#32 - Ben McKay

Football Discussion Dustin Fletcher Hangar
1640

Clearly

1641

It’s got little to do with the midfield.

A combination of McKay, LAV, Kelly, Heppell + the bad McGrath (2nd half of seasons) = the worst skilled backline I can think of in any era.
If we had have kept Zerk, it would have been even worse.

And then posters question why we decided to trial Martin back there…fark

1642

and maybe the highest paid defender in the team shouldn’t be the guy with the laziest kicking and handballing actions you will see

2 Likes
1643

Oh I agree it’s diabolical, and one could see it at North also.

He is what he is and needs to be surrounded by quality users.
We need to harness his intercept marking game.

3 Likes
1644

Not coast to coast per se, but a lot from our defensive half. I’d say mostly because we were pushed up super high, so when it broke down the goals were often pretty easy. Kind of dependent on good one on one defenders who are composed enough to win contests when losing means easy goals. I wonder if anyone’s been tracking those numbers.

1 Like
1645

Also, interestingly, we (marginally) conceded fewer inside 50s in the back half of the year than we did at the beginning. So the defenders may or may not have been under more pressure, but they weren’t seeing more ball in the defensive 50.

1646

Give nino his own hot takes thread

1 Like
1647

It’s literally this.

He with good ball users around him, will be fine.

When it was the who’s who of wtf are you doing city that we were dealing with for most of this season, it all turns to shtt.

Can’t have multiple dudes in the backline with “red lights” on their disposal use. Seems like we introduced that last year, Zerk, Lav, Kelly, you are only allowed a sideways 20m kick to an open player or all else fails, long down the line to a contest. Might have been the year prior even. Either way, a bunch of dudes who are “shtt I don’t know what to do with it, I’ll panic handball to you under pressure and you can figure it out”, and so on.

Found ourselves right back in that position this season, so ofcourse when the pressure of pressure-less repeat entries hits that backline, they’ll crumble as they don’t have the football disposal ability required to handle it.
One of our many problems.
:crossed_fingers: we don’t need to see Lav next season (VFL only) and can have Ridley/Reid and whoever else a better user to replace Kelly (and Martin).

2 Likes
1648

Except in the second half of the year we dominated inside 50
's.

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1649

That didn’t seem to do much good.

1650

Shift him forward. Cant be trusted in backline

3 Likes
1651

I think the opposition worked out his first movement after gaining possession is to handball to someone 5 meters behind him. Later on in the season he started to go for more adventures kicks to mix it up, with varying levels of success. You would think he’d play better with Ridley in the side but it didn’t actually work out like that.

2 Likes
1652

I’d like to see how he’d go at this, you would need to try it when we are 20 points down and chasing a game.

1653

He must improve next year, he has lazy moments in his game still which he brought over from the Kangaroos.

I’m hoping there is improvement in him, has he hit his ceiling?

1654

Yeah, we may have finished 15th and recieved pick 4. Oh the horror.

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1655

Only to draft another stick/injury prone Zac Reid

1656

Zac Reid was pick 10, which coincidentally is what we will end up with this year.

1657

Wasn’t he pick 7?

1658

Cox I think.

  • Edit - Dogs took JUH with pick one so our picks slid a spot.
    Cox - 8
    Perkins - 9
    Reid - 10
3 Likes
1659

No.