With commentators say Perkins should be a permanent midfielder now after last game, do we now have a surplus in that role?
Merrett
Hobbs - Currently playing more forward flank than on ball
Caldwell - can only really play inside
Shiel - wing
Langford - On ball?
Parish - inside but spent years forward
Perkins - high forward
Don’t want to see Hobbs beint wasted as a forward like Parish was.
Check out our VFL side and you can see we don’t have a surplus of mids.
That’s because we cram all our mids into the AFL side
RISH
RATH
We definitely don’t have a surplus of mids.
You need depth to cover injuries and you want pressure for spots.
We have a lot of similar size mids that need midfield time.
Merrett, Hobbs, Parish, Caldwell and Shiel are all pure mids in my eyes.
You then want to roll one of Stringer, Perkins or Langford through there.
I don’t think Caldwell or Hobbs will get enough time in the midfield when all are playing.
No surprise when Parish is out Caldwell has his best game for the year.
I reckon Caldwell and Hobbs are a lot more similar to Parish than Shiel and Merrett are. Despite all being around the same height.
Shiel has burst acceleration and Merrett has his kicking.
I agree they don’t all play the same.
All of those guys are too good for VFL so we need to play them or lose them.
Moving Shiel or Parish on for a player who can perform in the forward half makes sense.
The way our injury list gets turned over we shouldn’t even be having this discussion. It’s very rare that we’ve got all available.
Having the one less full-time on ball player means others get a look through there. Hobbs and Perkins have been beneficiaries, but probably Caldwell really relished the extra time at the coalface. As has been said, it’s not like we’ve got oodles of mids that there are 3-4 really good quality AFL standard players in the VFL like the Dogs that are blatantly too good for that level. A list manager who will look at things objectively would probably execute a trade on one of Parish or Merrett and try to extract maximum value whilst they are at their peaks to either invest in the draft or bring in another quality player that can address other needs in the team. But as long as Dodoro is there that will never occur.
Trading Parish would be genuine insanity
I think this myth has been busted. He’s proven to be more versatile than what was advertised when we traded for him. He’s a mid for sure, but he has way more tricks than “100% inside only”.
It’s…worth seeing what we could get back though.
Plus Shiel is 29 and played two good games in 12. There’ll be room soon.
Disagree, not insanity.
I think it’s worthy of consideration from a midfield balance pov
If we want to improve midfield balance we should trade the non-reigning AA midfielders first I think
On the surface of it yeah it would. But not if you had enormous faith in Caldwell and Hobbs and felt it could improve your list in other areas of need. Supporters are unlikely to look at things so coldly and dispassionately though, I understand that. It’d be a million to one to happen anyhow.
Maybe we have to make sure that Parish and Merrett don’t hog all the on-ball minutes.
Parish benefited from Shiel’s absence last year, Shiel benefiting from Parish’s absence now.
Perkins should be spending more time inside now.
And add Martin to the list.