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Early to discuss this I know, but if Weed is 2 years away from holding down a spot, Pedo near retirement and the rest as Potentials, Does the club need to look at an established 3rd tall for 2018? Do we need to look at the Patton/Wright/Lynch trend of a 200cm athletic forward and move Watts to half forward and Hogan at Ff or Chf with a new recruit? Or does the club need to recruit a specialist sharp shooting 3rd tall and persist with Hogan/Watts until Weid is ready? I know they dont grow on trees but injuries, suspensions and personal events have really left the forward line unsettled and im curious as to whether you see the current injury free forward line as the one going forward ? Or too early to tell/ bigger priorities elsewhere ?

I thought this deserved its own thread as we have all mentioned this in various threads. With Nasher, HG, and BB I think all pointing it out. Our forward line is dysfunctional. Now there are reasons for that - Clark is an enormous loss, Davey helped when the ball was on the ground of late, Green is more than handy when in form, Jurrah has had more issues than the Catholic Church of late, and Watts as a forward is a terrific backman... But... We still need to have less idiots in there ruining things. Rivers, Garland, Howe, and Sylvia can form an effective forward line but they and the peripheral players Magner, Bate, Dunn, and all the mids running through do simple things that want me to pull out my thick hair... 1. Running to the same spot in the forward line. This is as stupid as you can get at this level. The 'watch ball, get ball' ethos of this team would be just charming in its naivete, if it wasn't the reason we are where we are. When you see someone run into the contest of another it means one of two things; they don't know what they are doing, or they don't trust their teammate to win that contest. The player with trust issues then goes in, or up, and the other team - with players in and out of the contest takes the ball away. 2. Part time forwards and mids clogging up space in the forward line. This is self-explanatory. Mids in the forward line are like relatives visiting. They come in screaming for attention, stay too long, and rarely know what to do with it when they get it. Mids in my forward line push hard to get to the feet of the big blokes but are not allowed inside before that and are promptly kicked out after. 3. It is so difficult to teach people to be an effective forward. It is hard... And Rivers is back to earth, Garland is about knee deep in the ground. Magner has been asked to do a job there, and so has Moloney, but if you are useless going forward it makes it very easy to defend you and push forward. This is a reason for 1 and 2 to an extent but Leigh Brown will earn his wage for the next few months - he has got to get us to kick more than 8 goals from 54 Inside 50s. Otherwise we won't get the modest win tally I was hoping for from here on in.