The Great Ruck Debate.

[Thryleon]

"If you take the field you're fit" is one of those ridiculous football cliches.

It's the same as "We're taking it one week at a time" or "Injuries are no excuse."
If a club is taking it one game at a time their 'forward planning' is pretty "crap.
And injuries can cripple a sides season...we know that better than most.

I reckon we probably had half a dozen players on the weekend who were injured to some extent before they took the field and that hampered their performances. We don't know of course but we had three players roll ankles the week before and there is some talk Charlie rolled his pre-game.

Were GWS that good/ were we that bad.
Bit of both...but at different stages of the game.

GWS were awful in the first term.
They were excellent in the second and third, but struggled in the last.

Their 'dominant' period was just a little better than ours, lasted a little longer, and our worst was much worse than theirs.
And those momentum changes probably related to a fair extent to our injuries.

I wouldn't be getting over excited if I was a Giants fan.
I have a feeling they'll come back to earth pretty quickly.

On the rucks...
One of my main issues with the debate is the way we sometimes talk in "absolutes"...sometimes on both sides of the debate.

"We lose balance"
"We lose run"
"We lose clearances"
"If a solo ruck goes down we have nothing left"

The truth is we don't.
We don't lose these things.
They're not lost.
Not completely.
They change, sometimes dramatically and sometimes very subtly.

A player replacing a ruckman who goes down in the first ten minutes may not have the same influence, indeed it may be considerably less, but it doesn't disappear completely.
Not playing an extra runner doesn't mean you have no run at all.

With an advantage gained in one area, there is always a sacrifice in other areas.
The other thing is that things like balance and run are very hard to measure because there are numerous factors that can affect those things...including injury, loss of form, a poor game, weather
You can pick a side on paper...but the expectations won't always much the onfield performance.

Close your mind to options and you close your mind to opportunities to explore different structure and tactics.
You become one dimensional in that aspect of the game...and that makes you predictable.

the positive we can take out of the weekend was that all we need to do is not try match gws for pace but beat them at the coalface where they went to work on us.  That means less rub more big bodies.  We actually decreased our advantage in that regard to try strengthen a weakness when we have no hope of beating them with speed.  So smash them inside so they can't use the outside is that tactic to employ against these sides.  Could be argued we tried this vs Sydney and lost badly...