The guy hasn’t played an AFL game and is coming off an ACL!
Are you suggesting Redders is high in the ‘Dam’
I wonder if anyone advised Phillips to read the Zac Clarke thread before signing?
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Sorry, 28.
But yeah. Has been around for ever, drafted the same year as Hepp.
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I can’t believe Heppell is 28. Feels like yesterday that he won the rising star!
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Is it really the case that we haven’t made the decision to develop a young ruck?
Or the ones we have tried to develop haven’t come on??
Thurloq, Nyuon, Jenkins, Draper, even Lav2; I’d argue we’ve been trying.
Largely comes back to just not having the picks through 3 years of compromised drafts, then 2 years of sanctions. Spending one of our sparse few early picks on a ruck, who would’ve been a 2-3 year prospect of even getting a game would have been a very, very brave call.
Particularly when we seem to be regularly able to get passable rucks with 3rd round pick swaps.
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I can’t believe it either! (He’s only 27, Philips must’ve been 19yo when drafted)
Not very well clearly. Maybe that reflects that the recruiters do not know how to identify decent ruck quality.
I like to think we’d have been smart enough to pick up Grundy if we had the opportunity, just annoying that he slid ridiculously in a draft where our first pick was already committed, so we didn’t get a shot at him and the pies got a massive freebie.
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Who’ve we missed out on, then?
IMO It only really reflects that when you have 1 or 2 picks inside the top 50 every year, you’re going to be rolling the dice by necessity - a calculated gamble.
The AFL are relocating us to Tasmania?
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How’s GWS’ work there, had 5 picks in the top 15 and didn’t end up with the best player.
Kristian fkg Jaksch…!!!
Oh ffs.
He was generally under appreciated and derided by a vast number of supporters at the end of his tenure with the club, of which I myself deny being a part of but feel reflected badly on the club as a whole.
Please note Albert Thurgood has asked not to be formally recognised as part of this, as he loved the big rascally bean pole and put a large Atlantic salmon head in Sheedys bed after he left.
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Was the salmon head rotting?
It was fresh but there was a eerie Sicilian number playing in the background.
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If his rucking highlights are anything to go by, Phillips’ approach to watching the ball in flight and jumping for it on its merits (much more likely to get first touch and is a positive approach) is a much better approach to what big Tommy has been doing the last few years which is generally watching the opposition ruckman first (negative approach to retard the opposition as your first aim) and then flailing for the ball second.
TBC still has his uses and if he can get back to focusing on the damn ball in the ruck, he’ll be relatively valuable.
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We let him go because he was 30, perenially injured and (at that point) neither our best ruck nor our best forward (with a 20-21yo Scotty Cummings and a handy 18yo called Lloyd coming up behind him). And ongoing salary cap troubles.
The fact he got another 100 odd games out of his body from that point on is the story, I reckon every club would’ve pushed him rather than any of the baby bombers.
He kicked 39 goals in his last year with us (In 13 games). Cummings kicked 13, Lloyd 7.
He was clearly still our best full forward, (although Hird had started to ramp in up at Half forward by then), and there was never a second of his career that he was behind Somerville as a ruckman.
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He was behind Somerville and Alessio in the pecking order in ‘95, you can argue (well!) that he shouldn’t have been, but he absolutely was, in point of fact.
But realistically he was 30, would’ve been on a zillion, hadn’t got through a full year in a decade, and we had (at that point) pretty much constant battles with the AFL over salary cap - and guys like Hird, Mercuri and co were coming into their peak contract years.
Someone had to go.
He did amazingly well to get another 115 games out of his body. If he’d been a normal 30yo big bloke with a chequered injury history, he would’ve struggled on for 25 games over 2 years and nobody would even remember he went to Hawks.
Salmon left because Sheedy wouldn’t play him as a ruckman, and the fans treated him like shitt. Claiming otherwise is a trump like attempt at rewriting history.
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