BigH has consistently been our only effective forward in the last month or so, Charlie is in a rut, and the anti-ruck-duo brigade want BigH out of F50 and rucking when he doesn't really need to do so, even contemplating it momentarily is pure insanity!
Playing devils advocate here... Charles is leading the Coleman. He has kicked a goal in every one of his last 56? Games which is a record a that goes back decades to find a peer I believe. I'm not sure how out of form he is.
However that out of form also coincides with playing 2 rucks. Harry being in the 50 full time during the period you mentioned.
Soeaking of Harry, he only found form when he was able go break the shackles and play up the ground in the ruck.
For transparency, in not saying we should only play 1 ruck this week due to the above. I'm just saying your reasoning is incorrect.
Ollie Hollands got caught a couple of times, and that always looks bad. But is it any worse than a missed kick that goes to an opponent, or out on the full. Of a refusal to chase....or any other kinds of 'mistakes'.
Im pretty sure Vossy would prefer Ollies types of mistakes (taking the game on) than lack of effort mistakes.
I also don't put the blame all on Ollie. Teammates needed to inform him that he needed to kick it sooner ("you're hot" etc)
As for Binns, being good in the VFL doesn't mean you get a game in the AFL. He needs to make sure he's going to be better than someone in the AFL side. I'm not sure who he would be an upgrade on.
Petracca was on and I dont think anyone was going to stop him if he got enough supply and it was one on one stuff where he excels like Dusty did at his peak. We needed to put more pressure on the delivery and get another player across to help out when we could..
In a way it was better we got on top of him early and forced him to play forward. Sure, he dominated forward......but the ball had to get there for that to happen. Had he stayed midfield and started to dominate there, the dees would've had even more inside 50's, probably gone past the tipping point of what we could control.
Needs to learn to get more possessions and be more involved because he seems to be one of the better players at kicking to the advantage of our tall forwards in the AFL team.
Either that or change his name to Fantasia. Possessions and being involved doesn't matter for him.
I thought cunners was stiff to be dropped, and think he should be first recalled. Hopefully he gets through without incident.
[4] Free Kicks: My God, we were crucified. I don't want to go through all of them, but there were so many after half time! Without them, Melbourne wouldn't have got close. But that big tackle on Petracca near siren time: absolute Gold!
It was about 10 minutes into the last quarter and I checked the free kick count. For the second half up to that point it was 9-1 in their favour. I th I bk we then got about 4 in a row pretty quickly, plus that dodgy dangerous tackle one on Kemp that saved us a goal.
Overall I didn't think the umps were that bad, but there was definitely a bad patch which coincided with them coming back.
And Gawn, as expected has had a good game ruck wise, probably a bit quiet around the ground
There was a stat early that showed hitouts. Dees had twice as many as us (roughly) but we had more hitouts to advantage. Reckon pitto has held his own in that department.
Loving pittonets game tonight. He is being a real pest. Got inside gawns head early. Tackling well and getting the dees players to lose focus on the ball and we are benefiting from it.
Of course his goal and general ruck play has been good too.
It's been a long time since we've had a ruck with some genuine aggression, enjoys the hard stuff and loves the verbal.
Reckons he might have a broken finger too.
Hopefully he can keep gawn quiet for 1 more quarter.
Well, at the risk of seeming like a smarty pants, I suspected Hewett or Cerra. Balance. Plus Hewett was a little slow last week and would be a good replacement for a tired (or injured) mid when some of the early heat has gone out of the game.
Going back to what I was saying the other day...if someone is tired or injured, rest them. Keep cunners in the side.
