yeh but it’s hawthorn
a win is important
Heppell has had 10 weeks of form and consistency, has body of work behind him now where he can go into the middle for a few weeks, and protect Merrett and Parish.
Development wise we can expect to see Perkins play a lot more on the ball to.
And ham will get a lot more time on the wing.
And cox and jones will be getting opportunities.
there is no one to come in from the reserves, unless you want cahill, but i would rather him play small forward snelling role until he returns.
Yeah I hear you. I wouldn’t chuck a fit if Hepp was returned as an on baller with the number of injuries we have through there. I can see the rationale as it’s not like he’d be holding back promising young midfielders that we have just ready to unleash.
I get your point re hepp but I think we need to build solidarity in defence and keep them as 1 unit so they get the best understanding of the system and each other.
Durham playing next game is total fantasy land stuff. The justification of ‘let’s see if he can play to AFL standard’….well let’s get him to training at an AFL club for more than a week first hey?
I would much rather guelfi cover Heppell in defence, than McGrath in the midfield.
Like the Cats, when one of their stars got injured they would shuffle James Kelly or Corey enright through the middle and they would play a blinder, then go back to defence the next week.
Other option is stringer/Perkins to play majority of game as a mid, this would help keep Waterman in the side and help the forward line balance.
You just play Zaka.
Even if we did what we should have done, play Cahill, even if you select Cahill in the 22 and Zaka was SUB, he still would have come on early with the McGrath injury.
Zaka is in decline, in the last year of his contract, and is now a depth player.
We are using him exactly for that purpose.
There is zero point playing Zaka anymore, injured or not his time has come to an end. Forget finals, that shouldn’t matter, its about building the squad for 2022 and beyond. I would be playing Cahill every single week in front of him, let’s see if the kid can make it, so atleast we can make in informed decision at the end of the season.
Bye certainly needed to freshen up the legs and hopefully see a few players return albeit there isn’t too many who’d be ok, Draper, Wright & hopefully Smith off top of my head.
With further injuries again however we are really being forced to get by with depth options
Need to return to our preferred fwd structure talls wise and with sufficient fwd pressure players, Cahill in Snellings role
B: Hind Stewart Laverde
HB: Ridley Francis Heppell
C: Cox Langford Guelfi
HF: Smith Wright Jones
F: Stringer Hooker TIPPA
R: Draper Parish Merrett
B: Perkins Ham Cahill Redman
Sub: Waterman/Gleeson
Would rather a mid over Waterman/Gleeson as sub but we’ve got no-one, unless Durham gets fast tracked which seems very unlikely.
I guess we have options to play Heppell in midfield and have Gleeson/Durham drop into HBF also. Not sure they’d want to shift him however, prefer to keep that back 7 working together.