Our Midfield

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Simche said:
I'm wondering where the Ross/RCD/Dow/Graham defenders are at the moment. All of them are not going to even be in the B+ category of AFL midfielders going on current output and projections. Dow the only one I give half a chance of making it.

We are so disgustingly reliant on Prestia to remain competitive in the midfield and last night reminded me of the game against Melbourne last year when everything was going beautifully up until the moment he got injured and we then got smashed out of the middle.

It has been glaringly clear to most football people that the rule changes have made clearances the most important feature of the game right now, not turnovers. Look at the top 6 teams from last year and have a look at where they all sit in terms of getting first use. We are nowhere near them on those measures.

We've drafted for a turnover game style that by the end of this year will be four years out of date. The game has moved on and we've failed to innovate. The new rules hurt our ability to put pressure on back half kickers as they can just run around the man on the mark or get overlap without the angles being cut off. Our small forward depth has been eroded and players have not come on as expected in that area with the exception of Bolton.

We've also failed to bring through a noted 'purebreed' midfielder for what seems like a generation given the trade for Prestia. Those drafts where we took blokes like Lennon and Corey Ellis are now coming home to roost given they would be in the 25-27 category of players that could have kept us around the mark had we been more prudent in our selections (players like Cripps, Steele and Touk Miller were available for example).

It's time to invest in the future of the midfield. Try blokes through there like Baker and Ralphsmith who could have an impact and try and go to the draft with 3-4 big blokes in mind who get first use and use it well (and keep bloody drafting them instead of getting one like RCD and thinking that'll solve all of our problems).

Everyone seems to think that we're a few free agents or trades away. Tom Mitchell would have helped last night, but if we don't want a Hawthorn-esque decade back down the bottom I think we've got to continue to be patient, recognise what needs to be changed and put in place a consistent strategy to do so. I'd certainly rather Gibcus and a Sonsie long term than Tom.

There's plenty to work with. Gibcus and some of the younger generation like Bolton and Balta absolutely could be the next pillars of a run, but I think we all need to face the fact that we're no longer up there with the best sides anymore and need to start thinking strategically about how to get back there.
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Graham would have nothing to apologise for if he never played another AFL game. He is probably not going to be a gun inside mid but he is a very good footballer with worthwhile attributes. His future is likely as a high half forward and he should be good there.

Ross seems to be running well, is 21yo, 26 games into his career and could yet be a decent inside mid, these marginal guys you often cannot tell until they are 23 or 24 - see Matthew Kennedy as a perfect example.

Dow is 20. What has he done wrong? He is not Sam Walsh but again, has certain attributes that may prove useful in time, or not.

Collier-Dawkins is just 22. You would think he will be elevated to the AFL team fairly soon, if not next week. Probably needs to be given a run of games. He has more weapons than most inside mids but will need to overcome known weaknesses to make it.

I think Graham is already a lock in our best side and I would bet that at least one of the other 3 has a decent long career. Are any of them tracking to be elite? No. But I don’t think any player who is shaping to have a decent AFL career for us needs “defending."
 
Meteoric Rise said:
Graham would have nothing to apologise for if he never played another AFL game. He is probably not going to be a gun inside mid but he is a very good footballer with worthwhile attributes. His future is likely as a high half forward and he should be good there.

Ross seems to be running well, is 21yo, 26 games into his career and could yet be a decent inside mid, these marginal guys you often cannot tell until they are 23 or 24 - see Matthew Kennedy as a perfect example.

Dow is 20. What has he done wrong? He is not Sam Walsh but again, has certain attributes that may prove useful in time, or not.

Collier-Dawkins is just 22. You would think he will be elevated to the AFL team fairly soon, if not next week. Probably needs to be given a run of games. He has more weapons than most inside mids but will need to overcome known weaknesses to make it.

I think Graham is already a lock in our best side and I would bet that at least one of the other 3 has a decent long career. Are any of them tracking to be elite? No. But I don’t think any player who is shaping to have a decent AFL career for us needs “defending."
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RCD and Dow should have been in the team last night, they will definitely be in the team next week. We need contested ball winners
 

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Lord of the Wings said:
Because Tarrant was free whilst the other 2 would have cost us x2 1st rounders. Pretty simple really
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Midfield was always a big priority for fans and critics of the club.

We're gonna need herculean efforts from some players to atleast neutralise the midfield
 
Meteoric Rise said:
Graham would have nothing to apologise for if he never played another AFL game. He is probably not going to be a gun inside mid but he is a very good footballer with worthwhile attributes. His future is likely as a high half forward and he should be good there.

Ross seems to be running well, is 21yo, 26 games into his career and could yet be a decent inside mid, these marginal guys you often cannot tell until they are 23 or 24 - see Matthew Kennedy as a perfect example.

Dow is 20. What has he done wrong? He is not Sam Walsh but again, has certain attributes that may prove useful in time, or not.

