We'll all be watching Rowe closely this week. Last week he was very close to being a liability, whilst Casboult from all reports was very good again in the Reserves.
Graham is also unlucky, but I wouldn't be surprised if he is only considered as a replacement for McLean.
Where are McInnes and Waite?
Graham's problem is pace...good ball winner and you need your in and under types but Cachia, Curnow, Mclean, Carrazzo in the one team is in cricket terms very medium paced. I think Graham will be a good senior player but may have to wait his chance...
re: Rowe...fair points, dont know about a liability...he didnt have the ball enough to be a liability and was more of a passenger. However he has been signed for next season and Casboult would be thinking he is now fighting for his spot on the list unless both Hampson and Warnock get traded out.....
Sam Mitchel is slow
Agree he is slow...I;m not saying there isnt a place for Graham and like I said I am a fan but we have too many who are his pace....if Graham comes in then I think you need to lose one of the players I mentioned. If you look at Freo they have some slow movers onball in Barlow, Crowley etc but balance that out with players like Fyfe, Hill, Mundy who have more pace..I just want us to have a balanced midfield group and not all of the one type.
Nice innings from Clarke and a handy knock from Smith to assist him...3 for 300 is a good start and we need to push onto 500 as this is a good batting strip. Real good chance to win this test IMO if our bowlers can fire up and knock England over for 300 or less..
We'll all be watching Rowe closely this week. Last week he was very close to being a liability, whilst Casboult from all reports was very good again in the Reserves.
Graham is also unlucky, but I wouldn't be surprised if he is only considered as a replacement for McLean.
Where are McInnes and Waite?
Graham's problem is pace...good ball winner and you need your in and under types but Cachia, Curnow, Mclean, Carrazzo in the one team is in cricket terms very medium paced. I think Graham will be a good senior player but may have to wait his chance...
re: Rowe...fair points, dont know about a liability...he didnt have the ball enough to be a liability and was more of a passenger. However he has been signed for next season and Casboult would be thinking he is now fighting for his spot on the list unless both Hampson and Warnock get traded out.....
Khawaja...worst decision I have seen, went to the 3rd umpire who gave it out when clearly the ball missed the bat....should have gone to specsavers. Bat hit the pad, clear gap between ball and bat......NOT OUT...how can anyone give that out. We might as well just pack up and go home.....
Frankston vs. Northern Blues Sunday 4th August Frankston Oval at 2:00PM
Frankston B: Jennings J. Irving Dermott HB: Clark Simpson J. Newman* C: Cass Hockey Buchan HF: Alwan Haretuku C. Irving F: Lloyd Lourey Pongracic R: Gabriel Kitchin Potts Int: Bosward Matheson Purcell A. Forato Giobbi Edwards Delahunty Boland Miller
Northern Blues B:Davies Coulson* Joseph HB:O'Keeffe Bootsma Posar C:Menzel Lambert A. Gianfagna HF: Thomas F. Dale Temay F:Buckley Casboult Wilson R:Warnock T. Bell Graham Int: Lincoln Marcon McDonald Visser Dirago Meese Mitchell Dorman Bransgrove
Duigan is missing: he got a 2 week suspension at the VFL tribunal during the week. I didn't see the incident, so I have no idea how justified it was. Maybe RR can shed some light on it?
Our team this weekend is quite small, especially as Bootsma is CHB and Dale is CHF. I don't know who is going to play on Haratuku yet: he beat Watson last time we played a few weeks ago.
Mitchell is named on the bench. I am not sure what that means, but he had only 1 possession last weekend, a handball.
If Haratuku does well again he may put himself into calculations again for a rookie/senior spot.....only problem I have with him is he can look a bit laconic much like our own Watson.... Essendon dont mind drafting Frankston players with Goosey on the payroll and i reckon they are going to have to look to the VFL for some talent when they lose all their early picks...
Aus 0-58....good flat track, Rodgers the aggressor...lets hope we build on the good start and dont fall to reverse swing later in the day. Some luck has to come our way as the Poms are not that good.
