Is Cox the best every

[Barry Schneider]

AFL today is completely different to what it was 20 years ago and beyond.
Dempsey and the others played in an era where it was all about kicking long to packs and the great ruckman played 1 kick behind and took huge pack marks.
There was none of this posession football where it is easy to rack up cheap posessions on the half back flank.
Cox is the best of his era but I can't see how you can compare him or any current player in the game to what went before.
AFL today is more like soccer.

 

[al ain pie]

how anybody can say such & such will be the best ruckman/ff/chf etc of all time amazes me. is there anybody that has seen every player play? no, l didn't think so.
maybe the best of his generation, so lets stick to that and wait and see.

 

[Killer eagle]

I wouldnt rate him as the best ruckman ever, but at the moment he is probaly one of the best ruckmen playing.

In AFL's dreamteam hes the most expensive player at the moment.

 

[Footbrawler]

Is he the best ever ruckman????????????

the only player who i can think of who is up the top with him is POlly, apart from that i dont think anyone comes close

round 10 in a team that lost by 100 points, had 30 touches, 2goals, 36 hitouts and had a broken foot

The guy who was named 2003 All-Australian ruckman was pretty handy. High possession getter who won a Brownlow that year too. Forget his name. Reckon he'd give Cox a run for his money if he still played ruck too.

 

[Losing the passion]

I wouldnt rate him as the best ruckman ever, but at the moment he is probaly one of the best ruckmen playing.

In AFL's dreamteam hes the most expensive player at the moment.

Well I guess it's case closed then

 

[Haydos]

Lets have this discussion in 5 years time when it might actually be answerable.

 

[Crow-mo]

FIRST TIME???? he has controled games with those sort of stats for the last 3 years i havent seen a game yet he hasnt had under 20 touches

maybe you stop worrying about stats, and worry about the style of player he is and the quality of his actual ruckwork.

Cox is just another Jim Stynes. not a proper ruckman anyway.

 

[W.C. Fry]

Same could be said for Sandilands and nobody rates him as one of the more important players in the comp.

Look Dean Cox is a great player but he gets a lot of his touches in the back half of the ground, way to many now the Eagles dont have Cousins and Judd.

Wow what a revelation. Ruckmen more ball down back when you are mostly getting flogged each week and are on the bottom of the ladder. Ive give you a tip - when you lose by 100 points you tend to find the ball is in the opposition forward line more than your own.

Pure genius.

 

[Exhale You]

He doesn't need to have 30 touches to control a game.

When did i say he did?

I merely corrected someone's statistical errors, so perhaps read the thread properly before arguing with me over something i never gave an opinion on.

 

[29 4 Brownlow]

He is the best,

Collingwood would love him, suprised they havent tried to poach him, the scumbags

 

[Mullo]

Polly Farmer
Simon Madden
Gary Dempsey
These three a lot better than any current ruckman.

Reckon big cox trumps them.

Cox is a genuine superstar - will prob be the best by the end. The only ruckman ever, who could probably play out a game in the midfield.. Freak!

That's how they are being made thse days. Burger and Kreuzer will end up similar.. Hopefully McEvoy as well

 

[The Passenger]

Coxy is a freak and is just getting better. Undoubetbly in the best 5 players in the competition now.

Best ever ruckman?? No. He hasn't been doing it for long enough.

Will he ever be?? Unlikely. From what you read and reputation its hard to see him reaching the levels of John Nicholls and Graham Farmer but then you never know.... of all the ruckman going around he's the one that would be most likely too.

BUT if he continue to do what he's doing for another few years... well you couldn't deny his place up there with the likes of Madden x 2, Wynd, Dempsey, Moore and a handful of others who've already been mentioned in here.

EDIT: if something where to happen and he suddenly dropped off he'd be behind this group of players. freakish but without the longevity, which IMO and a lot of people's opinions, plays a huge part in determining a players status.

