(08-11-2016, 04:37 AM)laj link Wrote:I'd much rather lose a few extra taps and let Casboult run around taking marks around the ground as he does when he's on the ball.
That is not the reality.
Casboult takes almost zero D50 marks, he is a great lead-up target but Phillips and Kreuzer easily eclipse him in terms of defensive marking, they both get in the right position to stand under the long ball and force opposition around the boundary.
Further, in terms of ruck work, losing the tap is just a small part of it, Kreuzer is infinitely better than Phillips or Casboult once the ball hits the deck. There is no comparison. Stupidly we tend to have Cripps and Kreuzer working together, yet they often just get in each others way! Cripps tends to works far better in combination with Phillips because Phillips' follow up work is so much weaker than Kreuzer's, there is no hesitation Cripps juts gets the ball.
Bolton knows the value of Kreuzer playing well, what we need is a genuine marking target besides Casboult inside F50. McKay is the best long term option besides Curnow and Cripps. If we go and recruit another one or two forwards what happens to McKay and Curnow, will we then have a list with too many forwards, it sounds like that too many rucks argument from a couple of years ago!
I'd argue our best results this season occur when we have Casboult in tandem with Jones inside F50 with Kreuzer and Phillips staying out of the F50 zone.
Our best 2016 football between Rnd 5 and Rnd 9 we had two marking forwards and two rucks playing, on one occasion we had two rucks and three marking forwards when C.Curnow played!
"Ruck, ruck, ruck, ruck ....... Ruck, ruck, ruck, ruck"