Player Watch Esava Ratugolea

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If Esava wants to improve his game he needs to do two things:

1. head over to the gripo factory, that is, the Sticks Kernahan drill where you get a guy to kick the ball really hard at you at close range to get use to marking a very fast, hard ball with soft hands
2. watch tape of leading forwards and backmen to develop the footy IQ

I'll worry about his goal kicking when he can clunk marks in the right position.
 
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I recall what a mate who attended that trial match at Alberton against the fruit tingles told me on the morning after the game, ie `Ratugolea doesn't appear to have much footy nous!'

I watched the game on tv and had to agree with him, particularly after seeing Aliir give Esava two sprays early in the game when for some unknown reason he wandered off towards the grandstand side 60 - 70 metres from the direction of the play and with the tingles attacking through the outer wing, which left Aliir with two opponents to pick up.

It made no sense for Rat to do that, and he did it twice in the first qtr. o_O
 
The only future is to play him as a defender at the magpies and use him as a depth defender IMO he's far too dumb to be a forward & his goal kicking is dreadful.
 
1954 said:
I recall what a mate who attended that trial match at Alberton against the fruit tingles told me on the morning after the game, ie `Ratugolea doesn't appear to have much footy nous!'

I watched the game on tv and had to agree with him, particularly after seeing Aliir give Esava two sprays early in the game when for some unknown reason he wandered off towards the grandstand side 60 - 70 metres from the direction of the play and with the tingles attacking through the outer wing, which left Aliir with two opponents to pick up.

It made no sense for Rat to do that, and he did it twice in the first qtr. o_O
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We took so much muscle bulk off him, maybe he was just hungry and wandering off toward the smell of the food trucks ;)
 
Well played Geelong. You made him our problem and had us pay a premium for the privilege.
 
all seeing eye said:
A thing called development might help, something thats been lost at Alberton.
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He was on Geelong's list for, what, 6 or 7 years? Fair to say if they couldn't turn him into something nobody can.

I get why we had a crack last trade period, we were desperate for big bodies, but he needs to be only considered as a depth player in case of injuries.
 

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Are we throwing the Esava in defence option totally in the bin? New system and set-up might benefit him.
 
Lefti93 said:
Are we throwing the Esava in defence option totally in the bin? New system and set-up might benefit him.
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If Aliir ever gets injured, I think he'd be fine back there to cover.
 
The most frustrating part about this whole debacle is that if we got him in the 2022 trade period for pick 35 or whatever it was.. it probably would have been a decent pickup, if nothing for depth.

Instead it turned into this big stupid saga
 
jackag24 said:
The most frustrating part about this whole debacle is that if we got him in the 2022 trade period for pick 35 or whatever it was.. it probably would have been a decent pickup, if nothing for depth.

Instead it turned into this big stupid saga
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Trading out this years 1st rounds and turning it into multiple 2nd round picks for Soldo and Ratugolea was a HUGE L. Another case of poor list management. Would have been better drafting a mature age key defender than paying a crap load for Ratguloea.😕
 
Lefti93 said:
Are we throwing the Esava in defence option totally in the bin? New system and set-up might benefit him.
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A new system where they sit deeper might provide him a bit more coverage. But I'm not sure he'll be in their first team as a defender given BZT and Aliir are the primary talls. The game simply doesn't require 3 pure talls down back these days.
 
HHHAMMERtime said:
Is it possible to delist players in contract? Because we should do that with this bloke.
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It's possible, but you're generally not doing it with players on 5 year multimillion dollar deals. He sucks but if we delisted him we'd have to pay another $100k on top to some even worse depth tall plucked from the state leagues, so there's not much benefit.
 
Schulzenfest said:
It's possible, but you're generally not doing it with players on 5 year multimillion dollar deals. He sucks but if we delisted him we'd have to pay another $100k on top to some even worse depth tall plucked from the state leagues, so there's not much benefit.
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One of the worst ever list management decisions by any club ever.
 

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Player Watch Esava Ratugolea

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