You could argue the selection panel were being adventurous with McNiece and backing in his field kicking to open up some congestion/ didn’t quite work out that way but worth a shot.
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Way too harsh on McNiece by most posters, the guy has been given no chance to play his best footy
When he came into the side to debut he was hailed as being exactly what we needed etc etc now hes had 12 months of being unable to train or play gotten some fitness and throw back in under prepared and people critisize him!
I still see him as having a lot of potential to play an important role but our developement and coaching team need to do the right thing by him for that to happen
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He got selected so we could play McGrath in midfield. And fresh legs in defence.
Not that difficult to understand.
All the ins were about run & spread through midfield. McGrath was dominant early on as well.
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If that’s the only reason a player gets selected then the coaches should be sacked now!
Do you think good sides bring in underdone players?
Look he may have, regardless I don’t see how he’s a walk up start in this side
Problem is he’s too slow for his size & he crappped the bed when he needed to go several times yesterday. At 26, that ain’t going to change.
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An option would have been to drop McGrath back and bring in Clarke. I agree though that the idea was to utilise Ben’s kicking - which ended up not working at all.
Why wasn’t Redman selected then, he can fill the same roll, at least has some game time and form in the 2’s. Was held over from the previous VFL game and now with the bye didn’t play last week.
Selection and Development at the moment is a joke.
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Because Ben has a fully sick Mo like Myers and Joe do!
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give him a chance guys, he’s still learning the game, being from india and all.
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Adventurous is one word you could use.
Far, far from it.
I’ve got no issue with Ben, he’s been stuffed around.
Really, how?
Because Redman is not a lock down defender. Nor is he as small as McNiece. Horses for courses. I would like Redman to get a gig across half back at some point though. Kid can play, and has a bit of attitude about him.
And you’d find that if Redman had of played, Mutch wouldn’t have. That 6’1" - 6’2" runner is the position that was on offer for those guys, not small defender.
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His pace is actually pretty good. I’d agree that at 26, he has far less time to adjust to the tempo of AFL footy than the usual 1st or 2nd year kid. But it was only his 3rd game and his first for this year and off an interrupted preparation. I’ll cut him some slack and hope we don’t do the predicable and dump him right away.
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His inability to mark under pressure was seriously exposed on weekend
Give him a block of games. See if he’s up to it, if he is he is, if he isn’t put him back and ship him off. That’s gotta be the approach with every bloke who wasn’t considered best 22 this year. We need to find out about our list one way or another
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Exactly. By year’s end, we need to know a lot more about Lav, Langford, Mutch, McNeice, Redman, Clark, Ridley and Draper (and hopefully Francis).
We already know all there is to know about Luenberger, McKernan, JMerrett, Dea, and their value to us is as backups only.
It is legitimately too early to be making evaluations of Lavender, Houlihan, Zork and Mynott, so not the same urgency to have a look at them at AFL level.
But we aren’t going to win it this year. We need to take every opportunity to
- develop the talent we have drafted and don’t yet know whether they can be best 22
- give ourselves the best chance to make the right list management decisions at year’s end.
Do we need to draft a small defender? Playing McNeice will help us know that. Playing Baguley won’t.
Same with Draper/Luenberger, Redman/Dea, Ridley/Hartley, Langford/Myers/Clark etc etc.
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Depth player at most but he goes ok