Collier-Dawkins is just 22. You would think he will be elevated to the AFL team fairly soon, if not next week. Probably needs to be given a run of games. He has more weapons than most inside mids but will need to overcome known weaknesses to make it.

I think Graham is already a lock in our best side and I would bet that at least one of the other 3 has a decent long career. Are any of them tracking to be elite? No. But I don’t think any player who is shaping to have a decent AFL career for us needs “defending."
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Gee I hope you are right. I personally just can't see it for the following reasons:

Graham - I take your point that he's played a role and been a good role player. Problem is with our stars really coming off the boil he doesn't have another level to go to. We need blokes that can carry the side and find that next level and I'm not sure Graham can or ever will be able to. He relies on pressure acts and tackles to be effective but in his current shape he's incapable of providing that (I'll admit this is not his fault as he shouldn't have played last night).

Ross - Extremely slow and his disposal doesn't hurt teams. I've significant worries as to whether he's another one which is what you see is what you get. I'm not sure he can play inside the centre square and be effective and at the moment his best is as a second unit midfielder and out on the wings. Not sure I see it happening for him but geez I'd like him to be given more of a go if last night was anything to go by.

Collier-Dawkins - he may be 'just' 22 but outside some good play in patches, I'm not sure I've seen him do much better than the 19 VFL GF. He ran around that day looking like a real player but nothing at AFL level last year looked vaguely close to the required level. There's a point where you've got to make a call as to whether a bloke is worth a list spot and I feel Riley is dangerously close to a 'no' given he's not really providing a lot of argument to the contrary.

Dow - I distinguished Dow from the others due to both his age, and the fact that he looked quite good against Hawthorn. His ball use by hand looks fantastic but what worries me again are his size, speed and disposal by foot. Needs to get a run in the side (preferably ahead of someone like Aarts).

It's been a long time since we've had th likes of a Sam Walsh to pick from, but that's the sort of echelon of player we're going to have to find if we want to get back to the pointy end. Blowing our picks on flaky flanker types like Lennon and Ellis in the hope they develop into multidimensional players has wrought havoc on our current state of affairs. Blokes taken in that part of the draft should be bolstering our midfield but the cupboard is bare and it's not reasonable to put all our hope on someone like Sonsie when there were other midfielders available to be taken (I'm not knocking the drafting of Gibcus who I think will be a fantastic footballer but question whether Brown for example was the right 'type' for us to go at).
 
Simche said:
Gee I hope you are right. I personally just can't see it for the following reasons:

Graham - I take your point that he's played a role and been a good role player. Problem is with our stars really coming off the boil he doesn't have another level to go to. We need blokes that can carry the side and find that next level and I'm not sure Graham can or ever will be able to. He relies on pressure acts and tackles to be effective but in his current shape he's incapable of providing that (I'll admit this is not his fault as he shouldn't have played last night).

Ross - Extremely slow and his disposal doesn't hurt teams. I've significant worries as to whether he's another one which is what you see is what you get. I'm not sure he can play inside the centre square and be effective and at the moment his best is as a second unit midfielder and out on the wings. Not sure I see it happening for him but geez I'd like him to be given more of a go if last night was anything to go by.

Collier-Dawkins - he may be 'just' 22 but outside some good play in patches, I'm not sure I've seen him do much better than the 19 VFL GF. He ran around that day looking like a real player but nothing at AFL level last year looked vaguely close to the required level. There's a point where you've got to make a call as to whether a bloke is worth a list spot and I feel Riley is dangerously close to a 'no' given he's not really providing a lot of argument to the contrary.

Dow - I distinguished Dow from the others due to both his age, and the fact that he looked quite good against Hawthorn. His ball use by hand looks fantastic but what worries me again are his size, speed and disposal by foot. Needs to get a run in the side (preferably ahead of someone like Aarts).

It's been a long time since we've had th likes of a Sam Walsh to pick from, but that's the sort of echelon of player we're going to have to find if we want to get back to the pointy end. Blowing our picks on flaky flanker types like Lennon and Ellis in the hope they develop into multidimensional players has wrought havoc on our current state of affairs. Blokes taken in that part of the draft should be bolstering our midfield but the cupboard is bare and it's not reasonable to put all our hope on someone like Sonsie when there were other midfielders available to be taken (I'm not knocking the drafting of Gibcus who I think will be a fantastic footballer but question whether Brown for example was the right 'type' for us to go at).
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We definitely need some big bodied quality mids. Would you support offering Kennedy a strong contract like 5 x $600-650k and maybe using our first 2 draft picks this year to trade for Tom Green on a similar type of contract? Do you think a couple of moves like that might improve our midfield both in the short and long term?
 
