threenewpadlocks
Brownlow Medallist
The value of Gardner in one image.
This is the contest before it spilt out to Smith handballing it to Dale, who passed it for Schache's first goal
If you look at the previous camera angle, Gardner's actually lost a bit of ground to Francis, positioned himself badly. But he's got the speed, reach and jump (overall athleticism), where, even out of position a bit, to reach around Francis, spoil the ball and help us to a goal.
The stats book suggest Gardner only has about 2cm on Cordy. But when you factor in wingspan, jumping ability and speed off 2-3 steps, they're completely different athletes.
Is why, I suppose we persisted with Gardner and tried him in different positions. The athletic tools were there, not many 197cm blokes have the decent speed and reach that he does. You can't teach that when you can teach a hell of a lot of other things at AFL level.
This is the contest before it spilt out to Smith handballing it to Dale, who passed it for Schache's first goal
If you look at the previous camera angle, Gardner's actually lost a bit of ground to Francis, positioned himself badly. But he's got the speed, reach and jump (overall athleticism), where, even out of position a bit, to reach around Francis, spoil the ball and help us to a goal.
The stats book suggest Gardner only has about 2cm on Cordy. But when you factor in wingspan, jumping ability and speed off 2-3 steps, they're completely different athletes.
Is why, I suppose we persisted with Gardner and tried him in different positions. The athletic tools were there, not many 197cm blokes have the decent speed and reach that he does. You can't teach that when you can teach a hell of a lot of other things at AFL level.