Look out next year
-
LIVE: Sydney v Brisbane Lions - 2:30PM AEST Sat
Squiggle tips Lions at 61% chance -- What's your tip? -- Ticketing Buy, Sell -- Teams on Thurs »
-
Weekly Prize - Join Any Time - Tip Prelim Finals
The Golden Ticket - MCG and Marvel Medallion Club tickets and Corporate Box tickets at the Gabba, MCG and Marvel.
Round SF Winner: And_ROOS
-
AFLW 2024 - Round 4 - Chat, game threads, injury lists, team lineups and more.
Player Watch Pick #5 (2018) - Connor Rozee (AFL Captain)
- Thread starter Forzaport
- Start date
- Tagged users None
Absolute crap leadership. You don't get there just by rocking up and hoping things fall your way. It hasn't worked for 12 years. We have no ruthlessness whatsoever. Even when we finish top 4 literally everyone in the AFL knows we're zero threat. We could finish top next year and we'd still be about 6th in premiership odds.
We have no other level to go to in finals and can only beat good sides rarely, and shit ourselves at home. That doesn't win flags Connor. And your final series was poor. Ok against hawthorn, soft as piss other than that. See what Heeney does? Do that.
The comparison to Heeney is poor.
I agree that Rozee needs to get to that level, but Heeney has only finally put it all together at the age of 28. Prior to that he's been a huge tease for his entire career, and has barely been capable of spending half a year in the midfield.
He's now reached his prime and his body has fully matured. Furthermore, he's not a captain of his side
Go look at his 2022 finals series, and compare it to his regular season.
FishingRick04
Brownlow Medallist
Heeney live was amazing, he is an athlete and a half, strong, athletic, aggressive, Rozee has a lot of things to improve to compare.
At the same point of his career though, Rozee is a better player than Heeney was.
Heeney was given the time to grow, and improve his game in the areas that needed improvement.
I think Rozee deserves the same patience
Ford Fairlane
Moderator
- Feb 21, 2002
- 80,881
- 198,495
- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
- Other Teams
- Port Adelaide Magpies
- Moderator
- #3,331
Isaac Heeney is 28 already? 
FishingRick04
Brownlow Medallist
Well Connor will have a career in the AFL, it’s not like he’ll be delisted. He definitely needs to add some hardness to his game IMO
Isaac Heeney is a machiney
All I'm saying is, if Rozee had only 11 touches in an AFL grand final flogging (See: Heeney's 2022 GF performance) this forum would throw the baby out with the bath water..
And now we're saying Rozee needs to be more like Heeney.. something to be said there about how reactionary we can be at times
FishingRick04
Brownlow Medallist
Of course, we are comparing him to what is the best now, not two years ago.
- Sep 25, 2013
- 3,544
- 3,581
- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
Hmmm. Was ready to crucify Connor - for his output this year, his on and off field leadership and for those pressers.
Definitely needs to work on some things - but which AFL players don’t?
Which captains are perfect? Darcy Moore was great in his premiership year and terrible since. Gawn seems to exemplify leadership but his club implodes around him. Cotchin, Buckley, etc were initially hyper alpha and took a lot of work to improve their leadership style. Jonas missed most of last year as captain. Oscar Allen the same for different reasons. Walker was embroiled in Racism and didn’t turn up on grand final day and burned players who left. Have the suns had an adequate captain? Greene had a stinker of a year at GWS.
Whilst Connor hasn’t had his best year he has also had a pregnant wife, his first major injury and a lack of support around him. Wines was average till late in the year, Dixon and Boak have been ordinary, SPP out injured, DBJ inconsistent, Butters also a young fellow leader.
And did we expect him to bag the coach? Bag himself and the team? His pressers need work for sure but I don’t think they’re that far from what you would expect, particularly from a young leader who is still working it out and doesn’t have great support around him. And he is towing the party line - it’s almost like the role models he has did the exact same thing - Dixon, Wines, Boak, Jonas…
Perhaps we need to give him some slack. He needs some good people around him to guide him. I would see if Buckley or Cotchin or Selwood or Sloane or Ebert etc could mentor him. And maybe get him up to see the Richmond mindset gurus - Emma Murray or something like that and that Crowe guy.
But let’s give him some time to grow into it. There are concerns for sure but I think he has the potential to be a great captain and player for port. Let’s see how he goes over the off season and next year.
