2018 Rd 18: Pre Game Passion: Carlton vs Gold Coast

[ianh]

That's a pretty accurate summary and I reckon Levi has had an outstanding career given his limited ability.

While you may be right about him being a better player in a better side, I think that the fact that he has managed 100 games is in no small part due to our poor list management ... and the scarcity of quality key forwards.

Levi and Vickery are chalk and cheese; the latter was a high draft pick with the ability and attributes to be a dominant ruck/forward but who lacked the necessary application.

I recently did an exercise of picking our best 22 to have been recruited to the club since our last flag, excluding from consideration recruits from the last 2 years as not having had time to make a case for themselves.  I went with 1 ruckman (Kreuzer preferred to French) and Corey McKernan as forward/relief ruck.  I toyed with excluding McKernan given he was at the club for only 2 years but his B&F/leading goalkicker double in year 1 got him over the line.  But had I excluded him Levi would have been well in the race to take that role over.  Only Sam Rowe or Sean Hampson might have beaten him for the spot.  The remaining options (given Laurence Angwin wasted his incredible talents) were all either ruckmen who gave little forward or forwards who were not much chop in the ruck.  That process made me reconsider just how much Levi has got out of himself and how much value we have got out of a late rookie pick.

FWIW here is the 22 I came up with, and some comments:

I was just working through an exercise of putting together our best 22 recruited post our last premiership.  In doing the exercise I left out players from the last 2 years on the basis of lack of longevity, although I included Corey McKernan based on only 2 years given his B&F/leading goalkicker double in his first year at the club.  I only considered the players career at Carlton, so for example Sam Jacobs was overlooked.  I also went with the single ruckman with a forward who could ruck as back-up.  If picking a second specialist ruck I would have gone Barnaby French who is really the only other ruckman to have established himself in the team for any length of time.

This is what I came up with:

Kade Simpson                Michael Jamison                      Bret Thornton           
Sam Docherty                Jarrad Waite                            Heath Scotland
Nick Stevens                  Patrick Cripps                          Ryan Houlihan
Bryce Gibbs                  Lance Whitnall                        Charlie Curnow                       
Corey McKernan            Brendan Fevola                        Eddie Betts
Matthew Kreuzer            Chris Judd                              Mark Murphy
Andrew Carrazzo    Lachie Henderson    Matthew Lappin        Andrew Walker

Notably there is not one player there recruited to the club as a key backman in the National Draft (Jamison and Thornton being rookied).  But frankly the cupboard was bare.  Given that Weitering, Plowman and Marchbank were in the draft year before last and so excluded, this is the list of others recruited as primarily key backs:

Ben Sexton, Stephen O'Reilly, Luke Livingston, Mick Martyn, Kris Massie, Jason Sadington, Murray Vance, Karl Norman, Paul Bower, Mark Austin, Matthew Watson, and Patrick McCarthy.  Not much there!