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92
Robert Heatley Stand / Re: AFL Rd 24 2026 Post Game Prognostications Carlton vs Fremantle at Marvel
Last post by Lods -
Saad is a shadow of his best.

Anyone doubting the worth of Florent should probably grab a look at him working on a specific drill with Billy Wilson in the pre-season.
He was instructing and getting him to repeat it over and over.
Billy was taking it all on board.
I wouldn't be surprised if Florent wasn't a big contributor to Wilson's development.
That's the value of picking up an experienced player like Florent. They can be another assistant with their knowledge an experience.
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Robert Heatley Stand / Re: AFL Rd 24 2026 Post Game Prognostications Carlton vs Fremantle at Marvel
Last post by LP -
Quote from: shawny – on

Saad is so predictable and when his ball use dropped off he become a liability.
He is predictable, but that can work both ways, against him from a opposition perspective and for him from the perspective of our forwards.

I'd assert that when he is / was fit, agile and confident his ball use was efficient enough that any benefit to the opposition of being predictable was diminished. Knowing what he is going to do but not stopping it is embarrassing. He could run and spread, create space, just as Daicos, Pendles, Butters and now Smith can run, spread and create space. Either through injury or age he's lost a bit, we saw a VFL game a couple of weeks back that was him at his best, but it's few and far between now.

If had one criticism, it was too many long bombs, they are good to buy the defense time to setup, but not much use for scoring. It's like the soccer goalkeeper who always launches the pill to the other end of the ground, it almost never results in a score, it's a defensive move not an attacking move.
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Robert Heatley Stand / Re: AFL Rd 24 2026 Post Game Prognostications Carlton vs Fremantle at Marvel
Last post by shawny -
Quote from: RiverRat – on
Quote from: Thryleon – on
Florent is the sort of player who has many facets to his game, and his contribution is imho invaluable around the back of stoppage.  Watch he polices the back of it, and often is the second posession at the source using it well.

Charleson might be good enough, but there is a leadership, experience and multi faceted component to his play. 

A lot of his knockers have egg on their face. There was no shame not being able to get a gig at sydney. They'd love to him right now.
Florent serves a similar role to how Saad used to carry the ball through the lines, but he is much more poised because he does not always run to the left to set up a left foot kick, which cuts down the attacking options, plus he is a more reliable kick and uses effective hand passes to bring teammates along for the ride.


absolutely spot on. 

Saad is so predictable and when his ball use dropped off he become a liability.

The changes made from senior coach to list changes revolved around keeping possession and you can only execute that plan if you have decent ball users and decision makers and players like Saad, ollie hollands cant do it regularly enough and wont be there come seasons end. 



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Robert Heatley Stand / Re: AFL Rd 24 2026 Post Game Prognostications Carlton vs Fremantle at Marvel
Last post by RiverRat -
Quote from: Thryleon – on
Florent is the sort of player who has many facets to his game, and his contribution is imho invaluable around the back of stoppage.  Watch he polices the back of it, and often is the second posession at the source using it well.

Charleson might be good enough, but there is a leadership, experience and multi faceted component to his play. 

A lot of his knockers have egg on their face. There was no shame not being able to get a gig at sydney. They'd love to him right now.
Florent serves a similar role to how Saad used to carry the ball through the lines, but he is much more poised because he does not always run to the left to set up a left foot kick, which cuts down the attacking options, plus he is a more reliable kick and uses effective hand passes to bring teammates along for the ride.
97
Robert Heatley Stand / Re: AFL Rd 24 2026 Post Game Prognostications Carlton vs Fremantle at Marvel
Last post by DJC -
Quote from: crashlander – on
[1] In the best players, Freo named Jackson as their best. Are they smoking some illegal over there? Pitto had 17 possessions, compared to Jackson's 14. Pitto had 7 clearances to Jackson's 4. Pitto had much more effect on the game than Jackson did: thanks to Pitto, our mids had huge days! Did these idiots watch the game? It doesn't look like it.

The way I see it is that Jackson was among Freo's best five or six players but not their best by some margin.  Pitto played very well, had the better of Jackson and Cox, and had a great influence on the game, but I couldn't squeeze him into my best seven or eight players. I think that shows how much better we were on the day.
98
The Sports Desk / Re: God help me - the Cricket thread
Last post by LP -
Quote from: Professer E – on
Sorry but you're talking rubbish. The Oakley glasses are specifically designed for cricket and they have an aspheric lens to prevent distortion.
See the word "lens", any lens is functional only on a specific optical axis, curved sunglasses are not a field lens and even a field lens has a specific functional focal length.

