04-02-2019, 05:14 AM
(04-02-2019, 01:45 AM)Thryleon link Wrote:Playing devils advocate all 3 have the exact same problem.
They are all simply doing something a little bit alien to what they are used to.
1. Fasolo. Has just joined from the mortal enemy and may be doing what is asked of him but the way that we use the footy, and the actions of others could be contributing to making him look poor when he might be the only one in the right place at the wrong time, and hasn't played AFL footy for a while. All we can ask for is an upward trend in performance.
2. Gibbons is still trying to pick up the speed of AFL footy and is improving in this facet. Using Kane Lambert as a basis for comparison (given size and type of player its a pretty good basis for comparison) we shouldn't expect a lot from him this season. https://afltables.com/afl/stats/players/...mbert.html His first year was playing a finals bound team surrounded by much more mature recruits, and Lambert didnt exactly set the world on fire from the get go. In fact he didnt really hit his strides until his third year of AFL footy.
3. Ed. Learning a new role he is unsuited to. Now we can point at that and state that its a bad idea, however, we don't see what that allows us to do up the field. i.e. playing Ed forward might mean we get more midfield minutes into the likes of Dow, SPS, Setterfield, Fisher. That is arguably better for the team in the long term, than playing Ed at the coal face and when they can do it for longer, Ed might become proficient (enough) forward to give us a couple of different looks to that resting midfielder.
We are still a work in progress, and are going to be for the next couple of seasons IMHO, and that will only be exacerbated by the retirement of elder statesmen who still make up the bulk of our better performers most weeks. Until they become Jarrad McVeigh types who are contributers without being key to our teams fortunes, we arent going to be much better than we are now.
Good post...Kane Lambert is actually mates with Gibbons and has helped him over the years as he struggled to get drafted, same type of footballer and IMO Gibbons is ahead of Lambert in terms of development at the same stage.
Agree with MBB on Fasalo very lucky to be picked round 1 on the basis of fitness and his pre season activities and Jack Silvagni should have been rewarded for his efforts instead...