#45 Conor McKenna - the first six years

My favourite Long moment might be when he put Tony Lockett down with a front-on body-contact hip-and-shoulder. Was hilarious, and great evidence that technique matters.

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Anyway… this clip (it’s cued to the spot). Gonna blow games apart…

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Was this the moment where Tim Watson said he just started laughing on the field?

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And a goose step!

One of the best in the intra-club.

He is in for an absolute blinder of a year if he keeps it going.

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Him and saad are going to be terrifying for other teams.

so much run and overlap and kicking skills.

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It’s always a bit tricky attempting to read much into an intra club game, but one thing that stood out was that Conor was being used as the designated kicker by almost everyone.
Last year you’d expect him to get and go, but yesterday he was used repeatedly purely for his ability to hit targets off either foot.
Yeah, he can still try and take off on a mad dash, but this new level of trust by team mates, and being used to change the direction of the attack, is relatively new.

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Can McKenna/Saad form a better partnership than Malceski/McVeigh?

Teams are gonna tag him hard this year. He’s gonna have to battle through that.

There was a diagonal, left foot pass from McKenna in Q1 to Stewart out wide that went 40m lace out.

Most players struggle to do that on their preferred foot, let alone their non-preferred one.

He is now easily the best kick in the team.

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Which is where the beauty of Saad comes in.
By the time they’ve tagged Conor, Saad, and possibly Hurley, Gleeson, & BJ, to prevent our run from defence there are not a lot of forwards left in their half.
I’m very happy about that.

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Tag Mckeena ? I just don’t think that it will work. He is too quick for one thing and secondly if you did that Saad would be on the loose and we would win out in that area.

The Mckeena- Saad Show is going to be ELITE.

Irish will get a truck load of Brownlow votes this year. Go you good thing

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It makes me chuckle that half way through last year there were plenty of cranky shortsighted blitzes insisting on “. Stop the experiment” Now McKenna is definitely one of or most important players.

Footy is a wonderful thing

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I wouldn’t want to be tagging Irish.

He loves the tough stuff and can look after himself very well. Any tagger will know they have been playing on him.

I suspect we may seem him starting to move a bit into the midfield by the end of this year. He’s just too good a talent in close and has that amazing turn of speed.

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So it’s official, my work here is done.

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It is. You’ll have to get yourself over to the Langford thread now.

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Connor kicked the ball to himself while running. I suppose that is equivalent to a bounce. But his opponent appeared to be confused by it. If he kicked it instead of bouncing, could he then be penalised if immediately tackled?

It’s well established that drop kicks are only allowed some of the time.

Based on that, first time I’d say it’s legal but the decision could be anything, and shortly afterwards an interpretation would come in to not allow it.

Kicking the ball is correct disposal. Theoretically it’s a new possession when he catches it.

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I don’t think that is correct. If you handball to yourself and get tackled it’s still holding the ball I believe.