Preseason 2021

[whyBulldogs]

Gardner

ppl here ignore Gardner most of time, but healthy Gardner'll be in best 22 Bevo. Like/dislike that's a very highly likely scenario. Not a fan of him yet,but hopeful

 

[doggies ftw]

Gardner

No thanks

We just can’t play Cordy and Gardner in the same backline it’s such a waste playing two talls who can’t mark and aren’t necessarily great defensively anyway, I’d take the hit and play a smaller backline every day of the work over that set up.

Cordy currently has Gardner covered in every single facet of the game, which is saying a lot becauseCordys definitey not great.

 

[Boyd oh Boyd]

So the past few years we've had someone in the best 22 fall way out of form and scramble to replace them. Dale, Gowers, Biggs, etc. Any predictions for this year or are we finally going to get to build on our form?

Safe bet would unfortunately be Vandermeer. Younger player that will have some confusion over what role he's playing. Whether it's wing, half forward or forward pocket will depend on where we put our spare mids and I doubt we're concrete in that yet. I can see him have a down year, long term I'm very confident he'll be fine.

 

[BLACAE]

The side should learn to deal with not having Wood, as that time isn't that far away. We are still trying to replace Morris.

I hope they try get a KPD to replace him as we have Croz, Williams and Cords to perform that intercept role.

 

[Northernsoul74]

I hope they try get a KPD to replace him as we have Croz, Williams and Cords to perform that intercept role.

You’d think a KPD would be next on our list of needs.

 

[Bulldogs85]

You’d think a KPD would be next on our list of needs.

Hopefully we can get one in this year’s trade period or the draft

 

[weltschmerz]

If I could wave a wand and make any one of our players have a Bailey Williams-esque breakout year, it would be Lewis Young

33

Lewis Young

Age

25

Ht

202cm

Wt

99kg

Pos.

Def

Career

Season

Last 5

D

11.6

3star

K

7.5

3star

HB

4.1

3star

M

4.4

4star

T

1.6

4star

MG

197.9

3star

D

4.0

1star

K

3.0

1star

HB

1.0

1star

M

3.0

3star

T

0.0

1star

MG

26.0

1star

D

14.4

4star

K

8.2

4star

HB

6.2

4star

M

6.4

5star

T

2.0

4star

MG

181.6

3star

.

 

[Royale]

Yup, we desperately need another key defender. Taking an intercept mark would be nice, but at least someone that can nullify a gorilla. Makes me wonder if we even looked at Sam Collins before he went from Freo to Gold Coast.

 

[Dogsman16]

You’d think a KPD would be next on our list of needs.

A 2nd ruck to me is still the mid to long term most pressing need. Martin can't be relied upon for longer than one season and there were some signs he was cooked in 2020.

Playing one ruck only works for about 3-4 teams in the competition and English isn't the brute that can do this in the long term.

KPF's actually didnt get a hold of us too much in 2020. Hipwood kicked 5 (most of which were silly gardiner free kicks) but that was the only bag kicked against us by a key forward.

 

[Northernsoul74]

A 2nd ruck to me is still the mid to long term most pressing need. Martin can't be relied upon for longer than one season and there were some signs he was cooked in 2020.

Playing one ruck only works for about 3-4 teams in the competition and English isn't the brute that can do this in the long term.

KPF's actually didnt get a hold of us too much in 2020. Hipwood kicked 5 (most of which were silly gardiner free kicks) but that was the only bag kicked against us by a key forward.

It’s a very close 2nd for me but I agree with everything you’ve said. People are asking a lot of Martin.

 

[Virgin Dog]

A 2nd ruck to me is still the mid to long term most pressing need. Martin can't be relied upon for longer than one season and there were some signs he was cooked in 2020.

Playing one ruck only works for about 3-4 teams in the competition and English isn't the brute that can do this in the long term.

KPF's actually didnt get a hold of us too much in 2020. Hipwood kicked 5 (most of which were silly gardiner free kicks) but that was the only bag kicked against us by a key forward.

