Thought it might be timely to have a look at how Carlton's ruckman have performed over the years.

If we take an average of the hitout differential (which is the difference between how many hiouts Carlton gets and how many hitout the opposition gets) we get the results in column two of the table below. Negative numbers mean we are getting that many less hitouts per game than our opposition.

As you can see the last few years have not been pretty. The really bad news is that this year so far we have gone backwards.



The third column represents where Carlton have ranked amongst all team for this measure each year and the final column shows where the premiership winner of each year finished in the ranking of this measure.



To summarise.


WE NEED A RUCKMAN!

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Jamie,

Good get. Is there anything to measure the effectiveness of a ruck tap? If so I reckon that would be an interesting addition.

OUCH.
dick lets get it done.

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dane's trolling again

No worries we will get Matt Kreuzer with Pick 5 in this years National Draft.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

steve, that stat would be great, and it is available at a price, however my pocketbook doesn't stretch that far.

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Interesting that winning the tap is not an indicator or success with only one premiership side leading the tap outs. You need a ruckman who is competitive and I think it's for us a choice of whether we throw the youngsters in at the deep end or continue to groom them in the Bullants.

I reckon Eddie Betts would be able to improve those stats this year..

Brisbane's Jamie Charman is out of contract I think

Too old.

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They coud'nt.....could they?

Some one told me the clubs pay a pretty hefty price for those sort of statistics.

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"We used to sit around and talk about how bad the game plan was." Anthony Koutoufides

I wonder what the figure was before Cloke broke down?

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"We used to sit around and talk about how bad the game plan was." Anthony Koutoufides

Thanks for those stats Jarusa.

I can refer to my plethora of posts regarding the need for a ruckman (exceeding 200cm) in the last year. I hope all those that thought the ruck position was over rated have learned something about footy this year and from these stats.

Your ruckman gives your midfielders an advantage or the opposition's ruckman gives their midfielders the advantage of first use of the neutral ball. It's not rocket science. You can guess the result.

Those who understand the importance of a ruckman know that Stevens, Carrazzo, Murphy, Simpson, Walker, Russell...aren't the problem. Gees, even Bentick and Blackwell would look good with Cox feeding them, or at least they would have a 50-50 chance to compete if at the very least our ruckmen nullified the opposition's ruck.

amazonstud wrote



Yeah, but at least they make the finals having that (tap out advantage) weapon in their arsenal. That's the primary target. Then a top 4 position. Once you're in the finals anything can happen.

And when you have a Dean Cox in your team you have a 50/50 chance to win one, based on last year's stat.

As far as the 2000 team with Barnes and Alessio playing in the ruck, they had a 'great' team and Barnes took a lot of marks and created a lot of links around the ground, whilst Alessio was playing deep in the forwardline or CHF, giving their half decent crumbers plenty of ball (and goals).

Every team needs 2 BIG ruckmen over 200 cm if they want to compete.

The BIG problem I see is that our 3 tall ruckmen are:

Aisake
Hampson
Jacobs

They are all young, undeveloped, inexperienced and have a long way to go before they master this ruck caper, and we have no one to fill this void in the next 2-3 years.

It's not 195-6 cm ruckmen we have in Ackland, Cloke or McLaren, and their counterpart of similar size, Prendergast is gone. At least Prenders had a bigger motor, showed more commitment, and was a leader that bled for the jumper.

What an embrarrassment.

Yeah Kreuzner would be good, but I reckon he'll be gone before picks 4 and 5; so here's hoping we end up 15th on the ladder. But then again Kreuzner will need time to develop like the other young ones, and I doubt that the Blues brains trust is going to take a ruckman in the first round, given they invested in Hampson last year. They just don't get it.

What happens if Hampson and Aisake turn out to be unique wingmen, or forward flankers, or ruck rovers? It's possible.

We have to poach one to serve us over the next 3 years. Pity French is gone, we could have done with him this year, (even though I wasn't a fan of his type of rucking)......I wonder why he left? Pagan?

Go ask Pagan; the master of people management.

Did someone mention Charman? I can't see any other ready made ruckman that could serve us for 3-4 years.

What a frustrating and [REDACTED] situation to put ourselves in. I knew this was going to happen when we didn't invest in a genuine ruckman since Matty Allan in 1997. For this reason I suggest that Parkin, Brittain and Pagan are all short sighted flower who have contributed to selling my club short.

At least Parkin won us flags....with ruckmen we gave him to coach in Fitzpatrick, WOW Jones, Madden, what did he give us? Matty Allan.

