never had more than 18 touches. shows good forward craft but is still not a break away player like the A grade midfielders. so ie whats the point. make your strengths your best asset and turn them elite. look at his marking and jumping. if he develops this further next jerermy howe or maybe a hff that can kick a goal LAV.
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All good points.
I just donāt think the game and especially our forwardline has room for a specialist forward.
he looks to have great size about him and beautiful skills. My thoughts are that he will have a similar trajectory to Langford.
Play half forward for first season to get familiar with playing bigger bodies and then expose him to midfield.
That half forward role in the AFL is just such a thankless role these days.
Yeah weird.
Apparently in the eyes of some on Blitz every player we pick up isnāt a mid unless theyāve won a Brownlow Medal playing in the midfield. Until then they are a HFF of HBF.
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To be fair, I think most recruiters are the sameā¦
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Not to be a pain, but remind me how many times has that successfully worked so far?
Remember how many times we picked midfielders and they didnāt work out.
Barlow,ohā¦
There seems to be a change of tact for us late in the draft.
Weāve scraped the idea of getting ball magnet midfielders, who need to work on their disposal.
And gone for players;
that have great disposal, but need to learn how to play midfield.
The problem with late picks, is they have big deficiencies. But the recruiters are identifying these issues, and believe that they can be brought up to AFL level when in a full-time training program.
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Iām looking through our picks, and I think the last straight up mids we drafted in the national draft who we played as mids and didnāt make it were Kavanagh in 2011, maybe Melksham in 09 (which would be harsh on Melksham) and Hislop in 06? That is going so far back that I must be missing some.
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The issue I see with that approach is that we arenāt a good development club, imo. Players either seem to be good from the start (Parish, McGrath, Fanta) or they are no good and they donāt improve.
This can be distinguished from say Hawthorn and Sydney, both of whom are sensational at development.
So these players weāve had to draft this year I see as a lottery - ie, they could be good, or they could simply be no good. I have no faith in our system being able to take young players with deficiencies and turn them into good players.
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Yeah, you have guys like Oābrien, Hunter, Skipworth, Webster, Lee and probably others without digging to deep.
Medium forward, rookie, PSD, rookie B, rookie.
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Yep pretty much every single player who has successfully played midfield for us was drafted as ā¦ you guessed it ā¦ a midfielder.
Thats what we are effectively talking about with picks 48 and above.
None of heppell, myers or Zaka were known as midfielders in their draft years.
Sorry, didnāt realise you were only talking about late picks.
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Response from HM about Heppell in 5ā¦4ā¦3ā¦
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Yeah, Iām talking about all picks.
People always talk about flankers but we have drafted plenty of midfielders that havenāt made it.
I donāt think itās an exact science but my preference is the current model of choosing flankers because they at least generally come with better athletic make up and better skills.
If they donāt show something in their first two years you just go back to the well.
Myers has hardly been a conspicuous success as an afl midfielder. And as for Heppell and Zaka - your post is simply 100% wrong. Both of them were dominant midfielders at junior level.
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On cueā¦
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