What are we round 2 vfl. Not much time for them to "kill IT". Considering their standard is so hard to watch, NO ONE IS REALLY GOING TO STAND OUT.
The standard in the VFL isn’t that great imo.
You can put it down to several things but basically most teams have a few fringe afl players a couple of older guys who are fading and lots of kids. Gone are the hard bodied journeymen that could really play and made players earn their kicks. If you don’t believe me then how are port Melbourne so successful without any AFL listed players and young guys that recruiters have passed over. Mature guys who can play usually take the money on offer at local clubs rather than play as top ups making way for listed kids. There is provision for these guys to play as top ups, their listed by VFL clubs but nominate and play at local clubs. Generally they don’t get used a lot as that would mean young listed guys have to sit it out.
When Billings, Sinclair and lonie etc have gone back they have Killed it racking up huge possession counts, AFL standard players should stand out at that level. So after what was it 5 practice games and the first round in the books if players have just been ok then if they aren’t developing youngsters or returning from injury then they probably aren’t going to make it.
Dunstan will get 30 plus with ease imo, he’s too good for that level and not quite a lock at AFL.
As if a player would say the truth anyway.
Not feeling very confident about this one. Our team is on average 2 years younger than the Hawks, and 40 games less experienced. That's a massive discrepancy - equal biggest of any game this round, similar to West Coast vs Freo. We have 17 players under 100 games, they have 10. We have 2 players over 150, they have 9.
That's a big fraction of the side who have to improve their form by a lot for us to be seriously competitive. Would love that to happen but I'm not confident.
Interesting to read this again, I would really like to see long used as more than just a small forward.
Breust, Puopolo and Wingard v Webster, Savage and McKenzie.
I'm worried one of those three will get of chain and none of Webster, Savage or McKenzie are attacking enough to make the Hawks worry about them defensively.
my views on the players you mentioned.
Ross - has been one of our best players over the past 3 or so years , consistant every game , why do people still have question marks over him ?
Parker - shows a lot of potential but is still learning what it takes to play in the AFL , imagine he will be a bit inconsistant this year.
Acres - i agree with you on him.
Wilkie and Battle - they are inexperienced at AFL level for sure but they have been great so far . The only way to get experience is to get games. At the start of the year neither probably expected to be playing now . Injuries to Austin , Carlisle , Robbo and Claravino have ment that Battle has had to be played at chb , and Wilkie has been one of our best everygame so far.
Clark - young and raw but learning the game , like Coffield the only way they will get better is to be played.
Kent - needs time to get used to the playing group around him , hasnt shown much so far but the talent is there , hopefully will start to make an impact soon.
Dunstan out replaced by a forward mean midfield time for acres ?
Or rolling some players like Gresham, Parker and Long through. Hawks don't have a particularly big midfield so I think we can go in a bit smaller.
Can’t call it at this stage it’s way too early, plus wasn’t there a lot of talk early about how good he had been for the team at training.
I think the "good at training" is footy club code for " **** we can't get this guy on the park even at training". So far he's been a fail, he's got another 4 years to get right though.
Against GC he was definitely getting out of the forward 50 at times but couldn't see how they were using him when he did go out. Possibly playing as a high forward flank and running in like an extra wing.
They only played one VFL game but have play about 5 or more preseason games , so a lot of guys have had a chance to show there wares.
I'm really keen to see Marsh come good because I really feel the guy could be a game changer for us.
Having a mobile big guy would be great to have in the team - imagine having a Gilbert who is faster with a good kick.
We do have Clavarino and King but they really are another season away.
I meant we are in round two. Not all Afl listed played or trained with Vfl team preseason.
Training was good again today.
Max King getting much more involved, I'd say before mid-year he'll have played VFL.
Pretty disappointing in the club to not select Stuv again this weekend, especially after Richo was banging on about him being selected last Friday before the Freo game (He said that Stuv would miss v Freo but straight back in the week after). Stuvvy trained fully today.
Hanners is training. Modified program. The club has tried to get him going at full pelt but his body has broken down twice before, so they are getting him back to a reasonable level again and slowly increasing his workload so he can sustain it for the rest of the year. Still a while away. I was told he won't play until the second half of the year. Pretty poor choice of words by Richo to say they are rebuilding him. To put it simply, Hanners is probably at around 75% at the moment. They want him obviously at 100% so slowly building him towards that.
