Re: Best 22 so far
Reply #119 –
No use being quick if you cant get the ball, Tom Mitchell isnt overated at all IMO, he won a brownlow and dumb coaches like Bolton let him run around on his own and get 45 possies a game and 3 brownlow votes. No 1 skill in football is to be able to win the ball, you need to be able to win contested footy on a consistent basis, if you dont have enough of those contested players you can have all the pace you like but you wont win games.
eg Essendon are quick and play pretty outside running football and have played that style for years but are carp.....we saw the Bulldogs come from nowhere to win a flag by forcing contests/gang tackling and making the game ugly.
The point is the successful teams have an appropriate balance that they can make use of accordingly, imbalance being the aspect I raised about the earlier team.
FWIW, I think Tom is great at winning the football but his disposal is not damaging like a Dusty or Shuey, some rounds Tom struggled to hit the side of a barn leaving more than 1/2 his efforts wasted!
But I'm not big on the Brownlow as a measure, look at Dangerfield, we know know an effective disposal is anything that goes 50m even if it goes straight to an opponent which is the majority of his disposals go to nobody or to the opposition! Similar to Tom Mitchell!
We aren't free of players like this, as good as he is in my opinion Cripps biggest issue is poor disposal efficiency.