There are on Blitz who are very picky with the way others write and spell. I am picky on things about the way players are rated.
There are players better than Laverde below the knees but I don’t reckon he can be judged poor. Let’s see how he does this year with a younger body, more experience and perhaps greater opportunities.
His real problem with be getting into the best 22, as it seems there are a number ahead of him.
Fair enough. Maybe relative obscurity is too strong a term. I expected Lloyd to star in the Grand Final, probably, Long, probably Mercuri, Lucas, Hird etc. I just did not expect Barnard to do so well.
Or ever.
Don’t know that he’s bigger and stronger than Swan. Swan was listed at 185 and 93kg. And could run all day. He was an incredible athlete, even though he looked like he captained the div 2 ressies.
Begley may fill out to about that size. But it’s not a fait accompli, by any means.
The 93kg can be a bit misleading, I’d love to know what his Skinfolds and BF% were.
Swannie also had short little legs, built like a warthog
Swan was the strongest player at the Pies for a while, and was their best runner too.
I reckon he’d smash Begley, lift for lift.
Strongest and best runner?? That is a dangerous combo.
Begley has the capacity to become one of our best players and a star of the game. He has the body to be an inside bull, quality foot skills, great mark and great set shot on goal. He is also a decent decision maker. I can’t see many obvious limitations.
I think if his body is right he should be picked round one. The club picked him round one last year and for the 2017 final so they have a lot of confidence in him.
Shiel will bring a lot to our inside mid requirement but I think Begley will also help in this area.
If we want to move from mid-table to top four team we need players like Begs to step up. i am confident he will.
Begley does not find enough of the ball.
To date, it is the only weakness I can identify.
He doesn’t look as if he is a player that needs somebody else to get him the ball. However, if he cannot get himself up to the 30+ touch games in the VFL, there is no way he is playing as an AFL mid.
Having stated that, what a weapon he will be if he does manage that.
Not true.
What you do with the ball is more important than getting x amount of touches per game.
You can be a very effective mid with 20 - 25 touches if you use the ball well, and you can be a very mediocre mid whilst getting 30+ if you ball use is average.
Yep. Agree.
However you would hope that at VFL level an AFL level midfielder would get a higher number of touches.
His 11, 12, 13, 9 disposal efforts last year were fine as he learns the game off a HFF, but it doesn’t say midfielder.
Probably best to start forming an opinion on this in another couple of years.
While it’s true that he needs to win more of the ball, a guy getting low teens disposal counts off a forward flank or pocket in his first 5 games is not cause for alarm. In fact it’s pretty much par for the course
He has never played full time mid even at VFL level though.
He has mostly played the same role he plays at AFL level.
I agree with you. He’s been pretty damaging when he gets the ball.
In his 8 games he has had 74 disposals, 8 goals and 8 goals assists. That means that almost 22% of his disposals have resulted in a goal.
I hope he turns out to be like Luke Parker. The similarities are there, albeit Begley is bigger I think.
I’m not saying that he is stronger than Swan, but his natural size is perhaps bigger than Swan. Begley is listed as 188cm and 89kg.
Before he made it the club he ballooned to over 100Kg - that was only a few years ago as well.
Very good point
The question is : what
How fast is he?
Is he explosive like Swan?
Langford is a good example, was having 30 plus in vfl and 20 at AFL. However his good games at AFL were probably better than the high accumulation ones in the VFL, I think Begley would be the same.
Martin is another example in 2016 he was having some 30+ games that were nothing compared to his 20-25 and 4 goal games since.
It’s really an unknown whether he could be a mid, an accumulator or a clearance king.
I’m not even sure or see a reason why we need to find out. I’ve got us with 10 genuine mids that are already best 22 and beside Zaka and Myers the 8 others have more than 5 years left in them.
Except swanny thrived off white powder to get his skin folds down