Carlton Supporters Club

I don't think Newey gave up the chase on Cameron, I think he gave up in disgust at how easy it got to Cameron and how little support there was for him and how little pressure up the field there was to create the Cameron opportunity in the first place.

My thoughts exactly.  In our desperation to strengthen our forward line we seem to have unreal expectations of what Owies can provide.
In the teams above us he would be lucky to get a game.

Interesting to compare the season averages:

Owies - 2 goals and 1.3 tackles with 0.3 tackles inside 50
Durdin - 1.3 goals and 4.1 tackles with 1.6 tackles inside 50
Motlop - 1.1 goals and 3.3 tackles with 1.7 tackles inside 50
Charlie Cameron - 3.2 goals and 3.5 tackles with 2.1 tackles inside 50

If Charlie's the benchmark, Durdin and Motlop aren't too far off the pace defensively but their scoreboard impact is way down.  The Doggies' defenders won't be having nightmares about our small forwards.

The debate over the small forwards is a bit odd. No one is claiming Owies will win a Brownlow or get into the AA team. And sure, our small forwards as a group aren’t currently the envy of other sides. But you work with what you’ve got. The last offseason saw us prioritising wingers even though I thought we needed to find a crumbing goalsneak and a quick midfielder to add pace to the midfield. But you can’t fill all the holes in one offseason.

It used to be that the best crumbing smalls were found in the bargain basement. Eddie Betts, Stephen Milne and Tom Papley all came through the rookie draft (and remember we almost nabbed Papley in the manoeuvrings surrounding Joe Daniher). These days, the best goalsneaks are drafted early: Rankine (pick 3), Rachele (pick 5) and Pickett (pick 12). The best small forward in the coming draft, Nick Watson, is predicted to be a top 5 pick (despite being only 168-170cm and a bit of a flog). So you can’t just go down to the corner milk bar and buy a genuine goal kicking small anymore (to use a Paganism).

So we have to make do with what we have for the foreseeable future. Playing Motlop, Durdin and Owies together enables them to complement each others’ strengths. Durdin is the fast guy who’s best at snaps. Motlop is the best footballer although not blessed with great pace. And Owies seems to be the hardest running of the lot which enables him to run deep into F50 after running up the ground. He’s also a good mark and set shot, though I don’t see him as a great snap at goals.

But unless we can and do take someone in the mid season draft, we do have to make do with what we’ve got until this season is over. And we should only bring in another small forward by trade or in the draft if he’s clearly better than what we’ve got. We don’t want to recycle delisted players in the hope we can find a diamond in the rough (spoiler alert: our development of players is hardly elite). If there’s a good small forward who’ll be out of contract at the end of the year, maybe we could do what we did with Acres as we can certainly promise that there will be a spot in the seniors. The only problem with that is that maybe TdK ends up as a delisted free agent but we lose the considerable compensation we’d receive (as happened when Eddie left and we picked up Daisy).

Mav....not sure we have a pick currently in the mid-season draft? We'd have to get a long term injury before the cut-off or indefinitely rule out one of the already injured blokes....Williams has already been put on that list. Maybe get Cunningham or Marchbank to belt out a few laps and I'm sure one of them will go down again.

In: M.Cottrell, M.Owies
Out: B.Kemp (omitted), J.Honey (omitted), E.Curnow (omitted)

Last week's sub: Matt Kennedy