Player Watch Jeremy Finlayson

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Portology said:
Our long history of shoving square pegs into round holes will have him adapting to a 1:1-KPD/part time ruck role from day 1 of preseason and any difficulty adjusting next season will be put down to "because the move was forced by injury and form" rather than by, ah, the 2022 trade period and, um, not acting on an obvious list management situation. Good luck to him I say. A 1-1 KPD role may just be less body destroying for him than rucking around the ground.

Thoughts for those who have watched him more closely? Most thought he wasn't physical enough to ruck and even questioned that aspect of his whole game but he's at least been as competent at it as you could expect I think? Smart enough, tall enough and just strong enough to compete and importantly quick enough?
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I agree with the consensus, and even with the detail in the article that he did a fantastic job doing what was asked of him. The facts show though, that it was a failed move. As a part-game, or even a one-game move, it was fantastic. But to keep doing it, and at such a critical stage of our season, really showed how out of touch with reality our selectors are!
 
I don't care what the stats say, he's a terrible ruckman and the most important stat is win/loss and that doesn't make for pretty reading.
 

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Finlayson is a midfielder who rucks, not a ruckman - like Sam Powell-Pepper. Hence you judge him as a midfielder.
 
Tibbs said:
"Champion Data notes that, despite frequently losing the hitout count, the Power's effective clearance percentage has surged from No.6 in the League through the season's first 12 matches (79 per cent) to No.1 since Finlayson moved into the ruck (79.8 per cent).

The club's first possession win-rate has also risen from No.11 in the competition at round 12 (44.9 per cent) to No.2 since Finlayson moved into the ruck (47.6 per cent), while its clearance differential has gone from No.8 (+1.2 per game) to No.3 in the League (+4.2 per game) after the former Giant shifted positions.

To top it off, Port Adelaide has gone from being a middle of the road team at scoring from stoppage (its -1.4 points per game differential ranked No.11 at round 12) to being among the best in this particular statistic (its +6.1 differential after Finlayson moved into the ruck is now ranked No.5 in the AFL)."

This is such a skewering of the truth, its not funny! So as a "middle of the road team" we win 5 of 6 games with Hayes in the Ruck, then Finlayson is made first ruck, we improve dramatically .... and we lose 5 of the next 7.

Now that is what I call polishing a turd!

So what went wrong? Where did we fall down if this was such a successful move?

We all know the answer - That is everyone except our coaches! - The entire team dynamic was then off kilter. What seemed an improvement, actually disrupted the team more than assist.
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Yeah this is why blind number crunching really doesn't help. They're comparing the Finlayson era to two extremely different periods of the season for our rucks before that: Lycett from 1-4 then Hayes from 5-whenever it was that we dropped him. I'd like to see the stats carved up that way more. Finlayson is great when the other team has an inexperienced or just plain bad ruck, like when Stanley went off for Geelong and he got a quarter against the sub. But he's not a first choice ruckman, even though he's obviously trying his guts out with every trick in the book.

I also thought he was improving as a forward in the early part of the season before Dixon came back, we seemed to have a nice mobile setup with all 3 of our marking targets getting into space and taking marks in dangerous areas. I would be very interested to see Finlayson doing some centre bounce midfield work once we decide to play a real ruckman, because he has been great defensively and taking possession and breaking away from contests to deliver into the 50.
 
The big issue with Jeremy in ruck, is it makes us a very hit or miss midfield. We're not the same tight tough clearance side, instead we allow the ball to get outside the contest quicker and a lot more. Yes we're doing ok off that, a lot of good clearances are coming from it, the problem is that we just dont hold up defensively from this sort of approach.

Our backline is terrible and has been incredibly over rated for years. This quick ball that is coming out as a result puts our panicky defense under pressure and they leak goals with ease. We just dont score as fluently as the opposition, and we seem to be subjected to major momentum swings in the midfield where we seem to get hurt more than our opponents do, and our defence is not good enough to hold up under such pressure.
 
Coobk001 said:
The big issue with Jeremy in ruck, is it makes us a very hit or miss midfield. We're not the same tight tough clearance side, instead we allow the ball to get outside the contest quicker and a lot more. Yes we're doing ok off that, a lot of good clearances are coming from it, the problem is that we just dont hold up defensively from this sort of approach.

Our backline is terrible and has been incredibly over rated for years. This quick ball that is coming out as a result puts our panicky defense under pressure and they leak goals with ease. We just dont score as fluently as the opposition, and we seem to be subjected to major momentum swings in the midfield where we seem to get hurt more than our opponents do, and our defence is not good enough to hold up under such pressure.
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Exactly. But Ken and his followers will focus on the good performance of Finlayson, calling it a success. However, it was one individual, while there seemed to be a clear disconnect as a team. Flashes of brilliance, great quarters, but teams seemed to be easily able come to grips & to wear us down.
 
