Josh Rachele (2024): 4 CBA’s After 5 Rounds

[Rory Walkerfield]

So excited by the increased midfield time Rash is getting as per all those preseason articles.

So I thought I’d just keep a tally of our pick 6 future midfielders Centre Bounce Attendance stats for the year.

Centre Bounce
Round 1: 1
Round 2: 1
Round 3: 0
Round 4: 0
Cumulative: 2

Will update after each round.

 

[FR0GGY]

What about rd 4?

 

[Rory Walkerfield]

What about rd 4?

Can’t find the stat. Will update if someone can point me to it

 

[Cap]

What about rd 4?

I actually got a bit excited, I read 13

Then i relaised i was in Soligos profile.

Rach got 0

Edit - thats off the AFL website)

 

[feenix67]

 

[Samcro24]

View attachment 1950398

50-50

How’s 99-1

 

[Rory Walkerfield]

View attachment 1950398

Pedlar is at 0 after 3 rounds.

Rankine at 15 (out of 64 total) after 3 rounds or 23% of CBAs

 

[FR0GGY]

View attachment 1950398

You try telling Nicksy Rash is playing midfield

 

[Moonwatcher]

View attachment 1950398

Well that means the plan is for him to play midfield at least

 

[Burtonsgottago]

View attachment 1950398

It’s funny until I started crying

 

[WetCrow1991]

View attachment 1950398

So the 50-50 split is about as accurate as the comment about Laird, Crouch and Dawson being top tier players in the competition.

 

[Redleg Crow]

JFC

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

Stacked

 

[Kane McGoodwin]

View attachment 1950398

Perhaps the coaches would be best reading their own club media statements to get an idea.

It's an absolute disgrace Rachele & other young midfielders have had very limited midfield time.

It's not like our performances would have been worse... & I would suggest we would have played better with a more dynamic midfield mix.

 

[n4sir]

You know what would actually improve our game a hell of a lot? Having midfielders (and the occasional defender) who are a threat to kick goals.

So far this year out of 31 goals, outside of the forwards there have been just seven. Of those, Thursday night Laird & Dawson were forwards for their two goals for the season, so we are really down to five from four games.

That's just not good enough, and also a major reason why we are being shut down. Opposition players know to go back to defending Tex, Fog, Rankine and Rachelle, and ignore anyone else because it rarely matters.

Nicks defensive gameplan combined with player selection is actually strangling our team even more than the opposition. It's fugly and it's stupid.

 

[Burtonsgottago]

Nicks has to go. Why bother recruiting talented young players and then not play them were their talent can be developed? This was supposed to be a rebuild. I can understand if we were contending for a flag but we’re not and we’ve wasted 3 years of player development.

 

[Interloperer]

(I was going to add a "I hate to defend Nicks here, but..." at the start of this post. But that wouldn't be fair because he's just correcting for mistakes that are ultimate his fault to begin with. So please add an inferred "and this is Nicks' fault" to every claim made here. Though the recruitment team shares some fault too.)

The problem with the "fluid" rotating small forward/midfielder roles thing is that Pedlar has offered almost nothing this season. Rankine is often higher up the field. Somebody has to stay back and offer a small forward threat. And for whatever reason any other candidates seems to be locked into other roles/out of form.

 

[FR0GGY]

You know what would actually improve our game a hell of a lot? Having midfielders (and the occasional defender) who are a threat to kick goals.

So far this year out of 31 goals, outside of the forwards there have been just seven. Of those, Thursday night Laird & Dawson were forwards for their two goals for the season, so we are really down to five from four games.

That's just not good enough, and also a major reason why we are being shut down. Opposition players know to go back to defending Tex, Fog, Rankine and Rachelle, and ignore anyone else because it rarely matters.

Nicks defensive gameplan combined with player selection is actually strangling our team even more than the opposition. It's fugly and it's stupid.

Our forwards haven’t scored goals, tough ask asking the midfielder to too

 

[spenze]

We made a massive mistake signing Matt Crouch

5

Matt Crouch

Age

29

Ht

181cm

Wt

85kg

Pos.

Mid

Career

Season

Last 5

D

28.4

5star

K

12.0

4star

HB

16.4

5star

M

3.3

3star

T

3.9

5star

CL

4.8

5star

D

24.9

5star

K

9.7

4star

HB

15.1

5star

M

2.4

3star

T

2.4

3star

CL

4.4

5star

D

21.2

5star

K

10.4

4star

HB

10.8

5star

M

4.4

4star

T

3.4

5star

CL

2.0

4star

on again.

