rpfc

And the thing to add is that the back up ruck role is ‘a forward first’ and I think the FD has finally conceded that.

I thought he was fine, he’s just not as good a forward than Brown - which is fine - he’s a kid. I just would want your no 1 tall in the forward line getting to good spots which I felt BBB did in the first and the last. JVR and Grundy I don’t feel can learn that in 6 weeks… TMac a wildcard at this point.

Spargo is a very smart player but jeez he can frustrate when he is screaming for the ball and ignores hands so he can then try to bite off a kick or a shot that he literally is incapable of kicking. He needs to tighten up his decision making around his limitations. I would bring in Chandler.

To me, it is JVR or Grundy if Brown’s knee holds up

Yes, he needs to be able to perform at 85% of that playing forward for 40 mins a game.

Good point. And not to get to into the weeds with what Macca and DS were arguing about but we don’t use the corridor much with run because we bring all our forwards up the ground, we don’t have many ‘stay home’ forwards like the Pies do. So the ground is smaller and more compact which doesn’t help moving the ball into the middle but also once we run into there quickly, you have no one to kick to. I saw in the last that we made the ground bigger and having Melksham lead from deeper made that more pronounced.

The last quarter ball movement was inspired and what we need to encourage. Jake M was huge defensively and then was huge when we needed to compete. Gawn was amazing and as much as he thinks he ‘wants to make it work’ - this performance will stick with MC… Goodwin and co. are infuriatingly stubborn but they have done a number of things to get us out of our slumber; CP5 forward, Grundy out to allow Gawn to recover form, Rivers into the middle with a licence to kill or be killed through the middle, etc With Brown back and Petracca and Melksham we look better IF we move it quickly. Now spend the next 6 weeks doing that and we are back in business.

Of course not, mate. Like I care about that. We should have known that Gawn would struggle to become a forward and that this was a gamble that would fail - we should have an extra $650k for a forward this October but we don’t. We didn’t even really get Gawn to play forward properly and we barely gave this a go and we are off it . That is why I am banging on about this.

Blokes get dropped. However, as jaded says, $650k worth of ruckman being told he is not $200k worth of forward is querysome.

I am a ‘beauty of grey’ person, dc. But we have to hold ourselves to account on some things.

Yes it does. But it is completely foreseeable sense to make before we pulled out the irresistible PowerPoint last year.

Look I won’t lie; my present self and my past self have a pretty strained relationship. Wherever I enter a room he immediately leaves, and it’s probably best that way.

Why don’t you say this before the trade then? Oh wait… Apologies, you prescient handsome devil.

If it’s the same thing, why are some spending so much time trying to argue one isn’t the other.

For?

The death ride went off the rails?? If we don’t finish top 4 it’s on us. Forget about what other teams do and don’t do. So I death ride for all time! Or until end of august Whichever comes first

Yes because Alan Richardson said he was to go back and learn forward craft at Casey in the VFL. I wonder if anyone has the stats on how many 29 year old, famously poor forward players, have learned to be better forwards in the VFL?

Freo now 4th last on the live ladder. Who on here had them as a sleeping giant after we lost to them? And was like ‘they won’t be worried about the 70 point loss to GWS?’ They are soon to be 7 and 10 unless they pull off their best H&A victory ever Sat arvo.

Does put pay to the ‘what forward line problem?’ people… We’re doing so well we have abandoned our dual ruck strategy (that the FD was banging on about last October) for at least a month* to accomodate a change to our forward setup. *I guess he is at Casey however long it takes to learn forward craft…

Bumping because it was what I thought it was. They brought in a ruck knowing one of them had to be more forward than the other - the bloke who was earmarked to do it saw his form diminish as he struggled to embrace that new role - now the ruck who Champion Data had in the AA team a few weeks back is ‘learning to play forward’ in the VFL. A perfectly laughable situation that was wholly foreseeable tbh.

It smells a bit worse than what you are saying. They are telling a 29 year old ruck we just recruited, who has famously been a poor forward player, to learn forward craft in the VFL… (record scratch)

Yes, it’s a month on the calendar inviting more aerobic work to be done. It’s over and now we can stop talking about it.

Yeah sure. If they are actually being ‘rested’ and not, you know, omitted like Brodie Grundy just was

I think the term ‘managed’ needs a rest first, OD

I don’t want to relitigate the decision to bring in Grundy. It’s done, let’s get the most out of it. To me, it’s Gawn fwd 60% of the time with him leading at the footy in predictable lanes. I don’t think we have committed to that as yet. That’s essentially what I am saying. One can argue that he should be a behind the footy. That’s fine. But I don’t think our defence needs it and I don’t think our ball movement can survive being that tall.