Tibbs said:
This is such a skewering of the truth, its not funny! So as a "middle of the road team" we win 5 of 6 games with Hayes in the Ruck, then Finlayson is made first ruck, we improve dramatically .... and we lose 5 of the next 7.

Now that is what I call polishing a turd!

So what went wrong? Where did we fall down if this was such a successful move?
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Well we changed from playing rubbish teams like North, West Coast during Hayes time to playing against good sides.
 

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Duckimus Prime said:
Well we changed from playing rubbish teams like North, West Coast during Hayes time to playing against good sides.
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And Bulldogs and Saints, who were above us.

We have also gone on to lose close matches against teams we should be beating, and even when winning looked hot & cold.

Not nearly good enough!
 
What those stats don’t show is that when we had Hayes, because he is such an adapt tap ruckman- it meant the opposition barely ever got a tap to advantage because a) Hayes was winning more than 50% of taps in the game and b) when he didn’t win the tap he was at least very close to winning it or at least stopping a clean tap.
So while we may have more effective clearances, what these stats don’t show is that the number of effective clearances for the other team has ALSO increased. Finlayson is often not even close to impacting the tap and so it’s clean for the other team.
I don’t hate finlayson as ruck. He would be ideal as a backup (maybe 20% game time in there) to a number one like Hayes.
It’s a good change up for the opposition to face when you switch your good tap ruck for someone like finlayson who is good at the opposite (winning the ground ball) and I think a combo of both of these two would be even more effective than just one or the other, but we’ve barely seen it.

For the rest of the season I would like to see georgiades (absolutely love him, don’t get me wrong but just needs a hard reset) out to take some time to focus on the flaws of his game and come back for the preseason refreshed and ready to go. Finlayson as the replacement up forward and Hayes in as the extra tall.
I think Hayes has been better in the SANFL games than Teakle and deserves the run for the rest of the year at afl level given he has runs on the board.
 
With Hayes in the side:

135.6%

Biggest wins vs West Coast (117-33), North Melbourne (115-46)
Biggest loss vs Geelong (47-82)

Without Hayes:

104.4%

Biggest win vs GWS (84-29)
Biggest loss vs Melbourne (69-83)

I think everyone can agree that we would have thrashed the shit out of both West Coast and North Melbourne if we were rucking Finlayson and Dixon, so let's remove those two wins. In the interest of fairness, we'll also remove the GWS win for Finlayson and Dixon, since I'm sure Hayes would have helped smash them in that game.

With Hayes in the side (outliers removed):

98.8%

Without Hayes (outliers removed):

95.5%

Hayes played against Carlton (a), St Kilda (a), Western Bulldogs (h), Geelong (a) and Essendon (h).

Finlayson/Dixon played against Richmond (a), Sydney (h), Gold Coast (h), Fremantle (a), Melbourne (a), Geelong (h) and Collingwood (a).

So it's pretty much line ball. We lost clean looks at clearances to gain in other areas of the ground.
 
Janus said:
With Hayes in the side:

135.6%

Biggest wins vs West Coast (117-33), North Melbourne (115-46)
Biggest loss vs Geelong (47-82)

Without Hayes:

104.4%

Biggest win vs GWS (84-29)
Biggest loss vs Melbourne (69-83)

I think everyone can agree that we would have thrashed the s**t out of both West Coast and North Melbourne if we were rucking Finlayson and Dixon, so let's remove those two wins. In the interest of fairness, we'll also remove the GWS win for Finlayson and Dixon, since I'm sure Hayes would have helped smash them in that game.

With Hayes in the side (outliers removed):

98.8%

Without Hayes (outliers removed):

95.5%

Hayes played against Carlton (a), St Kilda (a), Western Bulldogs (h), Geelong (a) and Essendon (h).

Finlayson/Dixon played against Richmond (a), Sydney (h), Gold Coast (h), Fremantle (a), Melbourne (a), Geelong (h) and Collingwood (a).

So it's pretty much line ball. We lost clean looks at clearances to gain in other areas of the ground.
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So what you're saying is we sacrificed the perfect opportunity to pump games into a key part of our future for no appreciable gain.
 
Sleezy said:
So what you're saying is we sacrificed the perfect opportunity to pump games into a key part of our future for no appreciable gain.
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We sacrificed pumping games into Hayes to pump games into Georgiades.
 
Janus said:
We sacrificed pumping games into Hayes to pump games into Georgiades.
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Maybe we could have sacrificed pumping games into Motlop or McEntee instead.
 
His biggest test will be backing up this season.. he needs a consistent season to
Show he has matured.

I’d like to see hinkley play him as a utility, fill spots as necessary.. but under no circumstances should he be picked as the stand alone ruckman, pinch hit only.
 

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Player Watch Jeremy Finlayson

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