Recruit ■■■■ kicks of the footy and then wonder why we are inefficient going forward.
I was talking to a North Fan last week (I know, they are rare), and he said that the other 3 North fans on the big footy draft forum 2 years ago were praying that they wouldn’t pick Tsatas because he was a terrible kick. I wasn’t aware of this pre-draft, but first game I saw him play in the VFL, it was evident that he couldn’t kick.
I must admit that I am a bit dumbfounded by supposed draft experts like Cal Twomey and Ed Pascoe who rated Tsatas so high. It just shows that some people rate accumulation more than class. Unfortunately, Dodoro was one of those also.
You can’t turn ■■■■ kicks into good kicks, it just doesn’t happen. We need some classy ball users in the side desperately, or we will forever be talking about how inefficient we are going forward.
Yep our side has very little class. They do compete and give effort, but class and quality is what wins you premierships. The best ball users of this draft from what I’ve seen and read are murphy reid and xavier lindsay, but those guys will be gone potentially after the kako bid if we don’t get back into the first round of the draft.
Which is why it would be madness to trade back into this draft with future picks, we just have to take our medicine for 12 months and load up next year
yup - had one in our team from the mid-season draft, who has now gone on to become all-australian for a hated team because of haggling on a sweet stuff all money 1 yr on the contract - which we were happy to hand to the likes of say ( Weed/ Menzie/Guelfi…etc)
It’s naive to suggest they couldn’t/didn’t identify a flaw in his game. It’s more likely they noticed it and deemed it correctable. Happens in plenty of sports - NFL being a pretty prominent example.
I think the repeat entries we were forcing last year made both the forwards and mids look bad. We’d win the ball back and have have to kick to a crowded forward line. Turn it over. Repeat the process.
I mean yeah it’s not great but at least tsatas wants to actually improve on it and has been putting the work in to get better at it. He’s a real competitive bloke who hates losing and is willing to put extra time into things. Also our vfl midfield looked significantly better with him in there, can’t see why that can’t translate to afl level.
On the tackling side to his game, I hate to break it to you but a lot of our senior guys don’t like to tackle or defend. Defending is a mindset issue, not a skill issue. It requires buy in from the whole team. Sorry for going off on a little tangent, but if he’s getting heaps of possies and has hurt factor then it matters. Still think tsatas is an impactful player and am willing to back him. For the record, martin isn’t a great defender, I’ve seen that bloke stand around contests not willing to put his body on the line to get a hard ball, but he gets lauded coz he does more good than bad.
Picking a player that high despite such a glaring deficiency (poor kick) thinking you can either fix it or just not that bothered by it
OR
Not identifying the deficiency in the first place
Either way it was a huge ■■■■ up by the recruiters.
Picking players with elite kicking skills has been such a screaming need for this squad that it blows my mind how little emphasis our recruiting team seem to place on it.
Not sure what skill you’re suggesting NFL clubs deem correctable but as a like for like comparison if a running back kept fumbling the ball can’t see too many clubs picking them in the first round.
Not only that but he’s losing years off his career because his kicking isn’t up to it - the basic skill of the game. That is if he has a career because of it. It’s about 50/50 I’d say