But all teams need

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

Am I the only one who thinks Hitouts are becoming less relevant in today's game? A mobile ruckman who can get a kick (Lade, Cox, Goodes) is more valuable than a beanstalk (Sandilands) who wins all the hit outs but most of them don't go directly to a team mate.

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"We used to sit around and talk about how bad the game plan was." Anthony Koutoufides

I was listening to some bloke on the radio the other day from a mob in the states that run an analysis on the last 700 games of AFL and they rated the ruckman as the least most effective person on the ground . They said ( now wait for Mav) the most common two things that won games was the long and direct kicking and winning the stoppages .Wether or not your ruckman won the tap was irrelevant according to them

However I struggle to find. a team that has won a flag in recent years who didn't have at least one top line ruckman and the other who could at least hold his own .

But at the same time I struggle to find a team that has won a flag recently that didn't have a top line midfield.

So is it the ruckman or the blokes at the ruckmans feet

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As with all stats you can often find numerous different "truths". It may be that, in general, the majority of ruck contests do not lead to a direct clearance but when they do it nearly always creates a shot on goal.

If you create a 50-50 out a ruck contest then the clearance is decided by the abilities of your midfielders BUT when you are getting smashed in the ruck (like we have been) then it does not matter how good your midfielders are at clearing the ball.

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Carlton - Nothing's changed
I still love you, oh, I still love you
Only slightly, only slightly less
Than I used to, my love

Well I think Cox's strength last finals series was the amount of possessions he gets, he's like and extra midfielder.

There aren't many hit outs that result in DIRECT clearances to a team mate.

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"We used to sit around and talk about how bad the game plan was." Anthony Koutoufides

we were sucked into the contest against hawthorn in attempt to outnumber the hawks around the ruck tap - leaving two unmanned hawks at the back and side of the pack - the ball was fed out to them and run down the ground with ease

the hawks lined up at times resembling a rugby line off the back of the pack.

even if we won the hitout with that setup we had no one to kick to as we had congested the ball up situation ourselves by throwing numbers around it.

i think that was an apparent attempt to nullify our ruck deficiency but if we had stuck to man on man i think the result wouldnt have been as bad

you cant leave two umanned opposition in the centre corridor of the ground.

we need to be smarter at the stoppages with our setups and sharking the loose ball - the days of hitouts straight to an open midfeilder are dwindling

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*(grow - fun - gah)

Yeah but whatabout your whataboutism.

GodisNavyBlue wrote



Exactly.

We are getting smashed in the ruck.

The Game wrote



Yes there are. It depends on what you define as 'many'. Have a look at the Hawks game last Friday; at least 10 easy goals came from the ruckman tapping the ball down the throat of a midfielder who broke through the centre and found a leading target. That's 60 points. It happens every week (not the 10 goals a game from the ruck), but I only give a shit about Carlton being on the end of it.

If it happens 5 times in a game, that may seem 'not many', but when you look at it closer, it's 30 points. A bonus 30 easy points is the difference between winning and losing in most games; that's how important it is to win or nullify the ruck contest.

So whoever thinks that our insipid performance against the Hawksi n the ruck didn't influence the blow out, then you just keep believing that; you're wrong. Have a look what happened when Ackland didn't even compete against the Hawks ruckman, in their forwardline...they scored an easy goal.

It's not the be all to end all, but every 1% er counts in the game of AFL.

Do you know what a one percenter is? I bet you do.

Thomas and St Kilda found out how important it is to have a good tall ruckman in the last 3 finals series. I don't want to down the same track as with the Saints' strategy when we get to playing finals again...and we only will if we have good tall ruckmen to compliment the team.

We need every position filled and a bit of luck to win a flag.

I want another FLAG soon.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

how many developing ruckmen do we need?
aisake, hampson, cloke, jacobs
dont see the point of five developing ruckmen on the list.. four is top heavy as is. we have seven ruckmen on the list including setanta i think we have overdosed.

Hawthorn have the following ruckman

R.Campbell
S.Taylor
M.Baily
L.McEntee
B.Renouf
We need to develop as many ruckman as we can. At the moment, we have

A.O'hailpin
S.Hampson
S.Jacobs

We will need several more to eventually replace

C.Ackland
C.Cloke
D.Mcleran

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Bulldogs captain Steve Mortimer stood up to address his troops before they ran out. ''I'm a proud c---,'' he told them, ''I'm a winner, I wish myself a good g...ame, I wish everyone a good game. Let's get out there and f---ing bash them