85% or more of effective ruck work comes after the tap.
You can lose the taps, taps to advantage and whatever stat someone wants to invent 50:1 and still win the ruck, as Buckley found out!
If you know what you are doing, you can even deliberately lose the tap such that the opponent gets a tap to advantage stat, and still win the clearance. Most good rucks know this, Levi took years to show some signs that he was learning it, McDonald shows no pattern at all he is ruck chaos!
If we want to try someone in the ruck, it may as well be Jones, and play McDonald in his natural position inside D50 with Weitering. Under Josh Fraser's tutelage Jones showed significant potential in the VFL ruck, he recovers quickly naturally and attacks the football without hesitation. Something many players trialled in the ruck do not do!
You can lose the taps, taps to advantage and whatever stat someone wants to invent 50:1 and still win the ruck, as Buckley found out!
If you know what you are doing, you can even deliberately lose the tap such that the opponent gets a tap to advantage stat, and still win the clearance. Most good rucks know this, Levi took years to show some signs that he was learning it, McDonald shows no pattern at all he is ruck chaos!
If we want to try someone in the ruck, it may as well be Jones, and play McDonald in his natural position inside D50 with Weitering. Under Josh Fraser's tutelage Jones showed significant potential in the VFL ruck, he recovers quickly naturally and attacks the football without hesitation. Something many players trialled in the ruck do not do!
"Ruck, ruck, ruck, ruck ....... Ruck, ruck, ruck, ruck"