How does the competency of our ruckman impact upon my knowledge of ruck work? We had the All-Australian ruck less than 4 years ago. Does that make me an expert at ruck work? No. Does GWS never having an AA ruck mean its supporters are clueless about the ruck position? No. Don't be daft.
Anyway, this doesn't have to be some pissing contest; it was a discussion about strategy.
There's a philosophical difference in how our midfields are structured for stoppages: The hit out differential was +37 to the Giants last time we played. But clearances were only +2. That's par for course for us. We've lost raw hit out numbers routinely by large margins over the last 3 years, but have frequently been in the top few, if not at the top, for clearance differential, throughout. We don't have an elite tap ruckman, so our structures are predicated on mostly losing hit outs. E.g. Stefan Martin killed us in hit outs last week; we won the clearances by +15. That's why rucking Ayce Cordy, Lin Jong, Josh Dunkley, Bont, etc on occasion hasn't been fatal for us (though far from ideal). We don't try not to win hit outs, but we've planned for that being the reality. If we had prime Dean Cox, I'm sure we'd quickly change our structures.
It follows that where one team has set up to mostly win hit outs, and the other has set up to mostly lose them, and that's exactly how it plays out, then the ruck contest isn't going to have much bearing unless something unusual occurs in addition to or outside of that e.g. Roughead suddenly dominating hit outs, or Simpson sticking 10 tackles, or kicking 3 goals.