I rate Matt and he did a decent job on the back end of last year but it has to be recognised that a midfield with him and "kick it to the moon" Laird was not going to work.

But we put all our eggs in the "2020 was an anomaly" basket, instead of a "where do we go to guarantee a premiership" basket.

That is on Nicks, that is on Reid, they do not trust the future and hope the past sees us through to finals. They do not trust Hamish.

There is a serious deconstruct in this club. Olsen needs to take charge or get out.

 

[Sanders]

Stacked

With vanilla

 

[FR0GGY]

With vanilla

Our midfield is giving vanilla a bad name.
Nothing wrong with vanilla.

 

[Danger in Texas]

He needs to be rolled through the middle more than he is, but I’d give Soligo and Rankine priority

Hell, if we continue to be shit and want to further his development, I wouldn’t be against giving Dawson less CBAs and giving them to Rash

 

[Samcro24]

Our midfield is giving vanilla a bad name.
Nothing wrong with vanilla.

The midfield is yellow

 

[Danger in Texas]

The midfield is yellow

Our midfield:

 

[huludicidal]

As much as I agree that the midfield is vanilla and contains entirely the wrong balance, Rachele is not, and will never be, a centre bounce AFL player IMO.

He quite simply does not play with any defensive intensity, and allows his man to waltz away unopposed in contested situations. He was horrendous at centre bounces last season, and correctly shitcanned from attending them as a direct result. It’s another classic case of the AFC assuming a non-midfielder can magically become a midfielder. Remember when Wayne Milera

30

Wayne Milera

Age

27

Ht

185cm

Wt

88kg

Pos.

Def

Career

Season

Last 5

D

16.9

4star

K

10.0

4star

HB

6.8

4star

M

4.3

4star

T

2.5

4star

MG

265.3

4star

D

15.0

4star

K

8.5

3star

HB

6.5

4star

M

3.5

3star

T

1.0

2star

MG

282.0

4star

D

11.4

3star

K

5.8

3star

HB

5.6

4star

M

3.0

3star

T

1.4

4star

MG

182.0

3star

was the next big midfield thing?

Soligo is better at every single aspect of midfield play than Rachele, so he must be a walk up start at centre bounces from here on.

Personally I think the biggest issue now is Laird. Ditching him from the midfield permanently needs to happen ASAP. Crouch is not the problem, and would comfortably be leading our club champion award right now. Him not gaining a lot of metres isn’t a problem at all. He is there to farm handballs to the kickers. Farming those handballs to the likes of Laird and Berry is the problem. Honestly Laird’s ball use by foot is just embarrassing.

Dawson hasn’t had a good start to 2024, but he’s also not the problem.

With a fully fit team, Dawson, Crouch, Soligo and Rankine should be attending by far the highest percentage of centre bounces for us.

What we have to find are the best 5th and 6th CBA options. Laird and Berry clearly aren’t the answer. Neither is Rachele. Neither is Keays. Anyone with any remaining confidence that Pedlar is ever going to be an AFL standard mid is a more optimistic human than me.

I’d like to see Taylor given a crack. Edwards seems like a longer term prospect who might not be ready yet, but in 2025, sure. I’m not convinced Dowling will be a CBA player, but playing Chayce Jones

1

Chayce Jones

Age

25

Ht

180cm

Wt

84kg

Pos.

D/M

Career

Season

Last 5

D

10.0

3star

K

5.4

2star

HB

4.6

3star

M

1.7

2star

T

1.9

4star

MG

178.6

3star

D

8.9

2star

K

4.9

2star

HB

4.0

3star

M

1.4

2star

T

1.6

3star

MG

143.3

3star

D

9.4

3star

K

4.4

2star

HB

5.0

4star

M

1.6

2star

T

1.8

4star

MG

175.0

3star

on a wing ahead of him is nonsense. Get Dowling on a wing NOW. Obviously Nankervis plays the other wing.

Whichever way you slice it, the recruiting and player development in this area of the ground has been utterly putrid, and we are fighting it out with West Coast, and West Coast alone, for the title of “worst midfield in the AFL” as a result.

We need a genuine A grade tackle breaker in there who can also hit the scoreboard at times. The answer doesn’t exist on our list, no player who fits that description in their right mind would want to be traded here, and our recruiting manager has literally never, NOT ONCE EVER, drafted an AFL quality midfielder in the top 20 picks of a national draft, so yeah, we’re up shit creek.