Gawn and Grundy - a failure?

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Gawn can't ruck full-time all season now, that's why he drove the Grundy acquisition. The main reason Gawn was able to dominate on Friday night was because he’s had a chop out from Grundy all year.

Gawn won't be able to go solo for 9-10 more matches so Grundy will be back in a couple of weeks with some forward craft practice. It's not like Brown is setting the house on fire up there anyway so the bar is not high.

If Gawn gets injured and there's no Grundy, we're totally screwed.

Gawn has two years to run, Grundy has 4, then we we have Verrall and KFW in the hopper. It's not a perfect set-up but it's workable.
 
old55 said:
If Gawn gets injured and there's no Grundy, we're totally screwed.
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absolute rubbish - plenty of teams do well with only so-so rucks, Port and Collingwood for example. WCE won 2018 with NicNat sitting on the pine. Brown in a way, is an ideal sceond string. Really not good enough to be a first-teamer but fine for the ocasional chop-out for Gawn.
If all Grundy is doing is providing second banana duties for the Dees, then no matter how well he is performing that, it is a massive opportunity cost for Dees, - would have been much better throwing money at a Ben King or another A-grade midfielder, but instead that value is tied up in Grundy - one of the major reasons why the Dees are having only a 'meh' season.
 
catscollector said:
He's one of the most bewildering players in the game. He is still a terrific ruckman averaging 15 disposals, 20+ hitouts (30+ if he's the sole ruck) but there's something about his playing style which has you feeling the cliff face is right around the corner. And it's a testament to just how great he has been given he's still a very solid player.
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Count the hit outs to disadvantage. It is a big number.
 

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jim boy said:
absolute rubbish - plenty of teams do well with only so-so rucks, Port and Collingwood for example. WCE won 2018 with NicNat sitting on the pine. Brown in a way, is an ideal sceond string. Really not good enough to be a first-teamer but fine for the ocasional chop-out for Gawn.
If all Grundy is doing is providing second banana duties for the Dees, then no matter how well he is performing that, it is a massive opportunity cost for Dees, - would have been much better throwing money at a Ben King or another A-grade midfielder, but instead that value is tied up in Grundy - one of the major reasons why the Dees are having only a 'meh' season.
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Yeah, they don't play a contested stoppage based gameplan like MFC. We like ruck supremacy.

The reason we were uncompetitive at the end of last year was because Gawn, Oliver and Petracca were all beaten up and injured.

Grundy has done much more than "2nd banana" with Gawn this year, he's taken equal or more ruck time than Gawn. The FD hoped Gawn would be more effective forward but it hasn't worked out so they need Grundy to contribute more there.

Gawn and Grundy will be back in tandem shortly.
 
I was surprised that Melbourne didn't learn their lesson when they recruited Preuss. Two number 1 rucks didn't work then, don't know why they thought it would work now.

Grundy has certainly helped though, they wouldn't have won the games they did without him when Gawn was out injured.

Having said that, I can't see him staying at Melbourne. Port does seem like the obvious fit.
 
Gawn and Grundy - A failure?

Well that would depend on which team you support.

As a Collingwood supporter I think the Melbourne acquisition of Grundy is a roaring success, as the Pies have (cap space) improved with his departure.
 

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I mean, probably more of a questionable buy than a complete failure. Grundy is still a good player, he’s just surplus to their current needs and not likely to get any better.

If it was the NBA they’d offload Grundy now before he has zero value in his 30s - but more than likely they will hold onto him for a few more years before either he’s completely out of the picture or replacing Gawn, already past his own prime, forcing them to recruit another ruckman.
 
Gawn being out of form before Friday wasn't ALL because Grundy was there. I mean come on, just look at the Geelong game, it's not Grundy's fault that Gawn was dropping easy marks on the lead and easy marks at half back with no one contesting him.

For now, I'm happy to call it a little bit from column A and column B that ifs Grundy being there but also just a coincidence that he had the best (ranking points) game out of anyone in 4 years. He's not gonna have a game as good as that for the rest of the year, as much as I want him to.

And for most of this year, Grundy's been playing better than Gawn.
 
Demon13304 said:
Gawn being out of form before Friday wasn't ALL because Grundy was there. I mean come on, just look at the Geelong game, it's not Grundy's fault that Gawn was dropping easy marks on the lead and easy marks at half back with no one contesting him.

For now, I'm happy to call it a little bit from column A and column B that ifs Grundy being there but also just a coincidence that he had the best (ranking points) game out of anyone in 4 years. He's not gonna have a game as good as that for the rest of the year, as much as I want him to.

And for most of this year, Grundy's been playing better than Gawn.
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It's pretty interesting.

I feel Grundy is made to look bad because he's not a fwd and he left a club with no key fwd and went to another club with no key fwd..

Grundy is not a fwd but his last two clubs need him to be.

But if Grundy played as a traditional ruck in a side with good fwds and who don't need him to play fwd then he'd be a good player.

Imagine Grundy at Geelong this season with Hawkins and Cameron fwd.

Grundy could just play his usual game as an old school follower/ruck and not be under pressure to play fwd

Geelong would absolutely dominate.

I think Grundy just made a bad call picking Melbourne. A club with a gun ruck and no fwd

What Grundy needs is a club with no Ruck and a gun fwd.

E.g Geelong, Port or Carlton.
 
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Pistol Night said:
Yeah probably. Long term I think McStay provides us more. Hopefully Grundy does with you guys. I wasn’t trying to start a s**t fight
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Fair enough - we have a challenge without an ideal solution. Max is close to the end but still has some magic like Friday night, but cannot sustain it every week. We're trying to win the flag with him now and extend the window out a bit with Oliver and Petracca.

Jackson leaves and we look at the market and there's Grundy or Lobb - a great team-mate or a campaigner - in addition Lobb doesn't want to ruck and would have seriously diluted the, as it turns out, lucrative Freo compensation.

We had to punt and there's some water to flow under the bridge. There's still a possibility of "#6 Brodie Grundy" on GF day.
 
old55 said:
Fair enough - we have a challenge without an ideal solution. Max is close to the end but still has some magic like Friday night, but cannot sustain it every week. We're trying to win the flag with him now and extend the window out a bit with Oliver and Petracca.

Jackson leaves and we look at the market and there's Grundy or Lobb - a great team-mate or a campaigner - in addition Lobb doesn't want to ruck and would have seriously diluted the, as it turns out, lucrative Freo compensation.

We had to punt and there's some water to flow under the bridge. There's still a possibility of "#6 Brodie Grundy" on GF day.
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Max's ruckwork is elite where as Brodie frustrated the hell out of us for years. His follow up work for a big guy is what keeps him relevant
 
Gavin Excell said:
More than halfway through the season and its fair to say the Gawn and Grundy deal has been underwhelming.

Can we conclude it a failure?
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100%.

Melbournes list has holes - like all lists. And they spent assets on reinforcing strengths.

It was never going to work. And here we are again, Melbourne a key contender, but their forward line is still a mess.
 
Grundy doesn't play the rest of the year, he was brought in to ruck, really dumb or he's manager and Grundy to think it would work.



He'll Go to Port, cats, wce, saints, blues or swans as no. 1 ruck which will pay 300k and a future 3rd rounder
 

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Gawn and Grundy - a failure?

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