Gtowncrow
Premiership Player
- Jul 6, 2021
- 3,215
- 4,114
- AFL Club
- Adelaide
Excellent summary. I couldn't agree more.Thoughts after the pre season:
I don't normally make big calls but I'm fairly bullish this year. I reckon we're gonna push for the 8. We've got former leaders looking good without the captaincy burden. Our actual captain is an elite talent. Laird is looking like a beast again in the midfield. Our next gen I think will take the next step.
Sharpest pre season I've seen in a while. We've looked pretty average for quite a few years now so it's nice for a change. Look sharp with skills and ball movement.
Positives:
Rankine could really be anything. We were building a strong forward line but he takes it to another level. Quiet tonight but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Two big calls - Soligo has elite potential and I see some young ablett junior in Rachele. Soligo oozes class and rarely does anything wrong. Rachele turned a corner. Looked hungry at the contest and is a class above when he gets it. Has agility, smarts and very powerful. Going to be exciting watching where these two end up as players.
Fog showing he's locked in that good form from last year. Starting to win a fair amount of 1v1s against good defenders. Huge talent.
Berry top 10 bnf coming up. He's adding strings to his bow. A grade is all we need from him.
Laird looking even better. His midfield craft can still improve and he's shown good signs so far.
Schoenberg very strong pre season. Adds a different dynamic to the midfield as his first instinct is to take the game on and regularly gets the ball at pace. Disposal looks tidier than the same time last year.
Parnell has arrived as a small defender. Defends well and is a natural attacking footballer when he has the ball. Smart player
Michalaney looks very very good. Natural footballer and strong 1v1. Has built a decent frame in one pre season. Will play games and perform.
Who wouldn't want Hinge in their best 22? Highly underrated player imo. Has all the traits you look for and underrated disposal.
Sloane pretty good on the wing.
McAdam looks to have taken his game to another level. Will be really interesting to see where he ends up this year. Starting to look like an experienced footballer. Could already see signs of this last year.
Doedee cops a lot of crap, but I thought he had a pretty decent pre season. Strong defensively. Not taking a huge amount of intercepts though.
Dawson is Dawson. I don't have a problem playing him in defence. Our defence looks a bit shaky still and he's a rock back there. The way the game is played now he's still able to set up play in the forward half anyway.
Himmelberg very solid pre season and starting to look like he feels he belongs at afl level. A decent part time ruck and uses the ball really well.
Keane looked really promising.
Didn't mind Brown actually. Has a good inside game.
Dowling also showed some nice signs. Great size.
Both Murphy and McHenry out of the 1st team! This might actually be the biggest positive of the pre season! We've gone from having a plodder small forward line to a very slick and dangerous one.
Negatives:
Butts and Murray. Not terrible, but they didn't fill me with huge confidence going into the season. I don't love that we're looking to use Butts more as an outlet out of defence. He's got okay disposal, but has limits. Murray misses a lot of targets for someone who has a nice looking kick on him. Hasn't really improved this area.
TT didn't put his hand up unfortunately. I don't have concerns long term, but would have been nice for him to stand up.
Hamill overtaken by Parnell. I really like Hamill so I'm a bit bummed that he's been pushed out. However he's been replaced by someone who has him covered in most areas other than 1v1 and height. So we're no worse off.
Rucks are mediocre. I don't care so much about this so long as the opposing ruck isn't dominating. Would be happy to replace ROB with Himm and TT doing half half. Gets TT into the game.
Other notes:
Pedlar looked to be trying too hard in the first two matches. Just wasn't working for him. West Coast game was very different and you can see why the club likes him. Hopefully that was the game the settles him down and we start to see him flourish.
Milera didn't stand out like I was hoping. Thought he was okay. Used the ball well and was calm under pressure. Didn't take the game on as much as I'd like. Hopefully he gets that confidence back as there's still a role for him imo.
Not sure what to do with Crouch and Keays. Looks like they've decided that Keays will be a role player up forward. Crouch had a very good pre season but I really don't think there's a spot for him given we need to prioritise Berry, Schoenberg and Soligo with majority midfield time (outside of laird). It would be nice to get some trade value out of him but that's not going to happen if he's plonked in the Sanfl. Tricky one.