Hampson, Kreuzer, Cloke.

The addition of Hampson in today's team allowed Kreuzer and Cloke to spend more time inside 50. The benefits of this luxury of talls to our forward structure was clear today. Hammer plays a more traditional ruckman role, while Kreuz and Cloke almost share an old skool ruck/resting forward role.

At times today it worked pretty. Only issue was a few occasions when we had too many guys going for the same mark inside 50 and spoiling each other. This also enabled Port to run the ball out a few times as our blokes weren't always able to apply pressure on their opponents after Port had won the ball at ground level.

No matter, today was the first day we've really been spoilt for marking options in our attacking half. We'll get better and the players will learn to work together more effectively.

Just a nice glimpse into the future to see how our best 22 looks with The Three Tapper setup. Kreuzer can apply the polish, even more so after he has bulked up a bit and gained even more confidence in his abilities. Cloke can continue to put his all in for the jumper and pinch hit up forward. And Hammer, with more game time, will hopefully develop into a valuable ruckman with good all round athleticism.

It doesn't happen often, of course, but sometimes I reckon our recruiting blokes actually know what they're doing.

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I agree - I liked the setup we had today, it gave us a great balance.

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It did, but it would be nice for a change if the three tappers actually tapped the ball to one of our players on occasion.

I suppose that will come with time

Tapper, tapper, tapper.

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The winning of taps will come when Hammer and Kruezer put on a bit of weight. They've both got the leap, they're just being bumped out of the drop zone once they've made body contact at the moment. It was a luxury to play the 3 of them in the one side yesterday; Hammer sat on the pine for 48% of the day, which means the midfielders would have started to be affected had the game been at a higher pace.

I loved when Hampson chased that little bloke down on the wing, but instead of tackling he gave him a gentle shove in the back, and the Port lad flew through the air like superman.

Methinks Mr Hampson doesn't quite know his own strength...

While it did work well yesterday, I don't know if we can have the luxury of that many talls in a game. We still have to make room for Eddie!
Hammer's disposal still needs a bit of work. I love Kreuze as a leading forward. Cloke..... no idea what the future holds for him.

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Griggaisagun

spot on CB

its why i think Warnock from freo would be a better pick up for us than Kerr.


whilst kerr is a gun, bring in warnock and it allows us to push Kreuzer forward.

and its clear he is a very suitable option up forward.

Warnock, Hampson - main rucks
Kreuzer, Cloke - go forward and give us further options up forward.


Betts - Fevola - Fisher
Kreuzer - Cloke - Walker

thats a forward line

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I thought that his long kicks were very good.

A couple of short passes were the issue. One went wide of the mark...unless that had something with the change of direction of the lead after disposal, and the other didn't mark the distance; easy to fix.

May have something to do with not being conditioned to the pace at senior level after playing at VFL level.

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my god, thats a tall CHF line. but it could just work. walkers devensive pressure was sensational yesterday, and kruzer is a freak, so mobile for his size. cloke will always do his best. i guess if he was a lead up CHF and cleared the space for fev to run into 40 out that could work, eddie to do the sharking and fisher to be a decoy lead to the opposite pocket/flank from fev.

gee fish is a worry.
if he doesn't improve his goal kicking he's trade bait as far as i'm concerned. simply not up to the standard we should be striviing for.

Very good post Camel.It sure did work in our favour.And i reckon the more time given together the better it would work.Hampson is definately the wild card in the pack.For mine he is either going to be a massive success or a complete flop.Wrapt WH took a chance on this guy.He has gambled big time for sure,but no guts,no glory.

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Kade Simpson was on the Footy Show on 9 this morning; and looked at that footage....which they replayed a few times for a giggle.

Kade said that Hammer is the fastest guy on their list and got a bit of speed up; and couldn't pull up in time to just retard the other player.

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Yeah that is true camelboy but remember we didn't have Eddie Betts playing who would have crumbed 2-4 goals against the power. It's not all bad when this happens but we just didn't have any crumbers ..

Having seen the leap of Hammer, how important is it that we get a specialist ruck coach?

I'm not sold on what McKee brings to the table in terms of his experience and I really think we need to target a ruck coach in the off season.

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Hampson IS the fastest player on our list - and together with his leap and athleticism will be almost impossible to stop when he gets 20 or 30 games under his belt - which is why I have been a bit disappointed that our MC have not given him a few more games this season - hopefully they will give him the next 3 games - this will certainly pay big dividends come 2009.

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IIRC McKee wasn't even really a specialist ruckman. More in the Kozi mode. Is this right? If so, seems we can get someone more experienced and knowledgeable.

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I was pleased to see Hampson run 70 metres when a Port player was lining up for goal from just 35 metres out, simply to provide a presence on the goal line.

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