Ed's is experienced, remains focussed, won't surrender no matter how bad things get, he is still an A-Grade stopper.
Ed is a great stopper and seems like a great bloke, but when he kicks the footy it’s only by chance that the ball will find its way to a teammate. I don’t think we can be playing Ed Curnow and expect to push deep into the finals.
As we did with Casboult we need to move forward and inject some talent and speed into the line up.
I’d love to give Dow a go and I’m not convinced that he can’t play the role that either Owies or Martin play equally well (I’d argue probably better). Dow can spend time as a high half forward and can also attend some centre bounces.
As others have said, Corey Durdin for Owies is relatively clear.
I’d go with Pittonet (subject to fitness), Durdin and Dow IN and Silvagni, Owies and Martin OUT. Fisher on notice that he will be replaced by Honey if his output doesn’t improve.
Way too predictable and our kick-in tactic is beyond a joke.
Key points (1) Lob & Owies are absolutely headless & we can’t rely on these guys (2) Question marks on Acres and not sure he’s an upgrade on Cottrell at all (3) Silvagni, McGovern, Martin and Fisher have the talent but must do more (4) lack of pace and explosive players remains an issue - any of Honey, Dow, Durdin & Cunningham will help (5) Holland and Cowan ok, will be players in time (6) Ed C simply can’t kick - must handball at all options
In the cold hard light of day when the dust settles, trying going back to preseason, or 12 months ago and rate our top 25 players out of 10 and redo it now. Docherty and Curnow were pure speculation, nothing more, Cottrell was not in anyone's top 22, O'Brien was nowhere, Young was 'break glass in emergency', Marchbank was miles away, Cripps was 'gone'...... We have shown significant improvement, players have a red hot crack and our fans just love to go to the football these days! Cookie, Vossy, Crippa we are looking in anticipation already!!
Great post and I’d go further by saying that Hewitt, Saad, Durdin, Motlop and TDK all exceeded my limited expectations this year.
We do however need to urgently address our lack of durability - whilst Weitering was unlucky this year, we simply can’t continue to carry all of Marchbank, Williams, Martin, McGovern, Cunningham & Honey if they can’t get their bodies right. We may need to seriously consider trading out the injury prone for more durability, whilst also having a thorough look at Andrew Russell’s programme.
Can’t believe anybody could be contemplating dropping Stocker to accommodate Williams who hasn’t done a thing since he arrived at Ikon. Don’t think Voss will be that silly and he’ll need to earn the right to rejoin the team through the VFL.
Stocker was excellent against the Dees and provides some much needed hardness to our side.
This is our chance to play an early elimination final. Will have played 6 of the teams in the top 8 in the last 10 matches and likely to have no wins to any of those games. My bad. One against Fremantle. Will continue to be difficult without Kennedy and Hewitt.
Whilst we’ve had a couple of important players out, the bigger issue has been that over the past month or so approx a third of the team has been short of a run as we’ve had so many players returning from injury (eg Weitering, McGovern, honey, Marchbank, Martin, Pittonet, Setterfield).
Each week that goes by the same players are getting AFL match conditioned and it’s only a matter of time before we hit top form. Hoping like hell it’s against the pies.
Cant wait for this this game, crowd will be at fever pitch!
Docherty’s performance on the ball was excellent, whilst Stocker’s physicality through the night was important. I also thought all of Setterfield, Walsh, Cripps, Young, Weitering, McKay, Saad & Marchbank battled well.
Up forward, Martin, who I haven’t really been a fan of this year, was brilliant at key moments and could have been a match winner. Durdin was also back to his early year form and great to watch.
On the downside (1) Newnes simply isn’t up it (2) LOB needs to develop his body to break/stage up in tackles (3) Pittonet, whilst physical, is a very limited/average footballer (4) Owies good is offset by poor decisions and like Newnes he is often too slow to release the ball (5) Silvagni’s kicking for goal has to improve and has been costly
The next man up mantra will be full tested this week, with all of Dow, McGovern, Marchbank, Setterfield, Newnes, Martin and to a lesser extent Weitering having minimal AFL minutes over the last month or so.
That’s roughly a third of the team and given the game is Bris and their squad looks strong, if we were to somehow win this game it will be one of our clubs finest victories of all time.
Hoping for the best, but planning for the worst! Very very tough ask imo.
Honey is most definitely an asset for our side - he’s still picking up the tempo of AFL having missed most of the year through injury. He could easily be our most dangerous small forward cone finals time and nobody (apart from perhaps Saad) comes close to his closing speed. It seems that the match committee agrees.
We need everything going our way to win this game, and it appears we are behind before a ball is even bounced!
Nathan Williamson (aka Umpire #22) will be livid with us after we beat his mob last week on their home deck.....as if he needed more of a reason to screw us.
I thought I was the only one who had noticed that umpire 22 rarely paid frees to Carlton - he’s definitely got it in for the blues
