Cloke has done a massive job this year but yesterday looked tired and the lack of inches is finally taking its toll


We havent had a decent ruckman for a long time.

Hampson and Jacobs need to be picked and played together rotating off the bench


Hawthorn have done this with Taylor and Campbell with success


Jacobs should be promoted now


Both boys have played footy the past month without geting injured and can play 50% game time


It will also allow Kreuzer to play forward to give us another option up there that we need


Full marks to Cloke

He has done a terrific job but he aint a ruckman


I am sick of us playing short ruckman who arnt ruckman and when we come up against a guy like Hille we get slaughtered

Not saying that wont happen initially with 2 youngies like Hampson and Jacobs but we have to roll the dice IMo I posted something similar a few weeks ago

After yesterdays fiasco thoughts

Agreed Keogh.

Whilst Clokey has been very good for us, Hille yesterday was able to dictate the terms of tap outs and also clearing out of the ruck himself. He was ruckman and ruck rover for his team.

His height and strength allowed that.

We were not switched on yesterday and winning the last 2 weeks off a couple of good qtrs of football inflated out tyres [except Melvin's of course].

We need to throught caution to the wind and instigate a tandem team of ruckman in Jacobs and Hammer and let them play together for the remainder of the season.

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“It is a state of mind, a system of belief, a way of seeing the world, a deep faith that, because you are Carlton, you belong to something great.” - Mike Fitzpatrick articulating what Out of the Blue means.

I want to hear Ratten explain why he and the MC decided to play a 196cm unfit 3rd ruck, along with a 19yo bean poll against a bloke who was BOG last week against the best ruckman in the comp .

We should have been rotating Hammer/Cloke/Kreuz all day against this bloke. He killed us.

Don't blame the midfielders or forwards for yesterday, blame the coach and MC.

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Duke, that's a cop out.

Whilst not condoning that the MC probably erred, you can't blame them for our guys not being switched on.

Had we stolen a win yesterday, the MC would have been geniuses for sticking to their guns.

Now we require an explaination after losing.

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“It is a state of mind, a system of belief, a way of seeing the world, a deep faith that, because you are Carlton, you belong to something great.” - Mike Fitzpatrick articulating what Out of the Blue means.

Hindsight is beautiful.

I'm tipping that Ratts & the MC saw our midfield of Judd, Murphy, Stevens etc as far superior to Essendon*'s.

And decided that whether we were winning the taps or not we'd get the clearances.

They were wrong.

But on paper at least a decent assumption and Hammer didn't have a great game last week. Essendon*'s short forwards probably warranted the inclusion of Browne (who I don't reckon played that badly...).

Cloke's been massive for us this year so it was reasonable that he be given a shot. Hille is just in stellar form.

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Congratulations CK95

DUC, they [REDACTED] up big time. I want to know what was behind their thinking. I just hope like hell they can admit they were wrong and change it for this week.

We got miles ahead of ourselves, and I'm not just talking the players.

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Ratten and comp. where completely out-couched yesterday and it did start at the selection table. Unfortunately he will have to live with that and hopefully learn from it as well.

seems to me Ratts is always outcoached when we lose


but its expected that we should when we win

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This type of slight is alien in the more cultured part of the world - Walsh. Its up there with mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun!

It was clear in the first 5 minutes that Hampson should've been playing.
Why did AB only play half a game?
Is Cloke unfit?
If so, why is he our #1 ruckman.

Ratten was talking during the week about "owing the bombers one". Carrazzo mentioned that our draw was easier now after the collingwood game ala the Cornes comment.

I reckon most of us think we're more advanced than Essendon* in terms of playing personel. I think Ratts showed that both he and the group got ahead of themselves.

Fair enough, everyone makes mistakes and he's a new coach with new ideas - The test will be to see if he's learnt from these mistakes. He's got some decisions to make this week that won't be easy.

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I agree, as I said elsewhere, I think Ratts was concerned with their pace and made decisions to nullify that - right decisions - no we lost.

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This type of slight is alien in the more cultured part of the world - Walsh. Its up there with mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun!

