You Be The Judge

[Slartibartfast 17,297]

Although I think the list changes have been a positive move for the Club, we will be relying on many young and inexperienced players to front up in our best 22.

I wondered how long it would be until someone picked up on this point. In my post I said:-

"We clearly don’t have the experienced depth this year that we’ve had other years. A similar run of injuries this year will be even more disastrous than last year."

I'm not predicting injuries Rogue although I'd not be surprised to see them. We have a lot of injury prone players like Sylvia, Moloney, Mclean and Whelan with Bartram and Rivers still to join full training.

I believe our greatest exposure this year is our lack of experienced depth. Gone are Brown, Ward, Godders, Bizzell, TJ, Ferguson and Pickett. Whilst I agree with the cull we had and the necessity to refresh our list these were the players who we would turn to (TJ aside) when injuries hit. They were, in the main, not first picked players but when brought into the team could hold their own.

These guys have been replaced with unproven youth. MFC4Life's post on our best 22 shows our lack of depth. I reckon we have about 24 players or thereabouts that I feel confident can play competitive AFL footy today. The rest I reckon have yet to show that or just aren't up to it.

We desperately need players like Dunn and Newton to fully establish themselves. We need Buckley, Bode and Johnson C to take the next step. We also need a first year player to be competitive at AFL level in the way Petterd was last year and Bartram was the year before.

If we have a run of injuries like last year we'll be in real trouble. Even a few injuries could seriously derail us. But an injury free season that Geelong enjoyed last year and Sydney for a few years would see us comfortably in the 8.

Injuries are a critical component of any teams success but for us this year they will have an even greater say.

[mo64 5,874]

I'm not predicting injuries Rogue although I'd not be surprised to see them. We have a lot of injury prone players like Sylvia, Moloney, Mclean and Whelan with Bartram and Rivers still to join full training.

I believe our greatest exposure this year is our lack of experienced depth. Gone are Brown, Ward, Godders, Bizzell, TJ, Ferguson and Pickett. Whilst I agree with the cull we had and the necessity to refresh our list these were the players who we would turn to (TJ aside) when injuries hit. They were, in the main, not first picked players but when brought into the team could hold their own.

Fan, whilst we had experienced depth last year, we had an over abundance of tall defenders (Bizzell, Ferguson, Holland, Warnock, Wheatley and Frawley), yet none of these could cover for an injured Rivers, or an out of form Carroll.

When our midfielders were injured, we only had low-profile kids in Bode, CJ and Buckley as depth, and Godfrey who was not up to it.

What i'm saying is that our list last year was imbalanced. We've gone some way to addressing that with our draftees, but why Warnock has been retained is beyond me.

[Luck Lucy 0]

I believe our greatest exposure this year is our lack of experienced depth. Gone are Brown, Ward, Godders, Bizzell, TJ, Ferguson and Pickett.

The problem was that we experienced a far worse than average year with injuries and this hit us hard as it would most clubs. Leaving out TJ, you would not have ordinarliy expected to be playing so many of the above players (and a couple of others who are still on the list) who wear mainly "depth" players or at the end of their playing careers all at once. You might be able to carry one or two players whose skills are not up to scratch but when up to half your team is made up of such players you're in trouble. We need to be able to control our injuries and look after the injury prone players and hope for some better luck this year. And, we need a few of the younger players to improve so that when called upon to play the can handle the situation.

[Hannabal 4]

why Warnock has been retained is beyond me.

As a list manager, CAC made a good recruiter. Warnock is contracted in 2008.