- Aug 21, 2007
- 32,501
- 105,226
- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
- Other Teams
- Aston Villa, San Antonio Spurs
If it was just a question of development, another club would take the punt on a guy who is essentailly young for a tall guy and think they can turn him around if they think he has the basic tools. We hung onto Toby Thurstans for 4 years befoe he played a single game and he played 100 games including a premiership. Hawthorn took a delisted one game Stephen Gilham as a rookie and turned him into a premiership player. Clubs will take a chance where they see something, especially in a 197cm key forward.
How could we have developed him differently other than give him more games? If the coaches didn't think he deserved games should he have been given them anyway? He was played as the go to forward at sanfl level. He was given runs in the ruck and defence to develop his all round game.
There's not much point retaining a guy on a list if you've shown you're not prepared to pick him, so why wouldn't you cut him and give him a chance somewhee else?
Guys who are 25+ and are delisted from bad football teams don't get second chances at AFL level.
I absolutely agree that there's no point retaining him if we weren't prepared to pick him. My problem is that we've retained a coach who doesn't care about structure going forward and who has made us the worst team going forward in the league. As others have said, we kick goals due to individual brilliance or on the counter, we very rarely kick goals because we've set up well and made space for our forwards.