Have to agree. I'd like to see a decent 2nd KPD establish themselves at some point (whether it's Cordy, Gardner, Young or a recruit), but ultimately it's the ruck where we get most exposed. I wouldn't even mind recruiting a number 1 ruck and having English play as 2nd ruck and roaming back and forward as required. Hopefully Martin is a decent short term fix, but ultimately we either need Sweet to improve out of sight, or we need to be looking at our options on the trade table. Problem is there's so few options out there - the good young guys like O'Brien, Marshall, Soldo, Draper etc. are presumably untouchable. Everyone else is either not established, too old or stupidly injury prone (Darcy). Only one I could think of would be Lycett, but he's really got little incentive to leave Port at this point

 

[Deadly Darcy]

A 2nd ruck to me is still the mid to long term most pressing need. Martin can't be relied upon for longer than one season and there were some signs he was cooked in 2020.

Playing one ruck only works for about 3-4 teams in the competition and English isn't the brute that can do this in the long term.

KPF's actually didnt get a hold of us too much in 2020. Hipwood kicked 5 (most of which were silly gardiner free kicks) but that was the only bag kicked against us by a key forward.

I would hope we are all over Sam Hayes at Port. He’s resigned for 2 more years but I would see him as one of the more gettable 3rd string rucks in the competition and we’ll be lucky to get more than 12-18 months out of Martin.

 

[Bulldogs85]

Fischer McAsey

3

Fischer Mcasey

Age

23

Ht

196cm

Wt

96kg

Pos.

Def

Career

Season

Last 5

D

6.8

2star

K

3.3

1star

HB

3.5

3star

M

1.8

2star

T

1.3

3star

MG

102.3

2star

D

6.8

1star

K

3.3

1star

HB

3.5

2star

M

1.8

2star

T

1.3

2star

MG

102.3

2star

D

7.2

2star

K

3.6

2star

HB

3.6

3star

M

1.8

2star

T

1.6

4star

MG

114.8

2star

come on down to the kennel
Shame we couldn’t find a way to draft Nickolas Cox

 

[Bulldogs85]

I would hope we are all over Sam Hayes at Port. He’s resigned for 2 more years but I would see him as one of the more gettable 3rd string rucks in the competition and we’ll be lucky to get more than 12-18 months out of Martin.

Port Adelaide highly rate Sam Hayes he will be hard to trade for if he is still contracted beyond this year

 

[Northernsoul74]

Fischer McAsey come on down to the kennel
Shame we couldn’t find a way to draft Nickolas Cox

Saints apparently very in to McAsey.

 

[Boyd oh Boyd]

The ruck issue is an interesting one. My issue with playing two rucks is:

1. Hitouts aren't correlated with clearances and weakly correlated with wins.
2. Playing two rucks requires another player to miss out.

In my opinion ruck is the least important position in the modern game. Looking at the 6 rucks I rate most highly (Nic Nat, Gawn, Grundy, Ryder, O'Brien and Goldstein) none were in top 4 sides, 2 were in top 8, and 2 were in the bottom 2 teams. It's older data but hitouts were correlated with wins at .18. It doesn't win you many games. Really all you need is a Lycett/Nankervis type that can half a contest to stop the better rucks. However we know English can't yet do this so yes, I agree picking up Martin was the right choice, but only in the short term. Another year and another 5-ish kilos then I believe English should be able to half the contest and start to win more of his own. In an ideal world 2022 is when we'd start expecting him to take over from our first ruck but seeing as we didn't have one we forced him to do it early, and it cost us.

The other problem is second rucks almost exclusively take the position of a forward, except for Blicavs who played wing this year (but when he was rucking Stanely went forward so in a roundabout way a forward was still out for the ruck). My question is are we better off with English kicking .5-1 goal a game and combining with a second ruck for 30 hitouts a game, or English playing ruck for 15 hitouts and having someone like Weightman or Cavarra kick 1 goal a game and lay 3-5 tackles? Smalls are super important in 2 ruck setups (Richmond, Geelong, West Coast, St Kilda all focus heavily on smalls) but we lack smalls on our list compared to them. We also lack positions for smalls, with Bruce, Naughton, English, Wallis and a resting mid already taking up 5/6 of the forward line. Then add in Vandermeer as a wing/forward and Hannan once he's fit and that's all 6 plus one on the bench. It looks good offensively but we're going to struggle to lock the ball in without a quick pressure small in there. And when the second ruck is resting where will he be? If forward can he take a mark and kick a goal? Can he bring it to ground, and who is he bringing it to ground for if there aren't many smalls? Is he on the bench, and if so can we handle rotations being down in order to fit in a player that could be spending as much time as 40% gametime on the bench?

