I don’t want to conflate the two. Parish has great vision and awareness. That’s one thing.
In the heat of game-play, particularly from centre congestion where Parish spends a lot of time, there is often no time to be too choosy. You expect that team mates are on the wing where you need them. That a forward has taken the right path if you win the tap. These are necessary thing for a team to function well. Star players are a part, sure. Team mechanics are in my view, far more important.
Anyway - various opinions
I think it is both. Gary Ablett had the same ability but he has said he always expected a team mate to be in a certain position when he went to that spot with a kick or handball. However there were also times when he would get it to someone that wasn’t part of the team setup, it was just his ability to see where each chess piece was. So a bit of both. Parish has that same ability,.
Yeah Voss said the same thing during their premiership years. You’re in the pack and you dish the ball out to where your team mates are meant to be. And you have faith that they’re gonna be there.
Darcy is awesome at what he does and has had a super year. But Deck isn’t taking anything away by saying team structure helped. That cohesion is one of the joys of the season for me.
Has good extraordinary peripheral vision has Darc…maybe the best in the league at getting the ball to someone in a better position right now and part of a select few ever. Once Caldwell, Sheil and the rest of the on-ballers get on the same page as Darc (and Zac) we will be tearing teams apart, not sometimes, but most times.
As a longtime Parish supporter I reckon most of those calls in the past were good ones.
A few reasons why;
Darcy has freely confessed his tank wasn’t at the required standard in previous years.
It’s better to have short stints in the midfield, and be competitive then, than struggle due to lack of fitness and lose confidence and/or get smashed physically
One thing Darcy has got better at is his forward craft. He’s now a goal kicking mid, I reckon because of time resting forwards.
Oddly Merrett who never really rested forward is unfortunately not a goal kicking mid.
There’s a lot to be said for pacing ones development as a mid, especially if you’re on the smaller side. And it’s not as if Darcy never played mid - just not for long enough for some band wagon jumpers- he regularly played there for at least some part of every game. Which continually gave him an idea of what he had to do better
It’s impossible to know whether it was the right call or not for the first five years of his career. All we know for sure is that in his sixth season of AFL the coaches still didn’t think he was ready for a full time midfield role. With their hands all but forced by two long term injuries they were proven entirely and laughably wrong. Were they wrong before that? Nobody can know, but I don’t think they deserve the benefit of the doubt.
In fairness to the coaches, by all reports ( by that I mean reading training reports on blitz) Caldwell was smashing it playing midfield in pre season and probably deserved first crack.
I’m just glad he had a break out season.
Hope we find a few more players on our list that surprise me like that because that’s the only way we’re going to win a premiership.
Whereas Parish had repeatedly smashed it in the middle of the ground in actual live games when given the chance, only to be invariably banished back to the forward pocket again.
But this is an old dead argument. I’m relieved that he’s finally being played in his natural position and is showing what he can do. I hope the coaching panel have learned something from the whole process and that obvious blatant mistakes like this aren’t made again.
FWIW this is how i’ve graded their years. Votes given same as Crichton. Have just kept disposals in there, but took into account all other stats + what I remember from the games…
They weren’t wrong due to his self admitted inability to run both ways which would have left us mightily exposed. Could the coaches and tried to improve that earlier? Probably yes, but so could have Parish. I’m just delighted he’s there now and we still have a big chunk of his career left to enjoy it.
