Inside extractors and other modern football roles

[bloodspirit]

Earlier this year a certain poster was ruffling feathers by, among other things, talking about the Swans having a policy of no more than 3 'inside extractors'. While the terminology put people off, he may not have been so far off the mark. I say this having regard to the release this week of the AFL Coaches' Association's inaugural All Australian team: Coaches shock with revolutionary AA team - AFL.com.au.

Apparently the teams got all their opposition analysts together to decide what is the ideal balance of team roles in the modern game. And this is what the consensus decision was for an ideal 'modern' 22:

* 9 midfielders including 4 'inside midfielders' (sound familiar?) and 5 inside/outside midfielders;
* 2 ruckmen
* 6 defenders including 2 talls, 2 mediums, a small and an extra tall/medium;
* 5 forwards including 2 key forwards, a high half-forward, a small a tall/medium 'marking' forward.

Obviously not all 'modern' footy teams have exactly this structure but I was curious about how our team stacks up with these roles. Which roles do our players play?

I'm not sure whether to try to go through our entire list or the 22 of our latest game or by each role or how to tackle this. However, perhaps it would be worth doing this because it may assist us better to analyse the structure that we play with. I'll have a bit of a go but I will leave out Goodes and Shaw since they have retired and think ahead a little bit (only a little).

I'll have a go at squeezing our players into the various roles:

Inside midfielders: Joey, Mitchell, Parker (?), Hewett (?), Bird, Perris (?), Foote
Inside/outside midfielders: Kizza, Hanners, Macca, Cunningham, Robbo (?), Mills (?), Heeney (?), Hiscox, McGlynn, BJ, Jetta, Lloyd
Rucks: Pyke, Tippett, Derickx, Naismith, Nankervis
Tall defenders: Teddy, Reg, X, Aliir (?)
Small defenders: Smith, Jones
Medium and tall/medium defenders: Rampe, Laidler, Marsh, Newman, Melican (?), AJ, McLaren
High half-forward: Buddy
Marking forward: Rose (?), Towers (?)
Key forwards: Reid, Davis (?), Rohan (?)

Obviously my listing could be rearranged if you wanted and there are various players who either I'm not sure if I've assigned correctly or perhaps we just don't know yet or who can play different positions as required (e.g. Reid).

Also, I'm not quite sure where this is getting to but I feel like I'm on to something. Help me out here. I've done some spade work to start off. Feel free to correct, improve or dispute my suggestions. What do we need more of? What do we have an oversupply of? Are there some players that need to be retrained/redeployed to different roles? How does this theory or analysis by the coaches apply to us at the Swans?

[Scottee]

Door for thought Blood spirit.
Melican and McLaren are tall defenders. Davis is probably the most versatile player in the side now but I would regard him as a large bodied midfielder. Aliir is a tall defender or wing. Towers also plays as a third man up follower. Jones can play as an io mid. Robbo is expected to be traded to Melbourne. Mills can play outside but is an inside specialist.Rose and Heeney are both potentially midfielder serving apprenticeships up forward. Bird expected to be traded out.