It was a tough ask for him to break through as a 199cm ruckman in the shadow of an all-time great in that position who is also the club captain. He had some good days at Casey but was unable to progress and was delisted at the end of the season.

 Date of Birth: 11 March 2004

Height: 199cm

Games CDFC 2025: 19

Goals CDFC 2025:  5

He had some good moments at Casey but, after two years of development in the system, he didn’t seem to be going anywhere. And it was always going to be hard to break into the AFL side given who had first dibs in the ruck and even the main back up ruckman couldn’t get a game.

Wishing Will all the best in the future.

Fair assessment WJ. Will showed development in his strength and fitness plus he was honing his ruck craft. Unfortunately his around the ground game didn't match that.

Edited September 26Sep 26 by Tarax Club

Our selection of young developing ruckmen in the last 10 years or so has been dreadful surely the worst in the AFL.

And our trading for experienced back ups (Schache, Fullerton) has been even worse.

1 hour ago, Cranky Franky said:

Our selection of young developing ruckmen in the last 10 years or so has been dreadful surely the worst in the AFL.

Which is odd considering you'd expect someone like Max Gawn would be pretty handy to learn from.

20 minutes ago, Demon Jack said:

Which is odd considering you'd expect someone like Max Gawn would be pretty handy to learn from.

No doubt Max would be a great mentor for ruck craft, but the Brundy experiment showed that, as great a ruckman and captain that he is, he doesn’t seem prepared to share much ruck time.

Jackson was a notable exception due to his unique physical form and his talents.

From the clips of the 21 GF sidelines, Max was more than happy to shed some ruck time as the bang, bang, bang unfolded. Perhaps because Jackson was the only co-ruck that he truly respected??

The great man does really need to start helping plan his own succession - maybe Heath is the guy, or Kalani??