I appreciate I'm in the minority on this board so I won't push it too hard, but outside of letting English develop another year I don't see the major benefit in a second ruck, at least for our team.

 

[Deadly Darcy]

Port Adelaide highly rate Sam Hayes he will be hard to trade for if he is still contracted beyond this year

The reason he’d be hard to get is because he’s good. If we assume Dunkley gets another godfather offer at the end of the year I’d happily overpay to get Hayes across based on the fact he’ll be 22-23 and the hard work of waiting for him to develop is largely over. Best list fit in the league for us beyond maybe McAsey who I’m personally less sold on as a player anyway. Plus Port have the only ruck depth across the league so could arguably afford to trade him where no one else can give a quality ruck away. Early first rounder if they wanted it. We’d walk away bent over from the thrusting but it would be worth the pain to get a good, age appropriate ruck into our list beyond English. We can’t afford the 5 years it would take to draft our own as our age list is ready now so it’s time to go hard and pay whatever it takes to get the last couple of cherries in my opinion. Better than another aging over the hill ruck (no disrespect to Martin as I think he’lol be good this year) but Hayes/English could fix that area for years in the Wynd/Darcy mold.

 

[Deadly Darcy]

The ruck issue is an interesting one. My issue with playing two rucks is:

1. Hitouts aren't correlated with clearances and weakly correlated with wins.
2. Playing two rucks requires another player to miss out.

In my opinion ruck is the least important position in the modern game. Looking at the 6 rucks I rate most highly (Nic Nat, Gawn, Grundy, Ryder, O'Brien and Goldstein) none were in top 4 sides, 2 were in top 8, and 2 were in the bottom 2 teams. It's older data but hitouts were correlated with wins at .18. It doesn't win you many games. Really all you need is a Lycett/Nankervis type that can half a contest to stop the better rucks. However we know English can't yet do this so yes, I agree picking up Martin was the right choice, but only in the short term. Another year and another 5-ish kilos then I believe English should be able to half the contest and start to win more of his own. In an ideal world 2022 is when we'd start expecting him to take over from our first ruck but seeing as we didn't have one we forced him to do it early, and it cost us.

The other problem is second rucks almost exclusively take the position of a forward, except for Blicavs who played wing this year (but when he was rucking Stanely went forward so in a roundabout way a forward was still out for the ruck). My question is are we better off with English kicking .5-1 goal a game and combining with a second ruck for 30 hitouts a game, or English playing ruck for 15 hitouts and having someone like Weightman or Cavarra kick 1 goal a game and lay 3-5 tackles? Smalls are super important in 2 ruck setups (Richmond, Geelong, West Coast, St Kilda all focus heavily on smalls) but we lack smalls on our list compared to them. We also lack positions for smalls, with Bruce, Naughton, English, Wallis and a resting mid already taking up 5/6 of the forward line. Then add in Vandermeer as a wing/forward and Hannan once he's fit and that's all 6 plus one on the bench. It looks good offensively but we're going to struggle to lock the ball in without a quick pressure small in there. And when the second ruck is resting where will he be? If forward can he take a mark and kick a goal? Can he bring it to ground, and who is he bringing it to ground for if there aren't many smalls? Is he on the bench, and if so can we handle rotations being down in order to fit in a player that could be spending as much time as 40% gametime on the bench?

I appreciate I'm in the minority on this board so I won't push it too hard, but outside of letting English develop another year I don't see the major benefit in a second ruck, at least for our team.

English as a roving ruck/forward/back filler and a first ruck to do the grunt work. We’ll see how it pans out this year!

 

[Northernsoul74]

The ruck issue is an interesting one. My issue with playing two rucks is:

1. Hitouts aren't correlated with clearances and weakly correlated with wins.
2. Playing two rucks requires another player to miss out.

