I’d be surprised if Kelly isn’t named in our back 6 (injuries permitting) by round 1 / pre-season game.
Montgomerie is an option, but I’d gather Ridley would need to be more accountable as a defender if he plays instead.
Zach Reid is injured and not ready.
I think Cox is a better alternative from a development point of view, but he’s injured and not ready.
Hayes is not ready.
McBride is not ready.
James Stewart is an option, but from what I’ve seen at training, he isn’t ahead of Kelly right now.
He is a weak link, but our alternatives aren’t any better. What you’ve highlighted is our biggest problem and why it’s tough to gauge how we go off training reports. When you look at our players against other opposition, we are so far off the mark it’s not funny. But when they are measured against themselves in training, it’s pretty clear who is a better option.
Unless you’re willing to take short term pain and develop a player in his role during the season, hope he doesn’t get his confidence smashed (like Joel Reynolds) and develop into a defender who can play on Hawkins / Cameron, then Kelly is in our back 6 come round 1.
Hopefully, by the middle of the year, we have other alternatives.
kelly is a decent medium sized defender, he has his flaws, but we weren’t cooked as often by medium sized forwards as often last year, except the pies game which was embarassingly bad for our backline
people underrate him because he’s a pure lockdown defender and stays focussed on keeping his man quiet as opposed to racking up cheap possies in the backline
I think the premise (and adding to it the gameplan) is valid to a certain degree, but not restrictive to only reply to lav, the whole backline suffered.
hell the sydney game where shiel was supposed to be marking papley for redman shows the backline was getting very little help. the tactics of having a defender marking someone in our fwd 50 from a kick out shows the tactics didn’t help either.
I mean ridley won a bnf as a decent backman and he looked vfl standard last year.
it’s not to absolve lav of any wrongdoing or criticism. people can think whatever they like about him, but to downplay the effect tactics and pressure up the field have and mostly disregard it as a variable to ones performance is a somewhat narrow view to have imo.
On exposed form he has about half the talent (if lucky) of any of those players and wasting games on him ahead of them based on list list profile and trajectory would be treading water and hurting development moving forward. He gets a game this season when literally everyone else is injured.
Maybe I am being unfair given the basket case our backline was and the lack of support from further up the field, but I just do not see the same tenacity with Kelly, as with others
I think it’s fair to say that our team defensive structures last year were absolutely cooked - I mean, BZT finished the year strongly and Redman gradually improved, but all our other defenders went backwards IMO.
I dont have a problem with playing those 3 over Kelly to help there development, long term its probably a good idea. But if we had to win a game tomorrow im definitely picking Kelly.
I’d have him (currently) between McGrath and Hind on that list. But the only other guy on that list adept at stopping small forwards is McGrath, and I gather we also want him playing a partially attacking role.
kelly is a odd cat. sometimes looks like the worst footballer is existence, sometimes completely dominates his opponent and looks like he’d never lose his place in our backline
Noones denying that his ball use is average but I suspect that his slow decision making was sometimes deliberate. Our defenders would look for options up the ground and then when none presented would pass to Kelly near the boundary who would wait for our players to get in position and then kick to the contest on the wing, it always looked like a deliberate slow play to me. If they were doing a fast play they wouldnt pass to Kelly.
kelly actually in a way reminds me of cutler - in terms of form. remember the back end of 21 when cutler literally dominated off half back? it was quite weird then last year he went back to terrible. I think kelly has the same ability of form swings, some good, some bad. i do think when and if he’s omitted from the 22, he may be seen as depth from that point