I don’t think its wrong to compare the players. The game by its very nature is comparative.
I also think both clubs got the player they need for better long term success. We need a classy and fast user of the ball to facilitate a link between contested and uncontested possessions (read: get the ball to our outside users whilst also being damaging). Melbourne still needed players that could win their own ball, not to say darcy can’t do that but he brings more that we need. Both clubs have won.
But then again its hard to lose with top 5 picks as they’re generally just so far ahead of the rest of the players, with few being the exceptions that prove the rules (merrett, cripps). even though I wanted someone other than McG, hes still gonna be a more than good player over his career in the worst case scenario. If your club has a good development program the top echelon in each drafts talent will shine. And our development seems to have some good people behind it right now. Diesel is gonna work wonders with our upcoming midfielders (very impressive on the efc footy podcast yesterday).
There are a lot more derived statistics that we do not see, and cannot work out very easily at all but the clubs buy them.
Clearly Dangerfield is a prototype for a budding midfielder. Zac Merret and Darcy have the capacity to influence games in the same way as Dangerfield on the outside. This excerpt from a Geelong report on Danger field underline some of the reasons why Dangerfield won a Brownlow, not in subjective terms but objectively.
"He is also ranked first for kicks inside 50 retained (86) and most kicks inside 50 marked (35 in total), which proves he has both quality and quantity. Dangerfield’s most dominant area, however, is metres gained. Put simply, he is a metres gained machine – ranked first in the AFL with 14,186 metres in total. With each Dangerfield disposal, the ball is advanced for Geelong some 19.6 metres on average and is retained 67.8% of the time, while he has gained 3.4 kilometres more distance than the next best player in Andrew Gaff…"
Metres gained is not BS, but as with many things it is the quality of those metres that players strive to achieve. Hacking the ball forward to increase the metres gained stats is not the way you become an elite player
How many inside 50s did he have in total though. Those stats on there own don’t proove quality, only the % retained and marked would. I think too retention probably had add much to do with the forward structure and quality of player forward of the ball add the kicker himself.
I’ve wanted to say this for a while, but haven’t been able to find the right context…
Still not sure this is, but anyway…
I think a lot of Parish’s kicks that overshot their target last week can be put down to adrenaline due to the situation at the time.
He wasn’t on his own there. Watson did it too.
And his long kicks from the half backline were still very valuable, even if they did go just that little bit too far.
