#4 Kyle Langford — not our worst in possibly our worst

Welcome aboard!

He’s a good player IMO. Still hoping he gets midfield minutes.

Very few smiles this week again, love it.

The Langford I thought had a good first half was reduced a lot in the 2nd half with supply , but he has had 12 odd possessions and 7 score involvements. Mitch Brown has had 8 score involvements ( 4 goals of course) , so I would persist with Joe higher up the ground and Mitch deep and Langford roaming. What made the task even tougher yesterday was 5 possessions between two forwards and no accountabaility with players running off the half back line.

hasnt even won a brownlow yet.

delist.

Its a shame Langford hasn’t come screaming out of the blocks from game one and been a dominant big bodied midfielder, who has pin point accuracy and elite fitness just like Jobe did at the start of his career…

Will be just like goddard at saints in terms of footy ability, not in finger pointing

Is not & never will be a midfielder.

His big issue is his accountability to his direct opponent when playing at centre bounces/stoppages.

Time after time he gets burnt by players he either cant physically go with or just refuses to man up.

For mine this has been the reason he was dropped to the 2nds & the very same reason why he might find himself back their again.

He may get away with a with a wing position but again doesnt have pace to track back & forth.

His main weapon is his strong marking & good kicking … & this imo says he must play half-forward.

By all means ‘learn the game’ but its time to settle this guy into a permanent role.

You remind me of Pauline Hanson.

Some of what you say has merit, but the way you say it is lacking in polish.

FFS … dont reckon i said anything that his Coaches would not have said to him over last 10 weeks!

Pretty certain it was his lack of accountability that saw him GET DROPPED a few weeks back.

Am a big rap for kid … as I have said in previous posts … & reckon he will be a 200+ game player for us.

(Geez theres a lot of nuffies on here)

A lack of accountability are you for real. Accountable to who. Every game and I mean every game midfielders on both sides have more possessions than anyone else. A tagger is accountable not a midfielder

Welcome to watching football.

Hope you like the game & that it doesnt take you too long to work out how its played.

Enjoy your stay.

Been in the bus a fair while, kid has IT

He has IceTemple?
In a bus?

Is this all above board?

Is not & never will be a midfielder.

His big issue is his accountability to his direct opponent when playing at centre bounces/stoppages.

Time after time he gets burnt by players he either cant physically go with or just refuses to man up.

For mine this has been the reason he was dropped to the 2nds & the very same reason why he might find himself back their again.

He may get away with a with a wing position but again doesnt have pace to track back & forth.

His main weapon is his strong marking & good kicking … & this imo says he must play half-forward.

By all means ‘learn the game’ but its time to settle this guy into a permanent role.

You remind me of Pauline Hanson.

Some of what you say has merit, but the way you say it is lacking in polish.

FFS … dont reckon i said anything that his Coaches would not have said to him over last 10 weeks!

You think the coaches told him he is not and will never be a mid??

Lol … if they had any sense they would have!

Drugs are bad bro

Fantasia like

Will be better than pendlebury.

Wowsers

I think he'll be fine as long as we manage expectations. I think it's a long shot to expect that he's going to be Fyfe good, or Bontompelli good, or Watson good, or Kennedy good, or Pendlebury good. He does have the capacity to be a really strong, creative player though and maybe if he really works at it we might see something like the above emerge.

He’s going to be really important to us in the future. Heppell, Zerrett, Parish and Zaharakis will form a pretty awesome quartet in the years to come but they’re not the biggest lads going around. We need Langford (and Laverde, ideally Francis as well) to come on so that we can compete with all the teams that are routinely throwing 190+cm, heavily built guys into the middle these days.

Yes because his performances are directly linked to our expectations.

Is not & never will be a midfielder.

His big issue is his accountability to his direct opponent when playing at centre bounces/stoppages.

Time after time he gets burnt by players he either cant physically go with or just refuses to man up.

For mine this has been the reason he was dropped to the 2nds & the very same reason why he might find himself back their again.

He may get away with a with a wing position but again doesnt have pace to track back & forth.

His main weapon is his strong marking & good kicking … & this imo says he must play half-forward.

By all means ‘learn the game’ but its time to settle this guy into a permanent role.

You remind me of Pauline Hanson.

Some of what you say has merit, but the way you say it is lacking in polish.

FFS … dont reckon i said anything that his Coaches would not have said to him over last 10 weeks!

Pretty certain it was his lack of accountability that saw him GET DROPPED a few weeks back.

Am a big rap for kid … as I have said in previous posts … & reckon he will be a 200+ game player for us.

(Geez theres a lot of nuffies on here)

A lack of accountability are you for real. Accountable to who. Every game and I mean every game midfielders on both sides have more possessions than anyone else. A tagger is accountable not a midfielder

Is not & never will be a midfielder.

His big issue is his accountability to his direct opponent when playing at centre bounces/stoppages.

Time after time he gets burnt by players he either cant physically go with or just refuses to man up.

For mine this has been the reason he was dropped to the 2nds & the very same reason why he might find himself back their again.

He may get away with a with a wing position but again doesnt have pace to track back & forth.

His main weapon is his strong marking & good kicking … & this imo says he must play half-forward.

By all means ‘learn the game’ but its time to settle this guy into a permanent role.

You remind me of Pauline Hanson.

Some of what you say has merit, but the way you say it is lacking in polish.

FFS … dont reckon i said anything that his Coaches would not have said to him over last 10 weeks!

You think the coaches told him he is not and will never be a mid??

