Zaharakis strikes me as a player who is content just to have an AFL career and nothing more.
Will NEVER play in a winning finals side.
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Not at Essendon.
Trade him to Geelong he probably wins a Norm Smith.
He has done so at times for sure, I think though that sometimes people claim he squibs when he doesn’t or his role is to go to a position to allow an outside release. Not all players can go in or you leave nothing on the outside and the opposition win the ball back. Collingwood and Geelong this year are both very good at throw up structures and outside midfielders.
Strikes me as the kind of player that needs a firm back hand from his coach in order to pull his finger out.
Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile, molly coddle him and he’ll become complacent.
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Sorry but I just do not see it.
It is a long time since I played footy but I remember a coach telling me that I didn’t go at it hard enough. I took issue with him, because it was not that I was soft, I just did not think that way. I would wait for the ball instead of going and getting it and not matter what I did I could not change my thought process. Today I would see a hypnotist.
And back over 45 years ago at 178 cm and 92 kg, I was a bigger bloke than most others.
Yep. Easily solved. Give him more of an inside role. Excelled at this in 2016 during the saga. Won hard balls, burst out of packs, kicked goals. Looked amazing at times. Has never been the same since then, when shifted to an outside role. And now we are trialing him as a defensive mid/HBF player. FFS. Again, on the coaches for mine.
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Problem with that is Heppell, Parish, McGrath, Shiel and Zaharakis all play their best football when inside.
Which wouldn’t be a problem except that Woosh would never do something so out landish as to play people were they actually play their best. Also dropping Myers isn’t his thing.
All those guys mentioned also happen to have question marks on their kicking from time to time. So they would need to be surrounded by excellent kicks on the outside. McKenna, Saad, Redman, Walla and Fantasia fit that bill perfectly btw.
Smith and Merrett as the outside leaning midfielders with Smith forward of the ball and Merrett behind the ball where they can utilise their respective skillsets.
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Word!!!
He peaked in 2011. He’s never reached that level of output since. Think about that.
If you traded him right now, it wouldn’t hurt us in the slightest. We can find someone else to hang out the back of packs and butcher easy possessions. We can also pay them $500,000 a year less to do it.
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Yep. We’ve had a lot of what i like to call “pokie machine players” over the last 15 years - they pay out just enough to keep you hopeful and will occasionally even throw off a jackpot to really suck the punters in, but it’s as though they’re mathematically programmed to pay out less than they take in so you never end up ahead in the long run. Zaka and Bellchambers are the epitomes of “pokie machine players”.
If you want to sum up Essendon’s last decade. Just look at Zaharakis.
Soft outside player who only has a crack after getting a baking all week in the media.
When we are favourites and the game is to be won, he goes missing.
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Very much doubt it is how they train, but sides know if they stop our overlap run for long enough, we will revert to it.
We need to get a lot better at directing our ball movement through our better users in those situations. Heppell is rarely our best option in those situations, but all too often he’s our only option still presenting and working.
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Don’t just look at stats lol. Of course that’s going to paint him in good light coz he’s an outside runner.
Judge him on impact on games
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And?
They’re trying to improve players so they can play multiple positions. That is working for some, and others are taking longer to grasp it.
Wouldn’t you agree it’s not going to work to just pick 22 guys in all of their favourite spots, for every game?
That guys like Parish and Langford actually have to have 2nd strings, for the good of the team, as well as their own careers?
(Also if you’re quoting Smith as a good kick, I’d disagree strongly. Good kick at goals, pretty ordinary otherwise)
I think the only real measure is did he laugh after the game or not.
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Heppell is one of the only mids you can count on to take a good contested grab. I think that’s why he ends up with the ball a lot.
More than that - he’s a terrific runner, our hardest worker, one of our better clearance winners and he reads it better (in general play) than everyone we have. He’s almost always there or thereabouts at the end of the game.
However he’s no good kicking into 50 in particular.
We need him delivering it to Fanta, to Zerrett, to Tippa, to Zaha etc to take those kicks.
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I agree that players need to have some amount of versatility in the modern game, but it isn’t working, both from a team perspective and from an individual player development perspective. How many years must these guys spend out of position before they are allowed to develop their standout qualities and skills to an elite AFL standard?
Surely some of the better kids, the first round talent, should be introduced to the AFL in their preferred positions where they can build their confidence playing a familiar role, the one that they were actually drafted to play and then taught how to make an impact in other ways.
I feel like we are so concerned about “rounding out” our young player’s development that we mostly end up producing players who are average at most things when the first priority should be to make them elite at the handful of things that got them drafted and then iron out any deficiencies in their game.
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Who’s stopping them?
I’d argue Parish played probably 40 of his first ~50 games predominantly in his preferred position.
Francis has played 3? forward - through utter necessity - and back for the rest.
Laverde has played forward/mid every game I can remember.
McGrath back pocket in his first year, mid/HBF since.
Langford has been rotated a fair bit - he was drafted as a bit of a utility, nevertheless your point holds up here.
Redman and Ridley have both played pretty much exclusively back flank in the 1s.
Begley fwd/mid in his 3-4 games.
I think that’s all our first & second rounders in the last 4-5 years?
It might just be possible that Blitz is exaggerating here.
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