Have our recruiting department forgotton that there are zero 194+cm key defenders on our list and hasn't been during our last five years of misery?
Yea sure setanta is a beauty and will probably hold down CHB or possible FB in the future, but who else is there in case he doesn't make it?

I know he has lacked support but Thornton is not going to make our team a force moving forward. Watching him every week blaming his team mates for his man marking the ball uncontested drives me crazy. His attitude is a desease for our young team looking for leaders.

Who else is there? Saddington should have been delisted, Bannister is too small, Hartlett cannot read the play and hasn't shown a thing so far to suggest he will make it, there are young Mark Austin and Bower who look athletic but they are more long term prospects yet they are flankers at 192-193cm. Jamo looks promising but he too is only 192cm and besides he is still a rookie list player. Edwardes again too small at 192cm and besides most of his footy has been in attack for the bullants.

So if the defence is such a critical area in getting this side to become consistantly competitive in the future, why have we not drafted anyone in the last three years (apart from Kennedy as a forward, and ruckmen of course) who is that 194-197cm athletic key position prospect that could develop into that key back we are so desparate for?. Why is Wayne Hughes obsessed with recruiting tuff hard running half back flankers? How many do we need on the list? We have scotland, walker, russell, grigg, jamo, anderson, browne, armfield, bannister, bower, etc,etc.

Interested to get other thoughts on this to see whether i'm the only Carlton person a little worried by our recruiting focus these last few years.

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"what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger"!

Number 1 we have a few tall defenders all which are developing.
Over the last few years we have recruited
Hartlett
Bower
Austin and Jamieson as taller defenders.

We took Judd which meant we were left with pick 36 after Kreuzer.. id back them in to identify any good tall defenders with whatever pics we had left.

We had plenty of talls and tall midfielders but not enough smaller midfieders so we were out of whack... the recruitment of Pfeiffer Browne and Armfield addresses that '190/193 flatline problem we had... rather than pick up dud tall defenders for the hell of it.

WE have our tall defenders.. like any young tall defeders theyre raw and need to be developed.. why bring in more?

We havent finished rebuilding....and were never going to have finished rebuilding yet...

Theyre my thoughts.


By the way.. if you control the midfieldyou control the game.
Yu makeit harder for the ball to go into your defence at a million miles and hour and you can take it into your forward line at a million miles an hour..

The game is about runners now....

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How many 194cm+ key defenders were there in the last few premiership teams?

Not many .... if any.

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Yeah i think people are getting confused with what the game used to be like..... like in the eighties... and maybe the nineties...

Totally agree J...

I urge anyone to show me the Jakovich in WCs Sydneys Geelongs and Ports side...

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scribe , p-money and Jarusa

how many dudes you know roll like jarusa

not many...........if any

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*(grow - fun - gah)

Yeah but whatabout your whataboutism.

was hoping someone would pick that up.



Leppitsch 191cm
Mal Michael 190cm
Chad Cornes 192
Daryl Wakelin 192
Darren Glass 192
Adam Hunter 190
Leo Barry 184
Craig Bolton 190
Matthew Scarlett 192
Darren Milburn 189

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

You can be 235cms and run like the wind in our defence. Unless you can close down your player and spoil, or have the strength to hold your own in one on one battles, what is the point.

Our first goal should be to try and keep at least one team other than Richmond to under 100 points.

We missed this bloke.

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

Winston Churchill

Thanks, That saved me some research

Regards Cazzesman

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Ricky Gervais - “Everyone has the right to hold whatever beliefs they want. And everyone else has the right to find those beliefs f***ing ridiculous.”

The AA CHB is 196 cms tall and missed the Grand Final.

We wouldn't say no to a Lachlan Hansen if there was one available in the next draft.

Really this thread is more about bluesbest perception of us requiring a 194cm backman than the performance of our recruiting department.

