catempire
Premium Platinum
Forget the names. Look how they performed. Frequently dominated in clearances and other midfield metrics in those periods.
Richmond went 13th, 17th, 18th, 17th in average clearance rankings from 2017-2020 for instance.
Review Preseason hit out against Dons and Review
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Richmond went 13th, 17th, 18th, 17th in average clearance rankings from 2017-2020 for instance.
Vdubs
Hall of Famer
Maybe. Was that their ruck situation? Still part of the MF I guess.
- Apr 9, 2015
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Lots of good signs in this game for the team. Holmes, Clark and Neale impressive from the youngsters.
Our forward group is among the best couple in the league. And I think there enough to compete in the midfield particularly if some of the younger players can stand up.
Concern for me is down back, particularly small defenders and/or run from defence. Can see why they want Holmes to spend time there because the other options are not great.
Henry, Stewart, Dekoning and Guthrie are quality players and hopefully we can defend better with that group this year. But we’ll need to find some rebound and a way to defend small forwards. Bews has been a good player in the role but I feel he’s dropped off a lot. For some reason we’ve struggled to find players for this role for a long time.
Hopefully through O’Connor, Mullin, Tuohy, Duncan, Bowes we can find some support there.
Our forward group is among the best couple in the league. And I think there enough to compete in the midfield particularly if some of the younger players can stand up.
Concern for me is down back, particularly small defenders and/or run from defence. Can see why they want Holmes to spend time there because the other options are not great.
Henry, Stewart, Dekoning and Guthrie are quality players and hopefully we can defend better with that group this year. But we’ll need to find some rebound and a way to defend small forwards. Bews has been a good player in the role but I feel he’s dropped off a lot. For some reason we’ve struggled to find players for this role for a long time.
Hopefully through O’Connor, Mullin, Tuohy, Duncan, Bowes we can find some support there.
Catastrophe!
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You gathered that astute assessment off of 2 practice matches did you?
Might want to give the kid a little bit more time to make a judgement call, hey?
If he ends up Mitch Duncan I think it’s a great outcome. More my point, I think he will end up a good midfielder, but not an A grade AA caliber midfielder. If you think Duncan is an inappropriate name then insert someone else who fits the description.
Duncan was a good player without ever being an AA caliber one.
- Feb 28, 2011
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Kid? Who are you talking about, Bruhn? He’s been in the AFL system for a while now, and tell me who stands out in our midfield for you? All i said was it looks thin.
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- Jun 19, 2006
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Bruhn's kicking early last year was a complete liability. Late last year it had improved to being ok. It's only a practice game so let's not read too much into it but his kicking against Essendon was elite. Good execution and excellent decision making. If that continues it's a massive progression and makes him at least a useful midfielder.
Catastrophe!
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He's 21, mate. You said 'he doesn't look like progressing', then said let's focus on Clark. Sounds like writing him off to me.
I had high hopes for him a couple of seasons ago as he showed some incredible skills in the Irish game. I thought he might be able to translate some of that into our game , perhaps as a big bodied mid type (not a just a tagger ) but he always seems constrained and a little lost when I watch him these days. Almost as if he is playing for preservation only. His ‘versatility’ may turn out to be a millstone for his development as he doesn’t really seem to have a definite role in the team and as a result is always under threat from up and coming players.
Showed some good vision too, which can’t be taught
- Feb 12, 2017
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Posted this in another thread but regarding Bruhn, this is his draft cohort. He's outperforming a large majority of his peers outside of guys like Gulden & JUH. All three of our guys in Henry, Bruhn and Holmes are tracking more than fine.
Pure_Ownage
TheBrownDog
Have wingers that roll back to support the defence after the bounce (which blitz is good at or stanley could be the guy if blits rucks), push one or two half fwds up so we still have numbers around the ball and use it by run and hand with numbers then streaming fwd.
- Jun 11, 2013
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Oh I just felt you're underselling Duncan. I see no reason Bruhn couldn't be as good though.
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TheBrownDog
Hes not talking about quality of player but gameplan. Richmonds was to concede to a degree centre bounce but then slingshot off half back with runners and massive pressure to force and score off turnover.
Hawthorns was to pierce through the middle with angled kicks and overlap run so neither team were reliant on scores from centre bounce or clearance.
Pure_Ownage
TheBrownDog
Hes only had half a season as a full time midfielder and that was learning a new team and gameplan also.
Vdubs
Hall of Famer
Still, labelling those MF's as crap is incorrect.
Pure_Ownage
TheBrownDog
Posted this in another thread but regarding Bruhn, this is his draft cohort. He's outperforming a large majority of his peers outside of guys like Gulden & JUH. All three of our guys in Henry, Bruhn and Holmes are tracking more than fine.
Yeah this shows it wasnt a great quality draft (at this early stage) outside the top 10 and weve done really well with what we had (considering we also traded for cameron).
Pure_Ownage
TheBrownDog
i think you misunderstood the point. It was more they built a gameplan where they were consistently in the bottom 4 clubs for clearances, goals from ctr bounce etc, yet still scored at will. Which is true. In that sense the midfield in isolation was 'poor' but that was part of the gameplan.
Vdubs
Hall of Famer
I got the point, but he does insinuate, and state that we maybe forget the MF and build from HB, and have a an appropriate game plan, and explicitly states those 2 teams did it with crap MF's. No point going around in circles- we, in our own era, won games rebounding from HB, despite a brilliant MF. And ruck.
- Jun 19, 2006
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Smashed them from half way through the second. Coincided with Holmes and Bowes going into the centre and Atkins and Duncan going out. Could just be younger players going harder and older guys just cruising through.
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TheBrownDog
Do you mean 3rd qtr? Bowes wasnt on the field in the first half.
catempire
Premium Platinum
Their performance as midfields was crap.
- Jun 19, 2006
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Late in the second it was Holmes that went in there and the game changed. That continued in the 3rd with Bowes then in there.
The change didn't coincide with Bowes going in there. The tide had already turned. But it kept going.
I've noticed people carry big impressions they get from early in the game through to the very end. So despite actually winning the clearance differential after the first quarter, it still "felt" like we let their midfield dominate the stoppages.
And because we had a stack of midfielders finish on 18-21 disposals we "lost" the midfield battle as they had two players share about 60 touches.
It's interesting if you focus instead on score involvements of all of our ruck/midfielders compared to all of theirs. We won that count and fairly comfortably.
"Long year ahead for our midfield" indeed.
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