I like the idea of the Hendo-Waite attack. Not sure why you wouldn't give it a go.
Just feel like there's a lot of shuffling deck chairs only to find out what we already know.
Waite Hendo Attack would absolutely work...
Different Beasts, with Waite able to leap and Lead up the ground and Henderson One on one or leading out of the goal square.
Roughead/Franklin/Hale Tippet, Pyke, White Pods, Hawkins, Blicas/Simpson/West Hurley, Crameri, Bellchambers/Ryder,
Waite up the ground away from Henderson might work down forward......Waite isnt the brightest footballer playing and not sure if he can follow any gameplans.
Interesting comment from Mick about cuts to the list and one mans trash etc.....could be a few retreds on the way in..
@laj Jim it's well known that MM likes to build the team around a solid defence and I think he would be a bit concerned about us in this area. He's therefore likely looking at options as to how this could be fixed, albeit maybe just for what's left of this year?
He also went Cloke, Dawes and Brown in his forward line that won a flag.
Not sure Waite would be that solid in defence. Often played well as a sweeping type and played well on certain type of key forwards like Riewoldt but got monstered by the likes of Brown. Then there was the dumb turnovers, which cost us goals. We got Watson time to develop him. Still yet to let anyone down in the seniors. You're not going to build a team around a 30yo injury key defender.
Maybe its a question of if Waite can play with another key forward...I dont remember Fev and Waite playing too many blinders together ....I think Waite could do a Nick Reiwoldt and lead player/s up the ground and give Henderson the space to work in. What I dont want to see is both of them at the top of the goalsquare getting in each othesr road and dragging their defender on top of the other player. One needs to sacrifice for the other IMO and I reckon Waite would do better playing up the ground leaving Hendo one out...
If Lyon plays he would want to bowl 1000% better than he did on the weekend.
yes.
I actually don't understand why we don't send Fawad Ahmed over, especially if the pitch is going to spin. Poms would hate to face a good leggie on a truner.
Smaller grounds in England, he does bowl his share of loose stuff as well, didnt read much about him troubling the South Africans either.....be better in Aus to introduce him IMO.
We are a big chance this test IMO....Poms have got cocky and want to play Taylor, Panesar...the latter I dont rate at all and would be happy to see them lose Bresnan out of the team and have the two spinners play. Taylor made runs for Sussex but is a newbie and was dropped several times in the county game so I dont rate him as yet. I reckon Pietersen will/would be due for runs this test esepcially if we bowl the spinners more....so I hope he is out injured.
Gibbs is a midfielder who made his name as a U18 player in that position, I dont want him as half back flanker but I think his best work is done playing on one of the opposition best mids ie Goddard...Gibbs can both defend and attack and has great value going forward both creating and kicking goals.....and he doesnt rest forward enough.
Playing him half back is a waste, and just a bandaid for other half backs who cant use the ball properly out of defense....we have never seen the best of Gibbs because we have never played him consistently where he does his best work.
Waite and Hendo up front would be an opposition coaches nightmare! Two classy, strong marking athletic forwards both with a touch of brilliance in their own special way. Combined with the amigos I can't see us losing a game if we get the ball up forward enough. Perhaps playing both of them up front requires an adjustment in tactics, more of an offensive focus.
Waite, Henderson and Casboult with the amigos becomes a most difficult combination for ant opposition coach. What will help Caboult/Rowe, with Waite back, is there isn't the pressure on them to kick goals, just focus on taking a few marks and a bit of rucking.
I'll be interested to see if that happens if it works....Gunston, Buddy and Roughead works because the latter two are so good, I'm less convinced about Waite, Henderson and Casboult/Rowe working together....I think it will jam up the forward line and leave less room for the amigos to work in.