There was a bit of match-sim stuff as usual. A lot of work done on entry. Only probably saw 1 or 2 bombs into F50 from the 30 minutes they did it.
No real concerns to report. Coffield looked good but I think the reason now that he is missing from the seniors is he needs to just understand the way we want to play a bit better. There were a few times he didn't take the right option and the coaches called him out on it. He'll learn though no issues there.
Longer trained, looked good! But I think Marshall has probably gone past him to be honest. If Ro continues his good form I can't see how Longer breaks into the side.
Long, Parker, Lonie looked good in the forward drills. They all hunt the ball carrier so incredibly well - exciting to watch.
I think that's it. Plenty of confidence about the group. They reviewed the game earlier in the week and it pretty much came down to missed shots. All indicators pointed to a win, so whilst it's tough to lose, it looks as though they've focused on what went well and I reckon we will have a good showing on Sunday afternoon.
Bit of an overreaction...I don't know what the review entailed, all I know is that indicators from the review pointed to us winning comfortably. But if you want to pot the coach again I guess that's up to you.
How? We were behind on the GPS stats so we weren't working as hard around the ground. Then we were behind in center clearance and contested possession. Plus the quality of inside 50.
Did we really think that internally we should have won comfortably?
I'd also like to see parker have some minutes through there.
I just want to see Clark play more midfield & with Dunstan’s ommision we’ll likely see just that. Plonk him in there & give him a full game in the guts!
He looked good mate, I'd expect him to play a few games for us this year. Interested to see how he goes this year.
Yeah we did. We only lost by 5 points. If we had better entry inside 50 I agree with their assumption that we would've won comfortably.
I thought scoreboard flattered us to be honest. It was pretty ordinary game by the midfield, who again just need to get more of the ball.
He's gone in there every game, just hasn't had impact yet.
It seems like he is half a second behind everyone else when he plays in the mid.
Can't wait for him to get up to speed and start breaking lines.... And ribs.
Agree that all the young ones will improve and need to play, it just doesn't make me very confident for this game when they're up against a bunch of 150+ game premiership players.
As for Ross, I think he's much better than he's showed so far this year.
i watched long at vfl level last friday and he was quite ordinary. did one or two nice things, but 17 touches and 4-5 tackles in a side that got belted does not warrant selection. Say what you want about Lonie, but when he went back to vfl level he banged the door down for weeks with 30+ to get back in. I dont like the message it sends, almost like his contract of 3 years and selection is all based on 'potential' rather than what he has shown.
Who is going to go in and win our contested footy without Dunstan?
Will be interesting to see if we move Acres into the midfield rather than have him wasted in forward pocket..
not sure if its the widely held view or not.
I want some to stand up and say this my midfield take it off me.
Its certainly not going to be seb ross thats for sure.
Big game for Steele I think.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. We need some one to step up & own the game (not only in the midfield) So far Steven (unabailable), Gresham & Billings have shown they can rip a game away from the opposition. But Billings hasn’t done it for two years & Gresham needs to take another step forward to really impact matches.
Hawthorn just love to get in behind the defence, I hope we have the sense to plan for this.
I like long but I agree with what you’re saying, 1 week out and an average game just doesn’t justify a recall on the face of it.
Now you could argue he should never have been dropped but that’s a different discussion. At any rate without being aware of all the thoughts of the coaching inner sanctum we just have to back them in. You have to assume that with his job well and truly on the line richo is picking the best side he can to get a win.
Long has pace and versatility Dunstan lacks both so maybe they think it’s a better matchup.
We look to have gone for speed and pressure over slow inside ball. Pretty much do what GC nearly did to us, run them off their feet. I expect us to play on from everything and just exploit the Hawks lack of pace. They had footage of Long running down Mitchell from behind last year. I expect that to be the game we are after, high pressure, lock the ball in our front half stuff. If we convert to a decent standard I think we can win this. The Hawks have usually got the umpires giving them an extra player. As they have dropped back the umpires have stopped gifting them.