In laser optics "windows" are the term used for flat optics, optics that do not impart any refraction or diffraction at a certain bandwidth, but the key term is "flat" and they must be very flat! If they are slightly wedge shaped or slightly curved they distort the image, and that is a separate issue to being aspherical. The normal unit is angstrom, which is a measure of flatness relative to a wavelength of light, because any optical measurement is wavelength dependant.

As for being aspheric, that is the term used to describe optics minimising optical aberrations, common folk read aberration and think fuzzy distorted, an aspherical lens tries to bring all the colours of the spectrum to the same focal length. A perfect optic would be diffraction limited. The non-technical explanation is the amount of refraction from the lens is similar for a wide range of colours, refraction is that thing that means the fish isn't where you think it is! If a lens isn't aspheric the fish looks blurry, but it's still not where you think it is. You get a clear sharp image, like those fancy fishing googles, but it doesn't mean the image isn't refracted, so you see a sharp image but it doesn't mean the fish you see is really in that position. Whether it's water, air or the plastic of the lens causing the distortion makes no difference, refraction is still present, the lens can't magically remove the effects of the water.

btw., Your next argue will be that the lens is only thin, like the thickness of the water makes a difference, as opposed to the relative positions of the object and observer relative to the focal plane. The medium doing the refraction could be a plane 1 atom thick, and it would have the same effect.

The best lens money can buy with a flat field typically have a flat field measured in just a few degrees, the ones industry make use daily typically start at about $4500 and go up from there, for interferometry that requires a flat reference field, they start at $7500 and go up from there. They only have functional apertures measured in a few millimetres(or a few degrees either side of the prime axis). $450 isn't going to cut it!

For those fancy glasses to be accurate you have to turn your whole head so that you are looking through the same aperture of the lens, if you don't, if you move your eyes instead, the observed object will be move across the field of view non-linear fashion, not much but enough to cause what you saw Webster do yesterday. My suggestion is once you've chosen a type of lens stick with it, train with it, because it affects how you see the world!
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Robert Heatley Stand / Re: AFL Rd 24 2026 Post Game Prognostications Carlton vs Fremantle at Marvel
Last post by kruddler -
Quote from: tex – on
A few years ago we had:
Lachie Fogarty
Jack Martin
Jesse Motlop
Cotrell
Owies

As our small forwards

Now we have
Hayward
Byrne
Evans
Ainsworth

So much more fight in our new group. Tbh Motlop will be flat out in the reserves next year.

Motlop is hard done by.

He got starved up forward, but when he got time in the middle he lifted his game.
Similar to Ainsworth, Evans and Hayward who all get time up around the middle.

Jack Martin has kicked more goals for the cats this year than he ever did with us. 22 from 17 games thus far. If we knew how to use him (and not break him) he'd still be worthy of a gig.

Fogarty was 'Mr Pressure', that i didn't rate because he made no impact on the scoreboard. Now we have others who have pressure AND can make an impact on the scoreboard, no surprises there.

Owies managed 33 goals for us in his final season and should not be undervalued either.

Cottrell is still playing, just more up the ground.

Hayward is the big difference maker from the changes.....and we all knew that beforehand.

I'd take the new group over the old group, but i don't think its as dominant as people make out.
If we had Charlie there this year, the current group wouldn't look 'as good' because Charlie would get all the focus.

There was many an argument about 'replacing charlie' in the off-season. Goal wise, you will always get more from others to help cover the loss somewhat, my main issue was having a genuine target who could be your focal point.
Have a look at how the VFL team went on the weekend and our entries inside 50 went to the opposition more than us because we tried to play Moir as a key forward simply because of lack of other options.

Its similar to when Fev left.
We 'replaced him' with small forwards who got more goals as a result.
In the semi final when we went deep to the goal square in an attempt to win the game.....we had Walker (who deserved a free!) as our target. If we had Fev there (or a genuine KPF) then we win that game and are off to the prelim.
Its not just about replacing goals of an outgoing coleman medalist, its about replacing a team structure.

Our boys have picked up the slack, but are we a more dangerous forward line? Not sure about that.