With Laverde having to recover from injury, I suspect Stewart gets a guernsey in our best forward line this year.
Next year I quite like
FF: The Corgi, Hooker, Walla
HF:Lav Joe Raz
With The Langford, Big Boy Begley, Parish and Trav all rotating into the forward line with all of our sub 197cm forwards rotating into the midfield as well. Lav and The Langford would share the third tall role and we will have more midfield options and reinforcements.
Mind you if Stewart develops into a Joe style forward (lite version at least) with surer hands and better use of his body, while running like a midfielder, I think I might reconsider my position, and Lav, Langford and Big Boy may have to focus more on the midfield and share with Raz, Walla and the Corgi.
Only one person (me) has offered mild criticism. You’d think that every second person had torn strips of him judging by the reaction.
When I joined Blitz you were often complaining that “golden boys” Hird and Lloyd were sacred cows that could not be criticized. Now you can’t even handle critique of James Stewart. He ain’t Hird or Lloyd.
Blitz isn’t characterized by a host of posters mercilessly tearing strips off players. What is far more common is hysterical overreactions to even the mildest critiques. Dissenting opinIons are quickly shut down around here. Baaa.
Take this thread as an example. One poster has said he has reservations about him. There was nothing mean-spirited or over the top said. Yet the response would suggest otherwise.
Some people want this place to be an extension of the cheer squad. Others want to discuss the game pragmatically and in detail. There’s no reason why both groups can’t coexist.
Yep, agree, but look at the comparisons you make and how you made them… the actual words you chose to use to describe the ‘different camps’. That shows which side of the line you’re sitting
He needs a few more tricks IMO. It’s a pity his ruckwork isn’t much chop, because that would be pretty ■■■■■■ useful.
I don’t reckon he’ll ever be a genuine key forward unless his contested marking improves quite dramatically, but he is carving out a little niche in our forward line atm, and he’s offering more than Francis or Langford were in the same role.
While I do think our forward line has been better with him in it, he’s still got a ways to go to lock himself in there.
It has to be said that he’s certainly been well worth the pick 71(ish) that we gave up for him.
Nowhere that I can see did I say anything about people not being allowed to criticise/critique players. What I did say that it was pretty typical Blitz for people to trot out negatives about someone after they have just put in a pretty ■■■■■■ handy performance. I must say I find your response to what I said to be the ‘over the top’ one.
Your world must be a bit different to mine. Because in my world, when someone has just put in the best performance they have ever made for you, that is the time for a bit of celebration. That is the time for a bit of encouragement and a bit of praise. A bit of enjoyment. Definitely not the time to trot out negatives. Plenty of time for that, just not at that point.
I always thought cherry picking involved a lot of hanging goal side of the pack every time because you couldn’t be ■■■■■■ running up the ground to defend.
Just watched the replay. He was very useful presenting up and leaving space behind him. Less obvious but quite promising was an athletic step and ability to cleanly take the ball in traffic then keep the hands free to dish it out to advantage. There’s a bit more to this bloke imo than “just” a third marking option. We won’t really know for another year or two though.
The best thing about the current forwards kicking goals is Lav, Begley etc have to perform to displace them. Regardless of what people think of Stewart, he’s creating a terrific problem to have.
I actually think that this guy will be a very good player. His over 200cm and played bugger all senior footy. From all reports he has a terrific attitude and works very hard at his game. I think his aggressiveness after ground balls is now very good. He just needs to learn how and when to use his body in the air, and how to hit a pack with pace. Both are things that take all the bigger blokes time to develop.
His skills, kicking, and athleticism are all top notch.
At least Ants hasn’t done a blow by blow description of his whole game, taking over-analysis to the extreme.
Gleeson beat Winguard, that’s all I care about.
My question is whether he can do those things when we aren’t up against an insipid performance pressure wise and tactically which we were against Port.
With the third genuine tall he gives us the “one lead up, two stay behind” extreme tall forwards that works so well for us.
This allows us to kick shorter to a lead up, so we are not just bombing it in long and allow a stay at home defender to just pick off our forward entries.
THAT is why he (and the other forwards) worked so well
