This will make him a better player. Right now it hurts because his output has dropped. It also means we need to be patient with him. Stewart has shown he can play at AFL level - when he is against 2nd or 3rd defender.
Perhaps the longer term picture is he’s not good enough to take the best defender, but the experience of being on the best might mean when he’s back on the 2nd or 3rd defender, he’ll have more impact than when he was on them before.
He is better below his knees and in play then Laverde but steward doesn’t have the best hands overhead for his size.
And Laverde has better hands but doesn’t have the height to out position true key backmen.
Third banana. No Joe and no Hooker equals 1st banana. He aint
When did Laverde actually take a mark. Actually he took one against Hawks 25 out…missed
What? We’re missing our best tall forward, have moved our second best tall forward to the backline and had to play our other big bodied forward in the midfield due to injuries during the game and you’re saying get rid of Stewart because he couldn’t do it all? What you smokin?
Tell me another equivalent player at ANY club that could have carried their forward line in the same circumstances? There aren’t any.
Stewart is working hard. As is McKernan & Stringer when they’re in the forwardline but for some reason our boneheaded coaching panel allow the opposition a spare or two in defence week after week meaning our forwards are outnumbered and often facing long bomb delivery. Name me any forward in the Comp that wants that scenario.
One tigers player would hold him down to let another tiger take the mark and the umpires let them get away with it all night ffs.
Or maybe fix the structure. Wayne Carey wouldn’t get a kick in our fwd setup against tigers.
the king would
he would have rolled up field, made dustin martin wet his pants, won own footy and if necessary have kicked it down the throat of a resting ruckman at ff.
Wayne Carey is easily the best player I have seen.
hes top 5 of all time in every reasonable football conversation.
Would love to see the structure changed. Stewart is doing it hard since JD went down. My point is if the players can’t fit into the existing structure and the coaches won’t change the structure then the personnel needs to change. This is hard on Stewart as he has been great up until the past few games. When Smack goes into the ruck Stewart gets extra attention. If we are not going to put Hooker back in the forward line (and I don’t think we should) Stewart will continue to get the extra attention.
Only essendon can take a kid who is an accurate kick for goal and get him to miss 25m out directly in front.
Do we just do circle work at training? Do we even have a skills coach, goal kicking coach, tackling coach (part time or full time)? Do we work on any sort of structure?
I think it’s just part of the implied pressure on the team.
This just proves more than ever that ALL forwards need to viable threats to score. Backmen are less likely to peel off their man and help someone else if they feel their opponent is likely to score.
That and the fact that some of the delivery coming into the 50 was diabolical.
He usually is quite a good athlete, has speed, has agility for a big man, what about a stint running him through the midfield?
Hes cooked
This is not a bad idea. See Westhoff from PA, similar type who’s carved a very good somewhat underrated career as a tall link man. Stewart could make this work
When Smack goes in to the ruck does TBell go forward or to the bench? From watching TV we still bomb it and Stewart gets hammered. We don’t seem to be as good at chaosball like Richmond are. Stewart is not a no.1 key forward (yet) so we should not play like he is. Our lack of flexibility in changing our game style killed us Saturday night.
Time for clubs to employ goal kicking coaches.
We have back,mid,forward coaches but not goal kicking ones also I would hire a tackling coach.
And a match day “change making” coach.
They dont even need to be full time either. I know the sports science guys say they can’t do goal kicking practice after training because it stuffs up their quads but it somehow needs to be mixed in