RiverRodent wrote:
jimmae wrote:
Aisake - Demanding the starting ruck role, needs it at this level to continue his development & you'd have to think he'd be seeing a lot of the seniors next year at this rate.
Hampson - No qualms with him playing forward so long as he is given license to push up the ground, and that would seem to be the case (you see more games than me though RR). He works on his marking and general play while GD refines his pretty solid tap work along with his contesting. Next year he takes the feature role in the Bullants.
Aisake is making great progress but Hammer is going backwards IMO.
The way he looked in preseason, I though Hammer would be in the seniors by now - he was jumping over everyone and marking everything in reach. Now he's getting consistently beaten in the ruck and is dropping sitters. His confidence seems to be shot and he isn't getting it back playing on the forward line where he looks badly out of position.
I think he is falling victim to the pecking order a bit too, but you're comparing work on the track to work in-game.
He is very much a project player, but in the end it was hard for the club to overlook his immense physical abilities, or so it would seem.
Maybe Ackland will get injured so we can elevate Aisake and this will become a moot point. Maybe he's carrying a bit of an injury, he's certainly run hard and pushed himself very hard in marking contests.