We need to address our dearth of inside mid quality simple as that. With Watson retiring at the end of the year we are actually a worse line up in 2018 than we are now and we are bottom 4 now. We should of gone after him last year when there was less competition, this year we need to grab Tom Rockliff. Best clearance player in the game. Averages 6 stoppage clearances a games plus 2.5 centre clearances + 30 possessions. He is a high quality player we can add straight away, not ideal in terms of age, but should give us 2-3 years of high output. Relying on Langford and drafting kids is absolutely not the way forward if we plan on playing finals. I would also be looking at the following players, and it’s time to pay overs if we have to. This is the absolutely priority, we don’t fix this part of our game we are not going to be a good side.
Dayne Zorko - averages 6 clearances inside out, kicks goals, gun, throw a heap of cash at him.
Jarryd Lyons - had a great year averaging 6.5 clearances and 15 contested possessions, let’s get him.
Zac Williams - not big clearance numbers yet but has only started playing mid from HB. Decent contested possession ratio, an absolute jet in the making.
Seb Ross - nearly 6 clearances a game has improved massively, their is a family connection let’s throw some cash at him
Personally I’m be having a massive crack at both Martin and Kelly and I’d be handing over 2 first round picks for Kelly in a heartbeat. I’d be happily using Francis in the trade if it got GWS juices flowing. But if we are out of the race for these two then we have to look at other mature options.
I agree but I’d be having a massive crack at Rockliff and Kelly.
Rockliff is also a free agent but would cost a lot less than Martin
All in on Kelly and be bit with our list cull
Had a great game against Hawthorn: 21 disposals (12 contested) @ 95% efficiency, 6 clearances, 6 marks, 9 tackles, 2 goals and 3 1%s with only 68% game time.
Adelaide would spew if we lured him away, and it might take a bit to do so. But kid has a massive upside that suits our needs.
You’ve gotta remember he’s a mature age player not a kid so he’s actually at his peak right now. Its very much like when we’ve grabbed guys from the VFL like Brown & Hartley - they are plug & play but often not as much upside. Right now he would be on a minimum contract so its the right time to try to lure him BUT he’s also brand new so would not have been factored for in any planning. This is sort of a honeymoon period where some players get no attention & can hurt you. Once teams start to put some time into countering him he may struggle. Not saying he will, plenty of guys like Barlow & Zorko have made later career starts & play very good football, but it is very very hard to know what you are chasing right now. I’m not against the idea, Adelaide did similar to us with Jenkins, but 5 games in might be too early to declare him a prime target. Last year Adelaide let Lyons walk for very cheaply & I wanted us to chase him. This may indicate the Crows are or at least were cap tight.
Their cap can’t have been that tight if they were going to be able to fit Gibbs in on big $$, albeit they cut Lyons to allow for that.
Both Mitch McGovern (from WA) and Jake Lever (from Vic) remain unsigned with home state clubs chasing them hard so if either goes frees up cash as well.
Difference between Greenwood and Brown/Hartley/Baguley types is that although Greenwood isn’t exactly a kid, he was out of the aussie-rules game for quite a while playing basketball instead, until a couple of years ago when the Crows Cat-B rookie-listed him. So he’s still got plenty of room for improvement. Just don’t have to wait for him to put on some kilos.
We should be putting time into luring Connor Blakely home from Freo. I think he could turn out to be a top 20 AFL player in time. I thought his kicking was suspect coming through underage football - but it seems above average. Great balance and poise and a creative, intelligent midfielder. Am I alone on this one?
Given our poor stoppage numbers this season I’m really surprised Bird hasn’t been given a go yet. Seems his papers might already be stamped. Also, an unpopular view is why Hocking hasn’t at least been tried beyond the slop-fest that was the round 3 Carlton game. At least Hocking could compete & take out the oppositions better clearance players. I’d take a break even at stoppages rather than the smashings we tend to get which more often than not results in losses. I guess it depends on what we’re trying to get out of the season. Are we in win now for finals mode or looking to groom for future run? I’d like us to have a crack this year as I believe playing finals would be a great reward for our players & supporters for what we’ve endured the past four years and would give the club great impetus for pre season leading into 2018.
I’m hoping we trade to obtain Hopper and use free agency to bring in Rockliff. If we can use 2018 first rounder for Hopper so we get a shot at the 2017 first round then we’ve done well.
Regarding the 2017 first round, ideally we could try and get Davis-Uniake, but realistically I’m hoping that we can trade into a position to draft Worpel or Cerra. Add one more good ball user and I think we’ve sorted the current and emerging inside midfield numbers.
It’s a bit hard to tell what the midfield will look like next year, but the problem would still remain the same no matter who we got.
You can get martin, you can get kelly you can get anyone, but if you surround them with all of watson, goddard, zakaharkis and hepp at center clearences or stoppages in general, you’ll face the same problems as this year.
The problem this year is, like it or not they are starting 22 players and are mostly being played as midfielders.
Yet as a combined combination that’s woeful for the stats you all want and crave, contested clearences.
If you remove watson and goddard from that mix (as an example) Zaka only stays on the wing and hepp is surrounded by zerrett and parish, coyler tippa and raz for patches then it becomes way more damaging.
the problem for this year is, sentiment dictates you won’t remove those 2, so you’re stuck having to be forced to play them, and they don’t really fit anywhere else, so you’re stuck playing them midfield.
We have some significant problems in the midfield granted. But not playing Goddard and Watson will not help our contested possessions. There both still in our top 4 clearance players and their both better than our alternative inside players. If you replace Watson and Goddard with more of Parish, Fantasia and Tippa it would help us when we don’t have the ball but it certainly wouldn’t help us get it. I think Worsfold has got the balance pretty right considering what he has to chose from. Replacing a Langford/Myers or dare I say a Watson with a D.Martin would have a massive effect on the dynamics of our midfield.