We have some players in the best form of their careers- Simmo, Tuohy, Walker, Hendo. Yet we have a midfield that really has been an achilles heal against the good sides this year. Murphy, Judd, Carrazzo- our offensive midfilders have been ordinary. Gibbs was good early, but he is just 'another player' in our side. Gibbs has not even got close to his 3rd season in terms of SC points and is currently averaging 11% lower than his 2009 season. His SC points have slipped consistently and his output is no different to his output last year. His first game of the year has been his best, and has not even got close to those SC points since. ie. he showed us what he can do in that game, but like his whole career, he has not delivered it consistently in 2013.
At Etihad, without Pavlich, we are 4 goals closer, but we really cannot carry the passengers that we had against the Suns. Our bottom 3 players had less SuperCoach points than the Suns worst performer. That in a 7 goal win is pretty poor (The bottom 2, Rowe and Lucas, played all or a significant part of the game). Judd's decline is interesting. Last year, his average SC points dropped by 10% from the year before and this year it has dropped a further 5%. We all know that SC points are not an exact science, but I think this analysis reflects what we are all seeing from him. Three games ago, judd was superb- but in terms of SC points, it was an anomally, 15% higher than his previous best this year and 37% better than his average. To put that into persective, he had four higher scores than that game (saints) last year, 5 better games in 2011 and 7 better games in 2010. An indication that the best of Judd is far behind and we can only really expect one other 'vintage' Judd game this year.
Murphy is an interesting one. He is 20% down on his output last year, and surprisingly, he actually came back better after the Dangerfield bump (based on SC points). However, his last 2 games against GC and St Kilda last year were well down and that form (average SC) has continued into this year. Murphy has only scored SC points that matched his average last year against Essendon, Port Adelaide, Melbourne and Geelong. He has scored his lowest scores of his career this season against the Saints and and Collingwood. Even worse than his first year.
Robbo is another, 15% down on last year. Ed is up about 8%, but is a defensive midfielder. Brock is down almost 20% too. So all in all, our midfielders are down by an average of 10-15%.
What this all means is that we can not rely on Judd anymore and for some reason, our other gun midfielder is struggling. We need Judd to meet his average (100 SC is still a good output), but we clearly need Murphy to up his output by 20% this week. What it also shows, is that we probably need to start introducing more offensive midfielders who are going to rack up some possessions. Bell and Graham have not collected less than 30 possessions in the last 4 games that they have played in the VFL. These are the types of players that we require now. We need our hands on the pill in the middle, not simply limiting the opposition's midfielders.
Bell and/or Graham need to come in this week.
Good post...I'd like the bigger frame of Bell in the team, reckon Graham could wait for an easier game to debut in.
Think it will be won and lost in the midfield like most games between the better teams......Fyfe, Barlow, Mundy and Hill will need negating and I expect Judd wont get much of the footy if his old mate Crowley picks him up. Sandilands is also back which means Kruezer will have to be at his best and need to run the giant around. The Freo giant usually posts up at FF during some stage in the game when they play us and we need to make sure we have the right mix of talls to man him up. Ross Lyon will close the game and make it a slog fest and I dont expect to see any pretty footy and I reckon Mick will do the same and it may get down to who gets their matchups right.
Murphy and Gibbs need to stand up and I expect the former to be also heavily tagged and bullied....
If it was a Freo home game then I would have said the Dockers but at Etihad I think we can get home if Mick gets his planning right....
I would consider Bell but not Graham...Freo have big mids and we need the extra size of Bell to combat them.
Lucas has to play...was poor vs GC but wont learn anything from that by being sent back to the twos, his previous from has been ok and I want to see him do will this week and show some character...good players usually play well after a poor game and its a good test for him.
Not much love for Sam Rowe but like I said we have three wins from three with him in the team and the Kruezer/Rowe combo has been better than other ones....
re: Carrazzo...sticking with him too, sure he stuffed up a few kicks and I was annoyed like others but he has the runs on the board and most of us including me were prepared to hang and bury Kade Simpson early in the year but he now one of our best each week. Freo have some big mids and we need Carrots where the action is and I thought his game after half time wasnt too bad....
re: Waite.......when he comes back Henderson wont be as effective as Waite will draw more of the ball and probably wont convert as well...