In my opinion ruck is the least important position in the modern game. Looking at the 6 rucks I rate most highly (Nic Nat, Gawn, Grundy, Ryder, O'Brien and Goldstein) none were in top 4 sides, 2 were in top 8, and 2 were in the bottom 2 teams. It's older data but hitouts were correlated with wins at .18. It doesn't win you many games. Really all you need is a Lycett/Nankervis type that can half a contest to stop the better rucks. However we know English can't yet do this so yes, I agree picking up Martin was the right choice, but only in the short term. Another year and another 5-ish kilos then I believe English should be able to half the contest and start to win more of his own. In an ideal world 2022 is when we'd start expecting him to take over from our first ruck but seeing as we didn't have one we forced him to do it early, and it cost us.

The other problem is second rucks almost exclusively take the position of a forward, except for Blicavs who played wing this year (but when he was rucking Stanely went forward so in a roundabout way a forward was still out for the ruck). My question is are we better off with English kicking .5-1 goal a game and combining with a second ruck for 30 hitouts a game, or English playing ruck for 15 hitouts and having someone like Weightman or Cavarra kick 1 goal a game and lay 3-5 tackles? Smalls are super important in 2 ruck setups (Richmond, Geelong, West Coast, St Kilda all focus heavily on smalls) but we lack smalls on our list compared to them. We also lack positions for smalls, with Bruce, Naughton, English, Wallis and a resting mid already taking up 5/6 of the forward line. Then add in Vandermeer as a wing/forward and Hannan once he's fit and that's all 6 plus one on the bench. It looks good offensively but we're going to struggle to lock the ball in without a quick pressure small in there. And when the second ruck is resting where will he be? If forward can he take a mark and kick a goal? Can he bring it to ground, and who is he bringing it to ground for if there aren't many smalls? Is he on the bench, and if so can we handle rotations being down in order to fit in a player that could be spending as much time as 40% gametime on the bench?

I appreciate I'm in the minority on this board so I won't push it too hard, but outside of letting English develop another year I don't see the major benefit in a second ruck, at least for our team.

I agree if English can genuinely become the player you hope for in the ruck. I just don’t think he will.

 

[Bulldogs85]

The reason he’d be hard to get is because he’s good. If we assume Dunkley gets another godfather offer at the end of the year I’d happily overpay to get Hayes across based on the fact he’ll be 22-23 and the hard work of waiting for him to develop is largely over. Best list fit in the league for us beyond maybe McAsey who I’m personally less sold on as a player anyway. Plus Port have the only ruck depth across the league so could arguably afford to trade him where no one else can give a quality ruck away. Early first rounder if they wanted it. We’d walk away bent over from the thrusting but it would be worth the pain to get a good, age appropriate ruck into our list beyond English. We can’t afford the 5 years it would take to draft our own as our age list is ready now so it’s time to go hard and pay whatever it takes to get the last couple of cherries in my opinion. Better than another aging over the hill ruck (no disrespect to Martin as I think he’lol be good this year) but Hayes/English could fix that area for years in the Wynd/Darcy mold.

Sam Hayes is contracted till 2023 Sydney were trying to get him as apart of the Aliir Aliir trade port Adelaide shut that down real quick. Can’t see port Adelaide even trading him he is part of their future even if he wanted to leave

 

[Northernsoul74]

Sam Hayes is contracted till 2023 Sydney were trying to get him as apart of the Aliir Aliir trade port Adelaide shut that down real quick. Can’t see port Adelaide even trading him he is part of their future even if he wanted to leave

He must be a very patient kid.

 

[Bulldogs85]

He must be a very patient kid.

Let’s see how patient he is if he doesn’t play any games this year he signed his contract extension this year

 

[House_of_Dahl]

Cordy currently has Gardner covered in every single facet of the game, which is saying a lot becauseCordys definitey not great.

To be fair Gardner is taller, faster, and higher leap. Needs to keep developing/improving but he does have those over Cordy.

 

[Northernsoul74]

To be fair Gardner is taller, faster, and higher leap. Needs to keep developing/improving but he does have those over Cordy.

I just wish he would try and mark the ball once in a while.

 

[Virgin Dog]

I just wish he would try and mark the ball once in a while.

I could be misremembering but I feel like Wood used to have a bad habit of spoiling at the wrong time, but eventually became one of our most valued interceptors. Hopefully Gardner works on his decision making