The ruck was massive problem for us and all day I couldn't help myself blaming Pagan for recruiting Cain Ackland.

Cain might be a fine lad and all but where we should have had a ruckman with a few years experience now under the belt and able to contest with Hille - who is in stellar form - we've got our most mature ruckman wandering around for the Ants.

Poor recruiting in those wilderness years won't be fixed overnight and yesterday emphasised that.

The only solace I take from it all is that Essendon* still has the majority of it's spine about to succumb to palsy as Lucas, Lloyd, Fletcher, Michael finish in rapid succession.

They won the battle (thanks to Hille's great work); I can't see them winning the war.

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This might sound extreme in the context of alleged sexual assault, drunken violence and a drug trafficking charge...

We had a ruckman capable of competing - problem is - he was playing for the Bullants.

We can't blame DP for the ruck issues. Sure we could've got Leuenberger or Renouf or whoever, but we had other defficiencies that needed sorting out.

What we need to do is decide whether we can afford a top class ruckman to recruit over summer and in the mean time, play the rucks we have to get games into them.

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Warnock....is that the right name?? the freo guy, not the melb one...

he is fricken huge


would be a nice addition as a tap ruckman (ackland trade?)


I'd like to see Hammer/Jacob duo sometime also.

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All at Carlton are Equal, Except some are More Equal than others

No Hindsight needed...Hille has been playing well, the MC and coaching staff totally underestimated Hille and stuffed up royally.
Paid scant respect to Myers, Riemers, Neagle etc as well......we took the Chad Cornes approach and thought it was an easy game.

Keogh is right.....we need to select a proper ruck division with Kruezer being able to spend more time forward and stop being so predictable with our kick it to Fev only game plan...

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

They may well have. But none of us spotted it in the leadup...

Only one person - CK - made any mention of Hille in the match preview thread.



No one said anything about dropping Hampson being a bad call. No one said anything about needing insurance. The main point was that Cloke had been playing well and deserved a shot.

Not one person said anything along the lines of 'I can't believe we dropped Hampson'.

So the match committee it seems thought along the same lines. With hindsight, yep, hindsight, it was the wrong call.

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Congratulations CK95

Totally agree .. the ruck is our weakest part of the game at the moment. Hampson should have been playing ... can't afford to get smashed like we did sunday. All year we have smashed in this department

Maybe they dropped Hampson because they thought it was going to be wet?
Anyways - they could have had him as emergency and slipped him in when things were fine on the day.

I think Essendon* sucked us in to all out attack/shoot out yet again when we should have put the defensive game into action - every other team has killed them with defence. And that should have started in the centre with our blokes knowing Cloke and Kruse wouldn't get near Hille.

I hope we get Jacobs in to do some body work so we don't kill the Kruse in his first year. I agree with others who'd like to see the lad at CHF.

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This might sound extreme in the context of alleged sexual assault, drunken violence and a drug trafficking charge...

Cheers keogh.

Here I am again with the broken record called 'bondi's ruck story'.

bluehammer wrote




My view was and has been consistently on that front since Hammer really showed something preseason.

True though, many posters thought we were too top heavy with Hammer, Kreuzer and Cloke in the team. I never have. Hammer and Kreuzer are quite athletic types and can run around, let alone being pretty good below the knees. Furthermore, we need to get games into these guys.

We need 200cm plus ruckmen to feed our midfield. This has been said time after time since the Prendergast years to the Ackland year (from hell).

I admire Cloke's lion heart, but even in games where he has played well in the ruck, he certainly didn't win or breakeven many a time. He put in a great effort for a 195cm ruckman. We all admire his lion hearted effort.

We recruited Kreuzer because he was the most outstanding player in the U18's, but also because we knew by the time this kid was 22, he would be a monster in the ruck; bigger and better than Hille. He was always going to develop faster than what is the norm for big fellas. But he is not 22. However, he is worthy of game time but he needs support.

Many posters have supported the idea of Cloke as the big body to take the load off the immature bodies of Hammer and Kreuzer.

