I don't think I heaped even a little bit of gushing praise on Blease, but I find it astounding that in a 10 goal loss, where our senior players were mostly rubbish, we choose to talk about Blease, who played for 1.5 quarters.

I'm not advocating that we always blindly support new players, but FFS I am sick and tired of reading crap about young players. Watts is shite, Strauss is soft, Scully can't kick etc etc... It's the same rubbish we heard about Frawley (terrible defender), Garland (soft and weak), and the list goes on. Just let these kids develop, don't expect them to be perfect from the first moment they step on the ground, accept that they'll take short steps, not chase hard enough, fluff some kicks. It happens, it happens to 10 year players too.

Let's stop focusing on stupid issues and worry about what is actually important.

It's far more upsetting that Green, our captain, has been MIA practically all year. What direction and leadership is a kid like Blease getting when his captain is not giving a yelp?

The thread title is 'Sam Blease'

What did you expect?

I don't think I heaped even a little bit of gushing praise on Blease, but I find it astounding that in a 10 goal loss, where our senior players were mostly rubbish, we choose to talk about Blease, who played for 1.5 quarters.

In a thread about Sam, I think I'm entitled to voice an opinion of his game. I agree that there were other people who had far worse games, but I will stand by my comments on his play.

I'm not advocating that we always blindly support new players, but FFS I am sick and tired of reading crap about young players. Watts is shite, Strauss is soft, Scully can't kick etc etc... It's the same rubbish we heard about Frawley (terrible defender), Garland (soft and weak), and the list goes on. Just let these kids develop, don't expect them to be perfect from the first moment they step on the ground, accept that they'll take short steps, not chase hard enough, fluff some kicks. It happens, it happens to 10 year players too.

Let's stop focusing on stupid issues and worry about what is actually important.

I'm pretty sure I've never taken part in the attacks on Watts, Frawley and Garland. In fact, I've been fairly consistent in saying that Watts will be worth the wait. I did say last year that Strauss was soft, because he was. I have been saying this year that he's improved his contest amazingly and is now looking like an AFL player. As for Scully's kicking, it is reliable and reasonably accurate, but his field kicking is too high, giving it more hang time than it needs and allowing opponents to reach the contest. If he wants to be an elite kick at AFL level he will need to re-work his kicking action to fly lower and reach his targets more quickly.

Feel free to dispute any of these points, or we could get back to chatting about Sam and his game on the weekend.

Ralph has said nothing that isn't true, anyone that has watched him closely in the VFL this year will agree that this isn't an isolated incident about workrate. I don't think anyone is saying he can't make it but he needs to improve his defensive side to his game significantly if he wants to keep his spot in the senior team.

Also his form improvement at Casey has coincided with a move from defense to the midfield and straight away his output went up and he has been averaging around 30 possies per game for the last couple of months. He played in defense on Friday night and looked like he did earlier in the year for Casey playing in defense where he was unimpressive.

I love this first post in this thread.

Watts, Blease and Strauss. That draft is paying off massively

With this signature....