#2 Tom Bellchambers šŸ›Ž

No coincidence that our best wins are usually with BELLY at his best. If heā€™s lazy moping around we usually get beaten, when heā€™s up and about we usually can beat anyone.

Tom to speak on SEN at 8:05am

Nothing to take away from the interview.

Q. Where is Essendon at now?
Good question. We are a young team. Freo average age > than Essendon

Essendon still have a lot to work on.

Did not respond as they expected

Expects Fremantle to win lots of games at home.

They have the reviewed game ā€“ need to improve defensive play

Q. Is he a physical ruckman?
Tom likes to play physically as a ruckman. To lead midfield by his physicality.

With Ess having 3 talls there is less time to play as a forward. Not getting much time as a forward through rotations. More like 95% ruck, 5% bench.

Q. Stringer and playing against Western Bulldogs?
Spoke to Jake and he had not thought about it too much. Will be wound up by game time.
Jake is an interesting character. Has been good at the club. Club is working out how best to utilise Jake.

ITā€™S ONLY TWO WEEKS into the season.

Q. Jakeā€™s tattoo?
Itā€™s a terrible tatt.

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Tommy was one of our best players against Fremantle, not sure if thatā€™s because he was good or so many of our other players were bad.

The Freo mids did not get an armchair ride from Sandilands. We were only -2 for clearances, because TBell did compete strongly with the big guy in a physical sense, limiting Sandilands taps to advantage .

One worry is that we won centre clearances well, but were well beaten at stoppages. I am assuming this was mainly at boundary throw ins. This was our main problem last year, and somehow, we donā€™t seem to have improved in this area.

So far this year we are 6th for centre clearances, and 18th ( last in the AFL) at stoppages. This is very worrying because this should have been worked on over the pre-season.

Had a really really good start to the season. Keep it up

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Reckon he beat Jacobs and completely blanketed Sandilands whilst kicking 2 goals on him. Great start to his year.

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The advent of AFL Stats pro has enabled us to settle a long time argument.

Who is a better TAP ruckman, TBell, Ryder or Berger.

Career Hitouts to advantage percent:

TBELL 28.3
Ryder 25.9
Berger 22.5

So far this season, against top ruckmen, Sandilands and Jacobs, TBell is running at 40.3% taps to advantage.
He is also kicking goals and leads the AFL at the moment, among pure ruckmen

Now the bad news. The number of hitouts he wins is a bit average.

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Probably was worked on, doesnā€™t mean it is going to work well at the start of the year. You would hope it would but clearly there are still some way to go there. On a positive, we can only improve in this are because we are last atm.

Bumpā€¦

Beaten by a second year ruckman whoā€™s played a handful of games.

In the second qtr English out marked him from a kick out. Then English worked hard to get to CHF while TBell jogged 20 meters behind. English got involved and took the mark and peeled off a 30 meter pass that ended in a goal.

Outworked, outplayed.

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Iā€™d like to have English

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Leuenberger beats him for workrate.

Thatā€™s saying something.

When he is good he is pretty good, when heā€™s bad heā€™s ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– ā–  shithouse

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Sets himself for big challenges, thinks itā€™ll just happen for the easier games. Couldnā€™t be more Essendon, really.

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Back to his tin man impersonation today. Didnā€™t work nearly hard enough, got beaten by a kid

Tommy easily won the ruck today. He hit it down the throat of Zerrett and Heppell many times and they fumbled or were swarmed by Dogs.

English played well around the ground, but overall TBC beat him. Letā€™s face it, TBC is the only viable option we have.

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Bingo.
Work rate is very poor
Being out marked by a 30kg kid in his second year of football doesnt help either

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As BF indicated TBell won 10 extra hitouts to advantage, but like many others lacked work rate around the ground. Not a bad game, but should have been better like many in the side.

I think most of us love Belly.

But honestly, he is indicative of what Essendon is currently. Unfortunately for Ruckman, we can compare them stat for stat with the opposition Ruckmanā€¦ and say win or loss. We canā€™t do that with any other player on the ground. Itā€™s subjective.

But as I was saying he is indicative of our club. Steps it up against the best, then gets lazy against the inferior opposition Ruckman.

He needs to make a decision about what he wants to achieve as a player. 2 years ago, Max Gawn spent a whole preseason telling everyone that he is going to be All Australian. He told the media, he told team mates, he told opposition players. He put pressure on himself to perform every week. He stopped saying it and started believing he was an All Australian Ruckman.

Itā€™s time for Belly to challenge himself to be the best in the land.

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I kinda agree with this, but so many times ni the last couple years, people here have banged on about how we won the ruck, but the other team poleaxed us in clearances. to me thats not winning ā– ā– ā– ā– .

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