Don't mind replacing Fantasia, but Moir is still a fair way off. He will be given plenty of time to develop before being paraded out a la Binns. With one or two exceptions, we are right into development and ensuring young players have served a comprehensive apprenticeship.
Yes, there's plenty of time for Moir, Binns, Monahan, O'Keeffe, Lemmey, etc. We're not in the position where we have to expose our "green shoots" to the harshness of AFL footy before they have toughened up.
Apart from destroying the “Charlie doesn’t defend” nonsense, it illustrates one aspect of Fantasia’s game that goes largely unnoticed.
As Thry has pointed out, Fantasia’s leadership is another reason why he is in the team. We have more than our share of relatively inexperienced players and Fantasia’s guidance and encouragement is invaluable.
Is Fantasia in our best 23? Probably not, but he will continue to be selected until Martin and Motlop are back in the mix.
We must not assume ever week will be like last weekend, especially this week. Do not forget the Handbaggers were the team that complained about TDK last season getting the umpires onside to start penalising TDK in the latter part of the first half of the season. Penalised for basically jumping higher than opponents and as a result putting his knee in their chest. TDK was punished, punished for Scott's actions of basically playing an undone Stanley and an inured Blicavs in the ruck.
Last week Conway is another monster, gave McInerney a touch up, and after the injury to Stewart we saw Scott using Cameron behind the ball as a mobile stoppage option. TDK won't get such an easy or open run if Cameron repeats this strategy.
Why then has De Koning's frees against average remained remarkably consistent across his entire career? On the other hand, his frees for average has been steadily climbing.
I have been as mystified as the next punter when it comes to rucklotto frees in past seasons but De Koning wasn't singled out for special treatment by the umpires at Chris Scott's request.
Crash, is this comp like a second tier, out of season thing, not the full blown professional competition?
The VFLW is made up of 10 teams representing or affiliated with the Victorian AFL teams and two “independent” teams; Willy and Darebin.
We’re running a lot of AFLW players through our VFLW team this season, not something we’ve really done before. Hopefully that will give our AFLW girls a flying start to the season.
Good thing about Pittonet last week is that he played well around the ground too. Works well with TDK playing well up forward.
That's the real key Jim. If both of our ruckmen can have an impact around the ground, it's a winning strategy. If we have to hide them on the pine, we're in trouble.
Just to reiterate the big man's words; "We've got such good connection, just trying to work together, whether it's who's having a better game against which rucks – there were passages where he was having a good day against Briggs, so he went in, and I went forward for a bit."
And that's why De Koning took most of the ruck contests against O'Brien the game before. Not because Pitto was underdone or because of a pre-determined plan but because De Koning was doing better against O'Brien than Pitto was.
We'll see how we against the cats. I'd only play one ruckman this week. The cats have historically surrendered clearance dominance to win field position.
Brisbane vs Geelong is a bit of an anomaly given the torrential rain and the Big O getting subbed out. In that context, Conway got 41 hitouts, Blicavs got 18 and Hawkins chipped in with six. That’s 65 to 35 but the clearances were even at 51 all.
We need to establish a clearance dominance as we did over GWS and that’s not going to happen if we take Geelong’s rucks too lightly. They have Stanley and Neale waiting in the wings and Sam De Koning can take a turn in the ruck.
Another consideration is the absence of Tom Stewart. There’s a case for Stewart being the Cat’s most important player and their defence will be weaker without his intercept marking. Stretching their defence further by “resting” a ruckman in our forward line and making their marking defenders accountable.
Then there’s the idea that, rather than worrying about what the opposition might do well, we just go to work and make them worry about us.
However i'll take issue with 1 point. TDK is no longer a specialist ruck. He can be a genuine forward option now, which was something that had been lacking previously. He was always capable of taking the odd mark and kicking the odd goal, but he is doing that more consistently now and showing the small forwards how to crumb the ball as well. He's become a much more all-rounded player.
Pitto as #1 ruck plays to his strengths. TDK as #2 ruck/forward plays to his strengths.
It might be a bit different when we play on a windy/wet deck in the middle of winter, but in ideal conditions of Marvel, it works.
Yeah, nah; De Koning is a specialist ruck! He attended 60% of the ruck contests against Adelaide but only took part in around one third of the ruck contests against GWS. He doesn't go on to the ball at the end of quarters to give Pitto a break or when the opposition big dog has a spell, he rucks at critical times and wins crucial hitouts (44% to advantage while Pitto managed 36%). How they divide up the ruckwork will depend on conditions, the opposition and the state of the game but we're playing two specialist rucks, one of whom has attributes that make him a potential ruck/forward. De Koning needs to do a lot of work on his forward craft, running patterns and marking if he is going to realise that potential. Importantly, oppositions see that potential and can't afford to leave De Koning without a tall defender when he does "rest" forward. That takes away their ability to double team Harry or Charlie with their third tall defender or ruckman.
The thing is that having De Koning jumping over and/or into the opposition's first ruck makes life easier for Pitto too. Our two gave Briggs a decent going over and I'm sure that Riccardi wished that he was somewhere else when it was his time to spell Briggs.
That was probably De Koning's best game and it was definitely Pitto's best. The challenge is to keep working on the dynamics and getting the best value out of both of them.
I don't really get the criticism of Charlie. He has a role to do and he does it really well. We have a plethora of small and medium forwards who are there to apply defensive pressure in our forward line. Charlie's main challenge is to get separation from his opponents.
Jeremy Cameron is being touted as the best player in the game at the moment and he has laid six tackles to Charlie's five. Somehow I don't think Scott or Vossy will be telling Jeremy and Charlie that they're not working hard enough.
Just before the end of the second quarter, Kemp gathered the loose ball and handpassed to Walsh. Kemp ran on and received the ball back forward of centre. Kemp could have blazed away and hoped for Harry to mark (Charlie was in the backline) but he spotted Ollie Hollands heading inside 50 on the flank. A perfectly weighted kick allowed Hollands to mark and he slotted the goal.
Back in the middle and a perfect tap from De Koning enabled Hewett to break away and pinpoint a pass to Kennedy. Kennedy kicked the ball to a contest and the ball was spoiled away from Curnow (back from being a loose man in defence). De Koning made it to the contest, crumbed the ball and snapped the goal on his wrong foot.
Those two goals got us back into the game. They also highlight our young, developing talent and the value of our established players like Hewett and Kennedy.
It's worth going to the replay to see how well De Koning and Hewett combine for the centre clearance; excellent ruckwork from De Koning and superb positioning, anticipation and execution from Hewett.
Then there's Tom's ability to get from the centre to the next contest, gather the ball and snap truly. Most ruckmen in that situation would play it safe and drop back into the hole or amble forward in case there's a stoppage.
Was a Dandenong support even though I lived in the Northern Suburbs near the Preston ground. They were the good old days, VFL on a Saturday and the VFA on Sundays.
Princes Park on the Saturday for me (when I wasn’t running around in the Ammos), then Coburg City Oval on the Sunday. Coburg vs Preston games were always special regardless of how each team was going.
