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Robert Heatley Stand / Re: AFL EF#1 2026 Post Game Prognostications Carlton vs Geelong
Last post by Thryleon -
Thats the point, the past....not now.
I think you've misread something somewhere.
LP was stating fans were sayong we were top heavy in the past....when we had lemmey etc.
You were the only one i ever heard suggesting anything of the sort.
In short.....LP is talking BS again.
Just like the afl screwed up by playing the game on a friday night.....just a mere 96k there for a sellout crowd.
Again, I don’t believe that I ever suggested that we were top heavy. I did point out that our ratio of talls to smalls in 2025 was similar to most other clubs.
For the record, I’m a two ruckmen kind of guy … provided that the two ruckmen can both have an impact when they’re not rucking.
This debate has waged in many threads but ill summarise as follows from my memory:
We havent recruited enough talls often enough was one perspective along with too many smalls.
The opposing perspective was that we have recruited plenty of each type but all of them have shortfalls at AFL level, which results in we need more of everything.
Sometimes the argument was then paraphrased into assuming that this meant we had enough, but the reality (according to me) is, that we were gambling on our good players staying fit, because they were all guns, and then trying to fill the gaps between them. This rehash and paraphrasing is why it was a never ending debate, because as we see in this topic, the opposing viewpoint was dismissed because it was transformed into a different argument about who was more right, rather than what was more right.
Which was the most pressing need? Turns out, that both was correct on this years evidence. Im not sure we have missed the talls, but getting in Ainsworth, Florent, Hayward, Evans, Jagga and co was tantamount to turning things around because we got halfway through a list build, sacked the list manager, sacked the coach because we needed to win, and ended up with a mish mash of aging players that couldnt help us take the next step any longer and failed to fill the gaps.
I think thats about as close as it gets to summarising. The irony is not lost on me, that last season, we delisted Harry Lemmy to go with the departing JSOS, TDK and Curnow situation, and still managed to cover those absences with a delisted free agent in Wade Derkson, a draftee in Harry Dean, and what was already here, and this was the doomsday scenario of losing Weitering for an elongated period of time. Still, we do need more quality talls as on history we got a bit lucky with Mckay and Pittonet being robust, and we could use some more grunt through the running players. With Walker coming in, and hopefully HOF returning, that means we need a more project ruck forward through the draft again and as we saw on the weekend another medium swing type because Mcgovern, Haynes and Newman arent getting any younger.
