Reset Rants

[Lods]

You can make judgements on individual players, however the counter argument is that the kids are no good because the group as a collective is gone backward from 2017.

For me it was a given.  Last year our midfield was a major weakness and it batted 3 deep with Cripps, Gibbs and Murphy.  E.Curnow next in line (god bless him) is an endurance beast, but a good honest battler.    With all three in the middle we were competitive.  We just couldn't afford to lose any.

Flash forward to 2018.  No Gibbs and No Doc and blokes like SPS in their 21 game of football are in the centre square.    Are we expecting SPS to replace Gibbs and his 231 games of experience.  Or course not.

So where is the improvement going to come from to replace Gibbs and Doc to at least match last years output?  As Raydan pointed out your real improvement comes from those guys who have had 4-5 pre-seasons and our cupboard is bare in this department. 

Our young kids will struggle to have a impact in a weak side.  Like McCluggage, Ainsworth, Brodie, Bowes etc.    All still have the potential to be very good players, but it ain't going to happen 21 games into a career.   

So I ask everyone given our outs.  What made you think we would be better than 2017?

Murphy wasn't supposed to be missing... and the addition of players like Kennedy and Lang and the drafting of Dow plus an expected improvement in SPS  should have given us a close to break even....otherwise Gibbs was some sort of super player.

Now fates have conspired against us...but lets assume down the track, towards the end of the season,  we have all these players fit and available.
We should have a better mid-field.

Docherty's the bigger loss....I suspect he would probably have spent some more time in the mid-field...but what we really miss is his setting up attacks from the half back. It would have been the key to the  more attacking game plan.... and the fact we tried that without his contribution was brave but obviously not very successful.