He's definetaly the best of his generation - Has well gone past the levels Luke Darcy, Matt Primus, Steven King, Matt Allan, Shaun Rehn, Peter Everitt, Jeff White, Brendan Lade most of whom only spent a couple of years at their peak.

Cox is now a three time all australian (only Everitt in the past decade or so has matched that) and racing towards a fourth and only getting better. He's only 26 as well so he's got plenty of time left in the game.

 

[Killer eagle]

Coxy is a freak and is just getting better. Undoubetbly in the best 5 players in the competition now.

Best ever ruckman?? No. He hasn't been doing it for long enough.

Will he ever be?? Unlikely. From what you read and reputation its hard to see him reaching the levels of John Nicholls and Graham Farmer but then you never know.... of all the ruckman going around he's the one that would be most likely too.

BUT if he continue to do what he's doing for another few years... well you couldn't deny his place up there with the likes of Madden x 2, Wynd, Dempsey, Moore and a handful of others.

He's definetaly the best of his generation - Has well gone past the levels Luke Darcy, Matt Primus, Steven King, Matt Allan, Shaun Rehn, Peter Everitt, Jeff White, Brendan Lade most of whom only spent a couple of years at their peak.

Cox is now a three time all australian (only Everitt in the past decade or so has matched that) and racing towards a fourth and only getting better. He's only 26 as well so he's got plenty of time left in the game.

That in itself is pretty impressive, you cant choose many ruckmen for an AA team. He has a long way to go for best ever tho.

 

[mcglee]

Dean Cox is an exceptional athlete whose aerobic capacity and field kicking skills are unsurpassed when compared to most ruckmen ever ( Stynes, Moore and Darcy in his big year maybe close) Was very effective getting the ball to Judd, Kerr and Cousins in the GF years. Has possibly revolutionised the definition of the ruckman and is why Kruezer and Leuenberger were recruited to emulate his style.

However comparing ruckmen of different eras is pointless. Their roles were so different. Cox is a ruckrover-so was Stynes( his possession rate actually surpassed Cox from memory), Peter Moore and Darcy ( not putting Darcy in the great bracket at all;just in for style comparison )
Simon Madden and Scott Wynd were the best TAP ruckmen I have seen in my era of watching football. Their centre square work was brilliant - way past Cox's best (36 hitouts from Madden and Wynd would not have resulted in a 100 point loss!)
Dempsey was the greatest contested mark ruckman the game has seen( again in my time - can't speak before 70's .) He would take 10 contested marks in the backline every week. Wished he could kick so hi marking would have made a difference at the other end
Farmer is everyone's favourite because he revolutionised the game with handball. Didn't see him play live but his tapwork is also rated highly.
Nicholls was a great ruck who could also go down and kick 6 goals in a GF-don't think Cox will ever do that.
Madden and Salmon could also be the brilliant forward that Cox can't be.( yes he kicks goals but as a midfielder not a forward.)

Everyone from other clubs with knoweldge of the past can bring up their own ruckman to add to mine.
Point is - comparison is too hard when the styles are different.
Is he the best today? Absolutely. But Ever? Too hard a question.

 

[Cuzz09]

Cox is a good player.

Who cares if he is better or worse than some guy from black and white days.

 

[Crow-mo]

Cox is a good player.

Who cares if he is better or worse than some guy from black and white days.

ha ha. good call.

 

[wce4premiership]

This thread is rubbish.

He hasn't even finished his career, atm he isn't the best "every"

 

[BLPC08]

Let's be honest, for a guy his size he is the best "around the ground ruckman" in history. Farmer was 6ft3, Madden and Dempsey were 6ft5; Coxy is 6ft9 and moves better than all of them, gets more possies and covers more ground. However, I'm not sure if Coxy is a better tap-ruckman than those guys, so you can't say he is the best Ruckman in history.

