nowhere near Rozee’s knee but that cheap arse potato vision alternate angle actually shows his head probably did hit the ground… 
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Its hilarious how the play the kids meme persists.
We are literally playing the youngest team in the AFL.
But Parish will now be the old man now stopping the kids.
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Hobbsy.
Harrison Jones would look at that and think “I got suspended for that”.
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And again, he hit the ground with a lot of force directly on the shoulder and his head whips quite severely. Its not unreasonable that he’d clutch his head even as just an instinctive reaction.
The whole thing stinks and really just highlights the afls ineptitude with these matters.
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It’s time for Christian to step down. You can debate all you like if their was contact to the head from Rozees knee or the ground but that is the wrong incident to make an example of. There are alot of worse plays for free kicks every round that don’t get pulled up. As Ross the Boss says, It’s farcical. Also if Robbo seen this incident he would be flabberbasted
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North and hawks are out of the rebuild now so iam not exactly sure what your point is with all that.
My point was playing these sort of guys and mark my words they will end up playing will just lift us off the bottom four and into that no mans land again that isn’t doing a proper rebuild and bringing in high end talent which is usually found in the top three or four in draft.
Like I said I think we are doing a rebuild on the run trying to win as many games as we can but add talent unfortunately it doesn’t work because you don’t bring in the elite talent.
To add to that when parish comes back it’s more than likely Hobbs that will need to make way are people going to be happy with that
You’ve just described most of the AFL tbf
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Really? I don’t see many defenders here over the journey. I reckon he’s copped his fair share of stick for not being good enough.
I’ve probably said it a number of times but we have a fair few poor kicks so we can’t really cover for that many at once in the same team - makes it hard to fit him in despite his other attributes
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My point is we’re getting younger and playing younger players in our selected teams. That is a rebuild.
North are not out of their rebuild yet. They are probably where Hawthorn were in 2023.
Every team that goes for a rebuild doesn’t just throw out all the old players and play youngsters all at once. Hawthorn of the early 2000s still had Peter Everett, Jonathan Hay, Richie Vandenberg, Joel Smith and Brad Dixon all the same age as Parish is now when they drafted Franklin, Lewis and Roughead. And they kept Crawford through that period to until they won a premiership.
To use us in the 90s as an example, we rebuilt and prioritised youngsters. But still had O’Donnell, Thompson, Watson, Harvey, Wallis, Grenvold, Long, Somerville, Bewick and Chris Daniher who were from previous ‘rebuilds’ that played at the time as well.
What we did in 2023 and 2024 wasn’t a rebuild. It was trying to win every game possible. Good or bad, that was a clear board directive.
Rebuild on the run and rebuild are the same thing. You just don’t know where the bottom is. For us it could have been last week, it could be in a month’s time, it might be next year. If we have a coach who is getting this list into mid table, then we have a good coach in place. We don’t have a good list to come with it.
You don’t need top 5 picks to build a good list. The Hawks grabbed Will Day at 19 in 2019, 2020 was Grainger-Barras at 6, 2021 was Josh Ward at 7, 2022 was Cam Mackenzie at 7 and 2023 was Nick Watson at 5. They only had 1 top 5 pick and the rest were in a similar range as Tsatas, Cox, Perkins and Reid. Yes, you have a better chance of getting superstars early in the draft, but to build a team, you need to use the rest of your picks and free agent pickups to their optimum as well. That’s been our biggest problem.
Hobbs isn’t that good a player. He is very limited. He’s done nothing more and nothing less than Josh Sinn from Port. Angus Sheldrick was taken in the same draft and is far better as an inside midfielder than Parish. He was the only junior who could actually defend and counter attack JHF. But he’s struggled to get on the park and is suffering similar problems to Hobbs (others have gone past him). But Sydney would definitely play Sheldrick ahead of Parish if they ever acquired Hobbs. And they’d play Hobbs in the forward line.
I don’t think Hobbs is going to develop into the player we thought we’d need when he was drafted. Tsatas is developing better and has the better body type for it. Durham and Caldwell are better midfielders than him. And that’s before you even get to Shiel and Parish.
