On the ruck question, I'm not sure why it's considered such an issue for this game. Witts will probably have more hitouts than anyone we put against him, but we are consistently strong on the clearance front (both in the centre and at stoppages) and I expect we'll have them covered there. Am I missing something here?
So, we'll get more clearances, but the issue is about what actually constitutes "clearing" the ball for us. Our delivery forward has been extremely poor and that's nothing to do with who is rucking. We either bomb it in, or poorly attempt to execute more precise delivery.
2 problems with this. First, whilst Harry has done extremely well, given the few clean deliveries he gets, to mark and put himself in a position to goal, we're not going to kick enough through him and we're presently light-on for other tall options who can mark and kick straight (looking at you Levi).
Second, we are not giving ourselves the opportunity to score the other way - by locking it in F50 when the ball (more often than not) simply spills. If we let the GC half-backs just run it straight back out, as we did with McVeigh, Lloyd, Mills, Jones last week, we're going to struggle.
Not too worried about our defence. I think it's looking pretty good, TBH.
So, we'll get more clearances, but the issue is about what actually constitutes "clearing" the ball for us. Our delivery forward has been extremely poor and that's nothing to do with who is rucking. We either bomb it in, or poorly attempt to execute more precise delivery.
2 problems with this. First, whilst Harry has done extremely well, given the few clean deliveries he gets, to mark and put himself in a position to goal, we're not going to kick enough through him and we're presently light-on for other tall options who can mark and kick straight (looking at you Levi).
Second, we are not giving ourselves the opportunity to score the other way - by locking it in F50 when the ball (more often than not) simply spills. If we let the GC half-backs just run it straight back out, as we did with McVeigh, Lloyd, Mills, Jones last week, we're going to struggle.
Not too worried about our defence. I think it's looking pretty good, TBH.