 

[frantelle]

wouldnt say the best tap ruckmen
its based on teh fact he gets soo many possessions, but a fair chunk of them are the cheap possessions in the back pocket that mean very little
keep in mind in the days of polly that there wasnt any of this chip to chip stuff....each possesion (for a ruckmen) would have to be a hardball get

its impossible to compare 2 players from 2 different eras
of course some computer/statistician geek will come out with some program or formula that says one way or another...but the ultimate fact is that its impossible to measure

im going to go with polly because he evolutioned the handball...and not many players evolutionise a basic skill in their career

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

There's a few things I'd like to see from Cox before he can be elevated to the heights of the very best.

1) Play a more dangerous style of game
He racks up the possessions, but a lot of them are on the half-back flank (and they're not intercepting entries into the D50). He does run back and take those marks in front of opposition forwards too, but most of the time he's just a link-man in switching the play uncontested. Sometimes this will happen twice in a passage of play, so those two kicks and two marks aren't hugely damaging.

When we're strugglign with ball movement, it'd be really nice to use Coxy as more of a target when we have to go the contested route. Again - we have done this, but it's not a feature of his game.

2) Kick more goals.
Thinking back to the peak of Spida Everitt, he was quite capable of kicking a bag of goals when left forward. We know that Cox kicks goals, but they're "midfielders goals". To throw Coxy forward and get a few contested marks and goals would be really helpful. This is one edge Seaby has over Cox at the Eagles.

 

[Total_Juddshanks]

Coxy is a freak and is just getting better. Undoubetbly in the best 5 players in the competition now.

Best ever ruckman?? No. He hasn't been doing it for long enough.

Will he ever be?? Unlikely. From what you read and reputation its hard to see him reaching the levels of John Nicholls and Graham Farmer but then you never know.... of all the ruckman going around he's the one that would be most likely too.

BUT if he continue to do what he's doing for another few years... well you couldn't deny his place up there with the likes of Madden x 2, Wynd, Dempsey, Moore and a handful of others who've already been mentioned in here.

EDIT: if something where to happen and he suddenly dropped off he'd be behind this group of players. freakish but without the longevity, which IMO and a lot of people's opinions, plays a huge part in determining a players status.

He's definetaly the best of his generation - Has well gone past the levels Luke Darcy, Matt Primus, Steven King, Matt Allan, Shaun Rehn, Peter Everitt, Jeff White, Brendan Lade most of whom only spent a couple of years at their peak.

Cox is now a three time all australian (only Everitt in the past decade or so has matched that) and racing towards a fourth and only getting better. He's only 26 as well so he's got plenty of time left in the game.

As you say, I think the longevity is what is beginning to knock Cox ahead of the current generation- modern ruckmen very rarely string together consecutive good seasons, but this is the 5th consecutive year he's been up the top of the pile.

I think people who write him off as 'just' a good aerobic athlete are selling him very short.

He's has astonishingly deft foot skills, he reads the play brilliantly, his ground level ability is superb, and his tapwork is topnotch.

In some ways, he's revolutionised the game as much as Farmer did- you look at the young ruckmen coming through, the Hales and Leunbergers and Griffins, and they are all Cox clones- he's raised the bar a long way.

 

[FordGTHO]

you no what im only 17 and never saw those guys play, i was just stating cox is the greatest i have ever seen and thought that we would have already surpassed all of those guys and you cam on insulting me about my threads coz your pissed that u cant start a thread like this about any of your players

I'm actually surprised you are 17, when i read the thread i presumed the OP was around 12 .

 

[Quinz]

Cox this season has 32 inside 50's, more than any other ruckman, and 21 rebound 50's, easily more than any other ruckman. He also has 46 clearances, again more than any other ruckman, and 89 contested possessions. None of these stats are cheap.

 

[mantis]

Let's be honest, for a guy his size he is the best "around the ground ruckman" in history. Farmer was 6ft3, Madden and Dempsey were 6ft5; Coxy is 6ft9 and moves better than all of them, gets more possies and covers more ground. However, I'm not sure if Coxy is a better tap-ruckman than those guys, so you can't say he is the best Ruckman in history.

You obviously never saw Simon Madden play.

 

[davey_magik]

His foot skills are the best I've ever seen on a 195cm+ player.