He’s 28yo, slow, unskilled, injury-prone and seems to lack confidence. He’s played about five good games for us in two years. He’s not very good, I’m not sure why people can’t accept this.
Hopefully Hayes comes back really strongly from his ACL and can claim the spot.
Disagree. His first 10 games for us were extremely strong. Collingwood even tagged him in the ANZAC Day draw. The gap between his best and his worst is way too big, but i think if he’s body is good, he’s a very serviceable player.
Nearly spat my coffee out when one of the boys from Don The Stat thought he could be AA next year, pretty optimistic view.
It was a really extreme tag, they even got Jamie Elliot to sit on his head at one point.
There’s clapping but that is just next level stuff
Real cult like vibes
McKay’s first half of 2024 is approaching the same mythical status as Nik Cox’s debut season.
I’d say, at a conservative estimate, that for every good game McKay has played for us he’s played three bad ones.
I reckon McKay has barely had a 6/10 game since that 2024 ANZAC day game. That was the first time I remember him getting the yips in the air, assumedly due to the atmosphere and intensity.
I thought he was really good after quarter time vs GWS in 2024.
Jesse Hogan was an awful match up for him and he beat him for three quarters of that game. But that was probably the last game he played where I was impressed by him.
Has he been with us for two years already? Doesn’t feel like it.
is there a highlight reel of that hanging around somewhere?
the reality is we brought mckay in to play on gorillas and there aren’t many of them around any more. it wasn’t his best role anyway. he plays his best footy when he can zone off and mark which he’s reluctant to do when he has the number 1 target. perversely when ridley isn’t in the side we seem more inclined to let mckay play his best role but when ridley is in the side we use mckay to take the best forward and prefer to give ridley zoning roles.
we’ve got it backwards IMO. I think ridley plays his best footy when opposed to the best tall forward and mckay is a much much better interceptor than him because he is stronger in the air. Ridley’s one wood as a key defender is reading the ball in the air better than his opponent and out positioning them to mark. Our obsession with him as an intercept marker is born out of that but when we try to get him to play looser he invariably ends up in no mans land. He’s much much better with a good tall opponent to anchor him
we really should be able to work it out.
of course the icing on the cake here is that all of mckay, reid and ridley are injury prone.
The real issue is that all our KPD’s are consistently injured.
Reid, Ridley and McKay would be a formidable defensive line, if they could stay on the park. But, they can’t and it makes it a poor defensive line. Even if only one of them goes down early, the others have to do different roles and that throws their game out.
Not many gorrilla forwards left Crows have two in Thilthorpe and Fogarty.
Big key backs like McKay are still valuable to have
He isn’t a gorilla fwd.
They are absolutely a dying breed. Thilthorpe is an athletic freak that finishes in top few at Crows 2k. Thats what makes him so dangerous, not just his size.
The days of a big, stay at home and wrestle key forward are over.
100%. This is why I never understood the Laverde hate. He would be forced to play different roles every week because all our KPD’s were in and out of the side.
Still a big unit
Lav/Stringer size.
Doesn’t play as a KPF gorilla, often up at the wing.
If you can’t run you can’t play. That includes KPF. Your two examples are not great examples.
So what value do they have for the other 16-17 games a year we don’t play against the Crows?
I guess Tom Barrass is not good any more ask Sam Mitchell of he thinks big key backs are useless