Lol … if they had any sense they would have!

Is not & never will be a midfielder.

His big issue is his accountability to his direct opponent when playing at centre bounces/stoppages.

Time after time he gets burnt by players he either cant physically go with or just refuses to man up.

For mine this has been the reason he was dropped to the 2nds & the very same reason why he might find himself back their again.

He may get away with a with a wing position but again doesnt have pace to track back & forth.

His main weapon is his strong marking & good kicking … & this imo says he must play half-forward.

By all means ‘learn the game’ but its time to settle this guy into a permanent role.

You remind me of Pauline Hanson.

Some of what you say has merit, but the way you say it is lacking in polish.

FFS … dont reckon i said anything that his Coaches would not have said to him over last 10 weeks!

You think the coaches told him he is not and will never be a mid??

Your getting confused with he times he is closest to an opponent but that opponent is not his. It's Kelly or birds. Happened multiple times on the weekend but the reality is it wasn't Langford trailing his man it was Langford trying to cover the dangerous man.
Ah yes, I remember when Mr Hooker went through this stage, and Blitz hated him.
To be fair. Blitz can predict the quality of a player purely based on someone's running style. Hooker simply isn't and will never be an AFL quality player because he has an unusual running style.
Is not & never will be a midfielder.

His big issue is his accountability to his direct opponent when playing at centre bounces/stoppages.

Time after time he gets burnt by players he either cant physically go with or just refuses to man up.

For mine this has been the reason he was dropped to the 2nds & the very same reason why he might find himself back their again.

He may get away with a with a wing position but again doesnt have pace to track back & forth.

His main weapon is his strong marking & good kicking … & this imo says he must play half-forward.

By all means ‘learn the game’ but its time to settle this guy into a permanent role.

You remind me of Pauline Hanson.

Some of what you say has merit, but the way you say it is lacking in polish.

FFS … dont reckon i said anything that his Coaches would not have said to him over last 10 weeks!

Pretty certain it was his lack of accountability that saw him GET DROPPED a few weeks back.

Am a big rap for kid … as I have said in previous posts … & reckon he will be a 200+ game player for us.

(Geez theres a lot of nuffies on here)

Some guys walk straight into footy, and from day one they, and everybody else, know what their role is going to be. Parish for example, was always going to be a bona fide midfielder from day dot. Zerrett and Heppell, were always going to start on flanks and then move into the middle as fitness / confidence / ability grew. Even Fantasia was probably the same idea, he just happened to excel too much in the first role.

But it’s different when you don’t know if you are going to end up playing ‘tall’ or a ‘small,’ an issue that many of the medium sized guys suffer with in the very early years. Myers looked useless trying to play tall in defence in the early days, and Watson was an awkward third-tall lead up forward when he first came into the team. Even somebody like Crameri, who was trying to make it as a big-bodied half-back / mid, didn’t find his right spot until Hirdy (or maybe it was Cuddles… nah, fark it, give it to Hirdy) saw his potential as a marking forward. None of these guys looked much at age 19.

It’s late, and I know I"m not articulating this very well, but what I"m trying to say is that a young guy isn’t going to excel, when it’s still not clear what type of player he is. In two or three years time, his physical attributes may be quite different to what they are now, and they may end up dictating where he finds his spot.

Anyway, with all that in mind, I think he is travelling pretty damn well, and although he may take a bit longer than some of the other young stars we have running around, I still believe he has the potential to be the pick of the bunch.

That fortnight of vfl form was enough to leave me completely convinced he is a mid who will compliment parish and zerret perfectly, who will work back hard to give defenders a chop out in the air, who will push forward and take marks in mismatches, who will be hard to tackle and capable of finding space in the contest and who will be better on the spread than jobe. People see him get caught twice on the weekend and seize on it but just about everything else he did was silk and damaging.

I definitely see the inside mid in him.

But those hands… Those 50m roosted goals… I wouldn’t write that possibility off just yet, he could end up quite the beast in a few years.

I’d like to have seen he and Lav swap roles late in the last I reckon Lav could’ve done some valuable bash and crash when we were getting punished in the centre late and langers ability to find space/beat an opponent and cooly slot a goal would’ve been nice

He’s the exception that proves the rule in so many ways. I honestly don’t have a comparison for him or any idea of what to expect or what he will be.

Is he a Mesut Özil laconic looking genius who will never have the 35 possession, 7 tackle, 3 goal games that the casual observer needs to actually rate a player but will make life easier for everyone he plays with?

Is he a Jack Watts/Bryce Gibbs without the crippling pressure of expectation in that he’s obviously pure silk from day one, but doesn’t have the mongrel that other rookies use to cover the fact that they’re still learning so will keep taking gradual steps for the next 5-8 years before peaking in his mid to late 20s?

Is he going to thrive in a stronger team next year or is he going to struggle to make it in for many games because what he does is more subtle and doesn’t “demand” a spot like a Fantasia or a Laverde does with those flashes of effort + determination in a piece of play?

Does he have an unfortunate knack of finding himself in pressure situations, or is it a combination of his team mates passing the buck and confirmation bias?

I honestly think I could make a convincing argument for or against any one of those points.

About the only thing I can definitively say about him is that he’s disgustingly talented.

I feel like he’ll be a great litmus test of where our club is at, because I reckon he’d be amazing if he’d developed at Hawthorn or Sydney and would be a complete bust if he’d developed at Brisbane or Gold Coast. I suspect Kyle will tell us where we fall on that spectrum.

langFWD (and mid)