Meteoric Rise said:
We definitely need some big bodied quality mids. Would you support offering Kennedy a strong contract like 5 x $600-650k and maybe using our first 2 draft picks this year to trade for Tom Green on a similar type of contract? Do you think a couple of moves like that might improve our midfield both in the short and long term?
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Would rather us keep our picks and draft and teach them ourselves

We won flags through the draft
Recruit cleverly but draft well and that seems to be the secret to success
 
Meteoric Rise said:
We also won flags by recruiting Nankervis, Prestia, Caddy, Lynch didn’t we?
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As i posted recruit cleverly

We didn’t sell the farm for any of them
Prestia was a pick 6 much like cerra to Carlton last year which was hugely successful

Tom green would cost 2 first rounders which I don’t feel is worth it

I’d rather draft 2 first round talents and develop them ourselves. Especially with the age demographic of our best 22 at the moment

Once again recruit cleverly and bring in big names through free agency ala lynch

Think that’s the best strategy in our position
 
ForeverHardcore said:
As i posted recruit cleverly

We didn’t sell the farm for any of them
Prestia was a pick 6 much like cerra to Carlton last year which was hugely successful

Tom green would cost 2 first rounders which I don’t feel is worth it

I’d rather draft 2 first round talents and develop them ourselves. Especially with the age demographic of our best 22 at the moment

Once again recruit cleverly and bring in big names through free agency ala lynch

Think that’s the best strategy in our position
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Tom Green is unlikely to cost more than the value of pick 6. And he would be 22 about to enter his prime...
 

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Carlton's mids tore us a new one and sure we lost Prestia early but they didnt have Sam Walsh. We would have lost by 10 goals.

Thats how far off it we are.
 
Not really sure what we are doing tbh - if we arent going to play the kids because Dimma and co dont rate them cut them loose. Can’t believe they cant get a game with the rubbish served up in recent times?
 
Rule changes have made our game style ineffective no longer can we have a team of role players in our midfield. Dimma needs to hit reset and start a new style in line with the game.

But like clarko pride will get in the way and dimma will back his style of the back of the success of the last 5 years.
 
Tzatziki_Man said:
Spot on

Most supporters wanted us to make a play for Mitchell or Wingard.

You're either going for a flag or you aint. So why get Tarrant and not top up the mids
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I think it was because of what Hawthorn wanted for Mitchell against what it cost to get Tarrant
 
Meteoric Rise said:
Tom Green is unlikely to cost more than the value of pick 6. And he would be 22 about to enter his prime...
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If he plays well this year, no way we get him for pick 6. But we need to be smart here. What does getting Tom Green do for us the next 3 years? Because unless he takes us to the top 4 its a waste. No point winning 8 games instead of 5. You get punished for that in the draft.
 
I've been banging on about our midfield every loss for the last decade and a bit, so not going there again, but I did think it's worth mentioning that one likely area of improvement will be from Nank and Soldo.

We know Nank just had a bout of covid, Soldo has never competed at a lower level and didn't look physically right, so neither were able to give us their usual man-hunting grunt at ground level which would have been so important last night against their big-bodied clearance players.
 
Let’s be real. What genuine attempts have we made to improve our midfield size since 2016?

We picked up Ross and RCD in 2018, Martyn in 2019, and only Sonsie in the 2021 draft despite having five top 30 picks.

In 6 years, that is all we have done IMO. I don’t even think we seriously considered trading for an inside midfielder with size at all because it’s hard to believe that we would not be able to land a single one with our success in recent years.

Before anyone brings it up, yes our Premierships have been fantastic and I am grateful for it. Having said that, we could have extended our competitiveness by more if we actually did more to improve our midfield. What we are seeing now isn’t only a natural decline of our midfield - this is also lack of effort by the club to stop the decline. We did not take the opportunities that were presented to us.

It’s a waste of an elite forward line and defence because having 3 or so midfielders that actually have the size to do the contested side of things could have made us strong contenders this year and/or next year. 2 of them don’t even need to be that good either. They just need to be able to win the ball and distribute it to our classy players.

Anyway, it is what it is. This will take a while to rectify IMO.
 
Lsta062 said:
Let’s be real. What genuine attempts have we made to improve our midfield size since 2016?

We picked up Ross and RCD in 2018, Martyn in 2019, and only Sonsie in the 2021 draft despite having five top 30 picks.

In 6 years, that is all we have done IMO. I don’t even think we seriously considered trading for an inside midfielder with size at all because it’s hard to believe that we would not be able to land a single one with our success in recent years.

Before anyone brings it up, yes our Premierships have been fantastic and I am grateful for it. Having said that, we could have extended our competitiveness by more if we actually did more to improve our midfield. What we are seeing now isn’t only a natural decline of our midfield - this is also lack of effort by the club to stop the decline. We did not take the opportunities that were presented to us.

It’s a waste of an elite forward line and defence because having 3 or so midfielders that actually have the size to do the contested side of things could have made us strong contenders this year and/or next year. 2 of them don’t even need to be that good either. They just need to be able to win the ball and distribute it to our classy players.

Anyway, it is what it is. This will take a while to rectify IMO.
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