16 hours ago, adonski said:

His 2025 highlights shows off his goal sense, just needed to start getting more of the pill (and the handy removal of the sub rule too)

Agreed. For me, he never quite looked like a hopeless frindge player. You could see the potential there. Was somewhat cruelled by the sub rule. It does somewhat surprise me that if you have a player who's strength is endurance that you'd make them a sub and limit their ability to leverage that strength for the team.

I'm guessing that when he is on the ground, he's always on the move and perhaps that's how he utilises that endurance to tank his opponent, because I did note, that at least in our first game against the Saints, he still only had something like 60% time on field (perhaps that's changing with his improved performances).

I don't think he's quite as defensive ANB. More of an offensive link player and/or that's Goodwin compared to King. It's a little hard to know if it's cause or effect.

17 minutes ago, binman said:

According to this 2023 article, at the 2020 draft combine Sharp's 2km time trial time was 5:28 seconds - 20 secoinds faster than the next best result (it's not clear if that means all time or in the 2020 combine).

That's serious time for 17 year old.

Yeah, he is an endurance beast... but has a good burst of pace. He is probably in the first 4 or 5 picked each week in King's game-plan.

The ANB role was similar to what Sharp is doing but the crucial difference is what ANB did for Petracca. Essentially, CP5 would go from a stoppage and flow forward and leave ANB to take his defensive duties on the mid that was his opponent.

From what I can see, all the Half Forwards push up the ground to make an outnumber at the stoppage or ‘around’ the stoppage/contest, especially defensive side so that when we get a turnover or when we win the ball in contest - we have to use hands in close to allow Sharp, Chandler, Latrelle, the mids/wings (whoever is not winning and sharing the footy) to get up the ground to provide a target by hand or foot.

So the ‘ethos of ANB’ is there with the hard running from defensive stoppage but it’s more of a determined counter attack set up than ANB sticking to Petracca’s opponent.

Oh and @binman - you were talking about why we had less forward handball against GC - that’s because we were setup to negate their forward handball so couldn’t do both - we opted to have extra players behind stoppage and deal with trying to use hands sideways to find the right time to kick over their HB line.

He’s a smart cookie Steven King, I love the way he makes changes throughout the game, doesn’t hesitate and utilises our players strengths without worrying about hurt feelings, knowing they are all onboard the Dee Train.

I’m 1000% out, can’t believe you guys tried to get me back in.

Next step for Sharp is to smarten up his inside 50 kicks. Often chooses the wrong option

Edited 12 hours ago12 hr by Nascent