None of our mids broke lines yesterday. Saying we don’t need slower mids is like saying we don’t need Heppell back. Langford, who was tagging, isn’t quick. Replacing Langford with Clarke makes no difference from a speed perspective. If you want speed, then releasing the quicker mids is a better idea. Leave the grunt work to actual inside mids. We’re incredibly slow in the midfield with McGrath and Shiel tied up in contests.
Our midfield continuously gets smashed in big games because we really don’t have any strength in contests. McGrath’s biggest weapon is his speed. What use is that going to be if he’s continuously playing in congestion with no bigger body to support him? Parish and at least one of Clarke and Hibberd should be doing the grunt work. If we use Clarke as a tagger, then Hibberd should be coming in while Heppell is out.
You said slower mids were the last thing we needed - you are, as usual completely & utterly wrong. Speed is overrated especially when you can’t get your hands on the ball. If football was a sprint race I’m sure our midfield would rate well but its not & its the complete lack of stronger, bigger (which usually means slower) inside mids that continues to see our midfield beaten.
BTW - is Hibberd actually slow? I only saw him 3 times last year but he didn’t look slow to me.
I guess you can’t be too slow at HB (where he started his career) so I doubt he’s that slow.
You’re exactly right with our speed. Even though we have a lot of fast midfielders in Merrett, Shiel and McGrath, our spread is horrible because those mids are having to do the hard work.
We need those players to distribute from congestion.
I think we need a Brad Hill type to gut run and use their speed, and I also think we need a big inside player that can help us win more clearances. If we ever bothered to use Parish in the midfield it would at least help on the inside part. I don’t see anyone in the reserves to help us as a speedy winger.
we need outright quality in midfield (and everywhere else) first and foremost. but yeah, outside is more pressing need by far.
I just refuse to buy into this delusion that Hibberd or Clarke are the same as Bontempelli/Fyfe/Pendlebury/Kennedy/Cripps - or that we’re so absolutely desperately terrible at clearances, that we need to re-configure the whole side full of average clearance mids, who don’t/can’t do much else
The conviction of this site that Fyfe, Kennedy and Cripps were going to destroy us these last three games seemingly not shaken by the fact that neither of them did.
If we have one aim for our midfield setup, it needs to be to get our existing most talented mids on the ball as much as possible. We’ve been struggling to find enough midfield time for Parish & Langford & even McGrath since, what, 2017?
Clarke or Hibberd makes that harder.
He looks like a borderline AFL/great VFL player to me. Similar level to Clarke, Mutch - bit bigger than either, better runner than Clarke, better inside than Mutch.
I could see him playing a few useful AFL games but I don’t think he’ll be a gamechanger.
Without an elite ruckman we should be playing Clarke and Guelfi in the midfield. These type of guys will do anything not to lose the contest and hack it out either by hand or foot. Rotate Shiel, Merrett, McGrath, Smith and Parish as the player you protect to get the clean clearance. Due to circumstance we need our better players on the outside where they can actually damage oppositions. There is no point wasting 3 of our better players on the inside where they can’t protect each other or get silver service.
Yep.
A good Ruck is like having an extra midfielder.
They don’t need to win every tap but they need to have some mobility and agility to win possession and lay a tackle if need be. Tom just has no secondary effort which effectively leaves us a man down at stoppages
Correct. The mids that are being slammed now actually performed pretty well against bigger bodied mids in those games.
Something else happened last night. The stats are damning: disposals 267 - 332, clearances 23 - 37, uncontested possessions 140 - 201, uncontested marks 49 - 80. We were smashed on the inside and the outside.
According to the AFL tracker we covered greater distance than Carlton (in total and at high speed) and had a higher average speed in attack and defence. But Carlton’s mids dominated the individual stats. It looks like a midfield work rate issue.
And where was the forward handball? Our game plan seem to break under pressure.
Not having an inside bull was the least of our worries last night. Poor midfield workrate, poor ball movement and an underperforming ruck were all bigger issues.