Definitely needs to work on some things - but which AFL players don’t?
Which captains are perfect? Darcy Moore was great in his premiership year and terrible since. Gawn seems to exemplify leadership but his club implodes around him. Cotchin, Buckley, etc were initially hyper alpha and took a lot of work to improve their leadership style. Jonas missed most of last year as captain. Oscar Allen the same for different reasons. Walker was embroiled in Racism and didn’t turn up on grand final day and burned players who left. Have the suns had an adequate captain? Greene had a stinker of a year at GWS.
Whilst Connor hasn’t had his best year he has also had a pregnant wife, his first major injury and a lack of support around him. Wines was average till late in the year, Dixon and Boak have been ordinary, SPP out injured, DBJ inconsistent, Butters also a young fellow leader.
And did we expect him to bag the coach? Bag himself and the team? His pressers need work for sure but I don’t think they’re that far from what you would expect, particularly from a young leader who is still working it out and doesn’t have great support around him. And he is towing the party line - it’s almost like the role models he has did the exact same thing - Dixon, Wines, Boak, Jonas…
Perhaps we need to give him some slack. He needs some good people around him to guide him. I would see if Buckley or Cotchin or Selwood or Sloane or Ebert etc could mentor him. And maybe get him up to see the Richmond mindset gurus - Emma Murray or something like that and that Crowe guy.
But let’s give him some time to grow into it. There are concerns for sure but I think he has the potential to be a great captain and player for port. Let’s see how he goes over the off season and next year.
I think it's fair to say that 2024 Heeney is what Rozee should aspire to be. It's also fair to say that pre-2024 Heeney was underwhelming to a similar extent as current Rozee.
However it's not so easy to just say that Rozee needs to elevate his game like Heeney, as the latter's form is due to a positional change. Heeney's contested possession rate has gone up by 50% this year, but he's also attending more CB's than ever before (around 20 per game, while only averaging around 3 a game in the previous few years). Rozee has averaged around 16-18 CBAs per game in the last couple of years, however his contested possession count only saw a marginal increase from 6 to 8 contested touches per game.
Of the 126 players to have attend more than 35% of CBs per game in 2024 (i.e. pretty much any midfielder), Rozee is ranked 45th for % centre clearances per CBA at 10.7%. Heeney is ranked 66 (9.2).* So it's not purely stoppage work that is the problem, it's the around the ground stuff, which can be seen with Heeney's far superior ability in groundballs (7.2 v 5.4) and hard ball (1.9 v 1.2), while Rozee gets more HB receives (8.9 v 7.8).
So my concern is how we use Rozee. Is it potentially a coaching thing in telling him to try and stay loose and use his agility to generate clearances, at the expense of helping with the contested work? I'm hoping so, because it's rare to see players significantly improve their contested possession rate beyond their first couple of years in the system. So if it's purely an ability thing, then we need to make the call to keep him as a forward.
*Shoutout to JHF who is ranked second in this stat (at 17.5%) just fractionally behind Shiel.
However it's not so easy to just say that Rozee needs to elevate his game like Heeney, as the latter's form is due to a positional change. Heeney's contested possession rate has gone up by 50% this year, but he's also attending more CB's than ever before (around 20 per game, while only averaging around 3 a game in the previous few years). Rozee has averaged around 16-18 CBAs per game in the last couple of years, however his contested possession count only saw a marginal increase from 6 to 8 contested touches per game.
Of the 126 players to have attend more than 35% of CBs per game in 2024 (i.e. pretty much any midfielder), Rozee is ranked 45th for % centre clearances per CBA at 10.7%. Heeney is ranked 66 (9.2).* So it's not purely stoppage work that is the problem, it's the around the ground stuff, which can be seen with Heeney's far superior ability in groundballs (7.2 v 5.4) and hard ball (1.9 v 1.2), while Rozee gets more HB receives (8.9 v 7.8).
So my concern is how we use Rozee. Is it potentially a coaching thing in telling him to try and stay loose and use his agility to generate clearances, at the expense of helping with the contested work? I'm hoping so, because it's rare to see players significantly improve their contested possession rate beyond their first couple of years in the system. So if it's purely an ability thing, then we need to make the call to keep him as a forward.
*Shoutout to JHF who is ranked second in this stat (at 17.5%) just fractionally behind Shiel.
