Just on Hobbs.
He’s our strongest mid in terms of muscle size and body strength.
Surely he is the player to go head to head with these strong bodied extractors.
He doesnt have to beat them, as were talking about some great mids of the competition.
He does need to quell some of their influence if we are prioritising him over others in the midfield.
If he cannot do this, what is the point of keeping him on the list ?
We created a spot in our backline to play with freedom and distribute the ball, and put one of our creative forward players there.
We could have tried Mass there, Martin is not great defensively either.
Did he have defensive shortcomings, yes, but they were massively overblown when he was made a scapegoat for the St Kilda loss.
Our midfield is fine… once Bryan kicks on well see a top tier midfield. We need improvement in either end rather than the mids
Don’t disagree with any of that. I’m just saying D’Ambrosio plays on the wing for the Hawks and we never gave him that chance.
No, you get rid of players like that when your list build is an utter failure and you need to start again before its too late.
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McGrath & Redman will do better now that Heppell & Kelly are gone IF we replace Heppell & Kelly with players that can run & kick. Ridley will also step up.
The backline is where our most important draft moves need to happen IMO
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That is just way too many “ifs” for the Essendon system to accomodate.
Shocking? No, Unfortunately it is a run of the mill draft for us, with yet more absolute failures and no stars.
If someone wants Hobbs we should take the deal.
He is tough as nails but what else does he offer.
Poor decision maker. Slow decision maker. Average skills. Average speed. Just lacks footy smarts
our midfield is also SH-T
depends on what they offer.
A question that always interests me is would Hobbs be a better player and more advanced if selected by another club? On Hobbs specifically I actually doubt it. On many other players I think it’s likely.
That’s the art of a good coach and system.
I’m not convinced Hobbs has a high ceiling. I don’t think his potential improvement is nearly as high as other younger players on the list. Thats an important point and it’s a point noted by North list boss Scott Clayton to a close friend of mine last week. He / they don’t rate Hobbs. He said he was more confident Tsatas had scope for improvement to become a good player. Interesting view.
I wonder if they rate will Phillips, I think Hobbs has a higher ceiling than him.
Most would agree Tsatas has higher ceiling, due to bigger size, speed and production, just need to fix up kicking.
Rowell smashes every midfield group at clearances. Its what he does.
Our midfield ranks in the top half a dozen metrics on everything that matters
I agree.
I don’t believe Hobbs gets much better.
Tsatas has some elite qualities that can be seen.
Can he improve the footskills sufficiently to make an AFL player is the question ?
The “turnover” is a lack of pressure in our forward 50. We lack pace and pressure up forward.
Theres nothing wrong with our midfield groups DE%. Its relatively as good as any other.
That is their overall DE. What is their DE when kicking inside 50. Even Zach is guilty of bombing the ball in blindly. The forward line is poor but lost count of the amount of times our mids kicked long to Menzie or Gresham who were 1v2.
Absolutely agree. He doesn’t have a point of difference or a particularly outstanding trait. At least someone like Tsatas is a freak accumulator.
I’m not actually sure what midfield Hobbs would get consistent time in…maybe Richmond?
I think he should be trying to get to Adelaide, an option for post Rory Laird.