2018 - What do you expect from the club?

[DJC]

Think Gibbs leaving will set us back a year probably...we have plenty of kids who can use his onball game time and learn the roles he did.
Its a changing of the guard...Simpson, Murphy, Kreuzer all will have to be replaced and its better we stagger these players leaving so Gibbs might have done us a favour by being able to train
up some kids for his role while we still have these other experienced players to help out.

I was of the opinion that Gibbs leaving would set us back but, after giving it some thought, I reckon our midfield is stronger now.

We effectively lost Gibbs, Buckley, Boekhorst, Smedts, Sumner, Armfield, Palmer and Gallucci out of our potential midfielders (Smedts was primarily a defender but he did take part in our midfield rotations).  We replaced that lot with Lang, Kennedy, Mullett, Shaw and Garlett, all of whom have midfield experience at AFL level.  On top of that are our draft picks and I reckon Dow and O'Brien will both debut earlier rather than later.

We then have the return from injury of Cripps and Ed Curnow and another pre-season into the likes of Samo, Fisher, Cuningham and Polson.

We may not have replaced Gibbs with a player of equal ability but our midfield is significantly stronger than what we had in the last half of last season.