The problem some posters have...in fact we all have the same problem...is fitting everyone in the 22 who may show something or gain something playing at senior level in the Dark Navy Blue jumper.

For those who don't value the ruck position's importance and value to the midfield, the first thing they look at is having only 2 ruckmen to avoid being so called 'top heavy'. Is a 195cm ruckman 'top heavy'? Mate, he (Cloke) isn't really a ruckman for a start.

I'm with keogh all the way on this one...in fact I'd go one further in this being our development year: promote Jacobs as we did with Aisake last year and lets see what signs he shows before D Day at the end of the year. It was incredible what happened to Hammer at the end of last season when he took on the ruck role when not ready, and only because Aisake succumbed to injury after he was promoted.

This is a development year, so lets give the future a go, or at least lets get some clarity about the future. One thing I'm sure of is that Cloke is not an advantage for us in the ruck moving forward towards the 17th flag.

Jacobs is taller and has shown plenty of improvement (from all reports), but more importantly he's shown to be a true big bodied tap ruckman which we lack in the seniors. He has shed a few kg's and presents around the ground like a guy who understands where he has to go...as does Kreuzer.

Hammer and Aisake are project players who have shown potential. At the very least, if they aren't going to consider Aisake for a different role other than ruck, then the writing is on the wall; our loss from a lack of creativity and trialling. But for goodness sake, play Hammer!! He'll learn something from every outing. We have nothing to lose.

Play and rotate Hammer, Kreuzer and Jacobs between ruck, fwd and I/C. Let them go full pace in shorter bursts on the ball and rotate them. Lets see what Aisake can do too whilst we're at it.

I bet if Walker, Houlihan, Hadley, Bannister, Jackson, Anderson, Thornton...weren't all injured at the same time, we wouldn't have discovered Armfield, or Browny and maybe even Grigg and Seen Russell grow like we did with Anderson last (shit) year.

Sorry to say this because I've met the young fine man, but I don't care what they do with Cloke to be honest; he's a pinch hitter and selected as an emergency imo. He was never recruited to be our long term ruckman. He was a discarded player and we took a punt on him, period. Really sorry to say that. If he can make CHF his position (too slow imo) or any other, then give it to him...then he may pinch hit in the ruck, like Kerna once did in the forwardline.

I'd rather see Hartlett given a go at CHF personally. Let them compete for the position. But we'll never know leaving them in the Ants while we kid ourselves about finals footy in 2008; it's just not that important to me this year.

Lets mix it up and grow some @#$%&! ruckmen. There's no guarantee we will snag a ready made one in the trade period, so until we do, lets grow our own.

Great post keogh!!

We need ruckMEN, not a ruckMAN.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

We were always going to struggle in the ruck - no matter if Hampson was playing or not. Hampson's ruckwork hasn't been fantastic when he was in the seniors against mediocre opposition, his timing has been all off.

Hille is 27 years of age, 201 cm, 109 kg and has played 137 games and widly recognised as one of the form ruckmen of the comp - he gave cox a bath last week.

Our main options were:
Cloke is 24, 195 cm, 98 kg and 38 games.
Kreuzer is 19, 199 cm, 94 kg and 11 games.
Hampson is 20, 200 cm, 93 kg and 8 games.
Other options include Ackland and Jacobs (rookie).

Looking at it objectively, we will continue to struggle in the ruck for some time; development of Kruezer and Hampson is going to take time and then some more time. Look at Leuenberger in brisbane - he has been dropped from the previous few games.

The key was to win the clearances from the ruck contest and we got smashed - imho having Hampson in the side was not going to alter that fact. I think sometimes supporters need to match their expectations with reality!

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The glass is neither half full nor half empty. Rather the glass is twice as big than required.

I agree with you on most points, Bondi. Especially the one about cloke. He has demanded a spot week after week, but if you were picking a side from scratch you'd have to go with Hammer and Kreuz for the 2 spots.

I admire what Cloke does, but he just can't compete with the big units. Where's Aisake right now? I would've thought with his size and athletisism he'd be ideal.

If he was better than Setanta, and Setant is playing why isn't Aisake?

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