like it was both.

The eye test tells me Zerk-Thatcher lacks the build and intensity to be a proper scragging #1 Key Defender. In the GWS game, he had no answer for the physicality or smarts of Hogan and was often 2-3m away from Hogan when he was taking marks.

If we decide to use him as a swap for McKenzie, I can see it working over the course of the season, but we will give up games in a Clurey vs. Hawkins meltdown style.

He seems capable of covering the Mihocheck/Fritsch/Langford types 1v1 while moving off his man to spoil and intercept. He's a huge upgrade on Jonas due to his mobility and height.
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Shaucob_Burjan said:
I actually love that no one can come up with a counter argument to BZT being the reverse Coleman winner.
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I think my post from last month is a fair rebuttal. In short Essendon were a bottom 4 team defensively this year and the only teams worse defensively had defenders who didn't play enough games to compete or were also in the top 5.

Here are the top 5 with team I50s conceded per game next to them

53 - Brandon Zerk-Thatcher (4th)
49 - Alex Pearce (13th)
48 - Charlie Ballard (5th)
47 - Sam Collins (5th)
45 - Noah Balta (3rd)

Alex Pearce aside, it's pretty consistent with defenders on teams who concede the most I50s who play full seasons.
 
Jimmy Unchained said:
I think my post from last month is a fair rebuttal. In short Essendon were a bottom 4 team defensively this year and the only teams worse defensively had defenders who didn't play enough games to compete or were also in the top 5.

Here are the top 5 with team I50s conceded per game next to them

53 - Brandon Zerk-Thatcher (4th)
49 - Alex Pearce (13th)
48 - Charlie Ballard (5th)
47 - Sam Collins (5th)
45 - Noah Balta (3rd)

Alex Pearce aside, it's pretty consistent with defenders on teams who concede the most I50s who play full seasons.
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Rubbish about the players not playing enough games to count.

Ben McKay played 19 games, only what? 3 games behind zerk.

I don’t know how many he conceded as he’s not on that table but it’s a maximum of 44, which is a fair way behind zerk and north conceded something like 300 points more from memory (which is about the same gap as from dons to pies lol)

On a far worse team, didn’t concede nearly as much as zerk.

I’m pretty confident the same would follow for the other defenders who didn’t play as many games as zerk. They still wouldn’t have eclipsed him.



None of this means zerk is irredeemable or cannot improve at our club.


But the excuses for his leading the reverse Coleman and hogwash.

He had his ass handed to him in a poor side. Simple.
 
philthy05 said:
Rubbish about the players not playing enough games to count.

Ben McKay played 19 games, only what? 3 games behind zerk.

I don’t know how many he conceded as he’s not on that table but it’s a maximum of 44, which is a fair way behind zerk and north conceded something like 300 points more from memory (which is about the same gap as from dons to pies lol)

On a far worse team, didn’t concede nearly as much as zerk.

I’m pretty confident the same would follow for the other defenders who didn’t play as many games as zerk. They still wouldn’t have eclipsed him.



None of this means zerk is irredeemable or cannot improve at our club.


But the excuses for his leading the reverse Coleman and hogwash.

He had his arse handed to him in a poor side. Simple.
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My response
philthy05 said:
Rubbish about the players not playing enough games to count.

Ben McKay played 19 games, only what? 3 games behind zerk.

I don’t know how many he conceded as he’s not on that table but it’s a maximum of 44, which is a fair way behind zerk and north conceded something like 300 points more from memory (which is about the same gap as from dons to pies lol)

On a far worse team, didn’t concede nearly as much as zerk.

I’m pretty confident the same would follow for the other defenders who didn’t play as many games as zerk. They still wouldn’t have eclipsed him.



None of this means zerk is irredeemable or cannot improve at our club.


But the excuses for his leading the reverse Coleman and hogwash.

He had his arse handed to him in a poor side. Simple.
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Noone is arguing he didn't have his ass handed to him in a poor side, in fact that's literally what I'm saying. These defenders all had their ass handed to them in a poor side. Your guess at 44 for Ben McKay would have him at 2.31 per game and zerk at 2.41 a game, hardly insurmountable differences for average defenders in terrible teams (i50 per game difference is 2.6 between North and Essendon, North's whole setup just leaked like a sieve).

Let's just not be resigned to the thought he's a spud until we see him play a couple of games for Port.
 
Brandon, there is a lot of negativity on this forum and your 'bad stats' on the Bombers but I am happy to wait to see how you play on the football ground itself.

You are a super upgrade over the ghost of Tom Jonas and it will be interesting how you coordinate with Aliir and Esava and the rest of the guys down back.

I am looking forward to watching you play footy and see what you can do for the team.
 

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Jimmy Unchained said:
My response

Noone is arguing he didn't have his arse handed to him in a poor side, in fact that's literally what I'm saying. These defenders all had their arse handed to them in a poor side. Your guess at 44 for Ben McKay would have him at 2.31 per game and zerk at 2.41 a game, hardly insurmountable differences for average defenders in terrible teams (i50 per game difference is 2.6 between North and Essendon, North's whole setup just leaked like a sieve).

Let's just not be resigned to the thought he's a spud until we see him play a couple of games for Port.
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Everyone including me has always conceded that the reverse Coleman is filled with players from the lower teams, but “Essendon is so bad that why he’s leading it” has been run out as an excuse constantly

As I’ve pointed out it doesn’t stand.

And I didn’t guess Mackay was on 44, I said that was the maximum possible he could have without us knowing exactly.

As I’ve said , it doesn’t mean we can’t get improvement out of him. We often have gotten improvement out of players we’ve brought in. I would assume we’re going to get a sharp improvement out of him.
 
EskimoPAFC said:
Also he has a basketball background and his dad kicked 9 goals on debut.
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You sure his dad didn't get 9 goals kicked on him instead on debut?
 
Peninsula Boy said:
Brandon, there is a lot of negativity on this forum and your 'bad stats' on the Bombers but I am happy to wait to see how you play on the football ground itself.

You are a super upgrade over the ghost of Tom Jonas and it will be interesting how you coordinate with Aliir and Esava and the rest of the guys down back.

I am looking forward to watching you play footy and see what you can do for the team.
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Hopefully BZT is an upgrade on Jonas, who in his last couple of seasons with his dropped marks, poor positioning, ordinary disposal, and those 2 fisted spoils when under little to no pressure when he could have marked the ball and settled the defence by doing so, directly, or indirectly regularly cost the club 3 or 4 goals per game.
 
RossFC said:
You sure his dad didn't get 9 goals kicked on him instead on debut?
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John Georgiades only kicked 8 on debut because he was playing against a debuting Michael Zerk-Thatcher.
 

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Player Watch Brandon Zerk-Thatcher

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