Shiel was never a first possession type inside mid at GWS and certainly isnt with us
We need players winning the tap off the ruck and giving to him
I seem to remember Parish winning the ball in instances when ruck drops it just behind himself in close on the defensive side. Whereas Shiel is often starting on the offensive side and needing ball hit into space more so.
Be interesting to see analysis on times where a player could/should have got a clearance via a clear ruck tap to them but didn’t as fumbled or otherwise.
How often was the tap out actually hit in direction/area that Shiel, McGrath etc could actually potentially get a clearance etc
As far as I’m concerned, McGrath has shown he’s clearly our best clearance mid, with Parish/Zerrett/Shiel reasonably close after that - for various reasons. Caldwell isn’t quite at that level, but I hope he’s in that 2nd tier pretty soon.
Ideally you’d have 6 guys in that rotation, so I guess Langford gets in there too as well.
And I think the overarching point is this: if we were absolutely desparate to win that match on the weekend, we “should” have done a bunch of things differently, from matchups to setups to rotations.
People should think on that, and the implications.
(Or keep blindly mashing their keyboard in rage. Your choice).
I think Shiel’s role at the centre bounce is to get on the end of the 1st possession by merrett, mcgrath or caldwell and use his acceleration and evasive skills. He seems to do this well.
What is more difficult to see on TV is his defensive work at stoppages.
@Dunlop Thank you for doing this, it is excellent.
1 game is a small sample size, so I won’t read too much into it just yet.
I’m much more interested in the winning % than the actual centre clearance (I believe this is awarded to the bloke who gets the final clearing possession, correct? Not necessarily the bloke who gets first hands on it and is often more important?)
I guess we are going to see Parish with a consistently high winning % and low attendance rate yet again this year…
One thing I found interesting was Merrett’s return. I am definitely an advocate for using him more on a wing or hbf to better utilise his skillset. However we only went 1 from 6 when he didn’t attend the centre bounce for this game. I will continue to watch that with interest.