I’m fine Hobbs getting games wherever possible and think his best position is in the forward line for defensive pressure or against certain team being a high half forward working up to the contest and helping out the contest.
I have no issues playing Parish ahead of Hobbs. Where it gets tricky is how the midfield time gets distributed when have Merrett, Durham, Caldwell, Parish, Shiel and Tsatas in the same team. I suspect we’ll shift Parish and Shiel elsewhere and prioritise Merrett, Durham, Caldwell and Tsatas. Time will tell. Same as we’ve shifted Jones elsewhere to prioritise Caddy. As we’ve done Ridley to prioritise Reid.
We’re not throwing youngsters all together into the ocean and seeing which ones sink and which ones swim. Previous rebuild teams don’t do that either.
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I agree with everything you said about Tsatas iam only in this thread because i was told Hobbs is better than Tsatas and that Hobbs should be in the afl side and Tsatas in the vfl
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“The poster” was me. Hi. Actually if you do look back at my original post, you’ll notice I said nothing about Hobbs at that point. I did say Tsatas might have to bide his time. I stand by that.
I think you responded to that with “that’s crazy talk” though I feel like suggesting a 13 gamer may have to bide his time is actually quite a reasonable take.
Thats when you followed up by saying that Tsatas is miles ahead of Hobbs. I disagreed. And for the sake of not getting into a ■■■■■■■ contest, I left it there.
However, you’ve kept going and you’ve missed the point, in fact you’ve misrepresented my point. At no point have I compared the pair. Because they have different roles. Hobbs is more of a bullocking in and under midfielder, Tsatas is more creative and elusive. This is probably why Hobbs averages double the tackles per game Tsatas does at the minute. They will eventually be playing together in the midfield, and complementing each other quite well I think.
The reason Tsatas might (and I said might) have to bide his time is balance of the midfield - which is the context of the post I was replying to in the first place.
Anyhow. Fark Carlton.
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Agreed Fark Carlton
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He is an overall better kick than Tsatas but probably more inconsistent.
He can hit a 30 meter bullet pass which Tsatas cant but he can also sky them and shank them.
Its more consistency with Ben.
Very hard to be an effective front pressuring half forward if you’re slower than nearly everyone else on the field (let alone agility and stamina)
They wont
“Mystery solved. The Hobbs staging fine. Asked for a better angle from the AFL, which shows Hobbs doesn’t get close to Rozee’s knee. The AFL ruled Hobbs didn’t hit his head on the ground but grabbed his head to milk a free kick,” says Jon AFL-licker Ralph.
That’s utter biassed bullcrap, which is typical of Ralph. The video shows that Hobbs grabbed his head after a sling tackle. It doesn’t show that he was faking it, trying to milk a free. It shows he had a sore head. It’s unChristian’s duty, and that fawning idiot Ralph’s duty too, to consider what other reason Hobbs might have had to grab his head, e.g., because his head had just been thrown violently back and forth in the tackle, which could easily have caused a headache.
The former Collingwood player hack, Michael unChristian is on an anti-Essendon campaign, as has been pointed out by others here (with Jon Ralph’s mindless support). Wright, Merrett and now Hobbs have fallen victim to his bias in the past 12 months. It’s high time the Club took a stand against him. He should be removed from his position, immediately. The Club and Hobbs should refuse to pay the fine and take the matter to Law.
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Although this is correct, it implies things occurred very differently to what happened.
- Kelly was offered a contract, but declined
- Stringer and Hind were traded/delisted due to their off field associates. There is nothing to say both would not have been retained if not for that.
I’m not sure how protecting our pick from the Kako bid has anything to do with a rebuild. It was just good common sense value gathering.
We’ve also stated we’re aiming for finals.
Hawks deliberately traded out the older players they could for value. As did North. We have only put up players past it or with off-field issues for trade.
North are bringing in some experience as they are now trying to move up the ladder.
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All well and good.
We’re talking about two players in our current 23 that people think are holding us back from a rebuild.
Yet, if you look at what most people see as a rebuild, they also have those players of similar age playing games whilst developing.
It’s not 23 players all under the age of 23.
I’ll leave it at that though.
This is the Hobbs thread, not the list management thread.