Braithy wrote:
Rocky Henderson wrote:
jake_h03 wrote:
Anyone thinking we're going well enough to leave out best 22 players is kidding themselves. It's nice to be 2-0 and have set our season up nicely, but let's be honest, we could very easily be 0-2.
Play your best team. Even if it means someone is unlucky to be dropped. Motlop and Martin are our most dangerous small/med forwards by a distance. They are both automatic selections when fit. I think E Hollands will be the same but I haven't really seen him play so I'll leave that to the side for now
This,
Owies and Durdin just aren't dangerous enough.
Hollands to be the high half forward and Cottrel the defensive forward..
agree owies and durdin aren't anything special as crumbing forwards or defensive pressure forwards. motlop offers more - and hopefully Moir is the small forward we've been craving since garlett and betts left.
fantasia will come out of the team only when martin is fit. the hope is that between fantasia and martin, one is at least fit.
not sure marchbank comes straight in ... knowing voss & how popular marchbank is with the playing group, he probably comes in at kemp's expense. hopefully not tho.
either way this friday we need to make a statement. much has been made that the coaching staff viewed this game as our opening round and trained for it with all that loading in the final weeks of preseason.
sydney, gws and port all look good. be great if we came out and dulled a bit of this all sydney/ interstate gf talk.
Motlop and Martin have x factor. Durdin, Fogarty and Owies are pressure small forwards. Agree we need more goals from our smalls.
Pretty hard for Cottrell to be fixed to a defensive forward role (on a Sheezel type) when he's expected to run his standard 15km up and down the ground, often filling in lanes that attacking HB's (like Sheezel) would be aiming for. I don't think opposition HB's have given us grief thus far, but like you said, we shouldnt take anything for granted.
Endurance runners effectively give us two players. They run 15km and give defensive support in defence, then run back as link men, and finally putting on forward pressure: Acres, Hollands, Hollands, Cottrell give us this advantage. I'd rather have one of the 2 small forwards in a defensive role against Sheezel type. So often the ball heads so quickly to forwardline we dont have crumbers present. Maybe the small can do both roles, rather than the running machines.
Moir is not a small forward. He's 6 foot 2 inches. He's more of a marking HF.
Kemp has been in good form. I prefer Marchbank but it would be savage to drop Kemp given Marchbank hasn't played in match conditions for a month.