We had so many holes to fill we had to start somewhere. For mine outside of our midfield we lacked a decent ruck and if you can't control the square all the 194cm backman you can recruit won't stop the flow of points.

I think our recruiting department in the last 2-3 years has done a pretty good job with what we've had. We did manage to recruit Chris Judd and Richard Hadley during the off season as well so I think as a recruiting department it does stack up pretty well against other clubs.

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The great are great to us only because we are on our knees. Let us arise.
--Robert Collier

I got it too.

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Tom Harley - 192cm.
Lewis Roberts-Thomson - 196cm (!)

Jakovich was 193cm.

James Clement 190cm
Ben Rutten 192cm

Defence starts from midfield, attack starts from defence. It's not a 6 x 6 x 6 game anymore.

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"A good composer does not initiate. He steals."

- Igor Stravinsky

My issues are with the forward line and a replacement CHF after losing Kennedy and Whitnall. I think we have enough potential defenders but lack a KPP body on body marking player to help Fev and Fisher out.

Mark Austin I see as the player for CHB.....194cm, can take a mark, just needs some weight and experience.

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"When you have the attitude of a champion, you see adversity as your
training partner."
- Conor Gillen

Our defence was rubbish this year...not the Defenders! We were fine when running forward, but as soon as the ball was turned over and heading in the opposite direction we lacked the same gusto. Our tackling was attrocious, something I always thought Liberatore would fix. Our shortest player had the best technique - Betts. We have recruited ferocious players, and if intensity is addressed, we'll be a totally new team I truly believe that. If we come out with hard bodies and tackle hard teams WILL be rattled, and confidence is then the key.

Case in point, rd 1, 2006. A shit team managed to rattle Melbourne on ferocity alone. Then again against Essendon* this year.

If your manager/coach can get you to play like it's your last game then with average skill you'll still win games. We've been down on skill, but we wouldn't quite be in the same mess if we had intensity.

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--------------------------------------------------------"The only one that could ever love me..."

Not wrong about Eddie......one of the few in the team who can lay a tackle and make it stick, doesnt just throw out the feeble one arm and pretend he is tackling but actually wraps players up and brings them to ground.
The other consistent tackler is Bentick.....
Hoping players like Armfield and Pfieffer give us some more grunt in the tackling dept...

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"When you have the attitude of a champion, you see adversity as your
training partner."
- Conor Gillen

I'm not blowing smoke up my own arse, but geez when we grew up playing rugby (ACT - I did play under 12's/10's Aussie Rules too!) you learn not to watch the feet when the person's in front of you, but to clearly watch the torso - and bloody well aim for it! Good tacklers do get beaten, but rarely. We have players that lunge forward or to the side and get stepped around after over-committing....or just go in half-arsed.

I'm ecstatic with our recruits in principal, whether they can perform who knows, but geez I can't stress enough just how much intensity changes a game in any sport!

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--------------------------------------------------------"The only one that could ever love me..."

From the Sunday Mail in October this year. Measures the number of games played by all players drafted with picks 1-30 since 1996:

Club -- Avg. Games -- # Top 30 Picks

St Kilda -- 83.4 -- 18
Fremantle -- 69.9 -- 16
West Coast -- 58.2 -- 25
Sydney -- 54.8 -- 18
Port Adelaide -- 50.1 -- 19
Bulldogs -- 49.8 -- 20
Brisbane -- 49.4 -- 20
Melbourne -- 48.1 -- 22
Essendon* -- 47.6 -- 28
Kangaroos -- 45.7 -- 22
Geelong -- 45.0 -- 22
Richmond -- 40.2 -- 17
Collingwood -- 37.0 -- 22
Hawthorn -- 34.7 -- 25
Adelaide -- 32.7 -- 13
Carlton -- 29.1 -- 15


Apart from enjoying being able to find another ladder in which Carlton win a wooden spoon, and one where the Saints > Blues (hard to find), this is an interesting statistic.

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Go Saints