I was also frustrated with Towers on Friday night...(I was yelling at the tv for him to get off the ground)...but I do feel sorry for him because his errors seem to always happen at the end of the game and they are clear in our memory.
How about Lloyd's kick that went straight to Essendon and gave them their first goal? Or Hanners multiple turnovers? They are forgiven because they are senior players.
I do think he will be dropped for Jones.
I'm not sure where you get your stats but Gawn is listed at 71% on the afl.com stats website. Whatever it is, I get your point. However, this is part of our overall problem - Naismith at 61% and Sinclair at 50%. Given that they are never benched at the same time, one of our bench spots is taken up by one of these guys 90% of the time.
As a comparison, Melbourne's ruck combination of Gawn and Pedersen were at 71% and 85% taking up much less bench time and giving their midfielders more rotations.
I think we need to find a way to overcome this and the easiest way is to drop Sinclair and get other players such as Towers to pinch hit.
I still think it is preferable to go with two ruckmen but with one proviso and that is that at least one has a second string to his bow.
Usually it will be as a marking target and I think Sinclair does offer that and is a better contested mark than Naismith, whose key strength is his work as a tap ruckman. Sinclair also has greater mobility than Tippo for mine.
At the moment they seem to be working well in tandem and reckon it will be reasonably hard for Tippo to force his way back into the best 22. Having said that I am glad we do have him there in reserve because the chances of a ruckman getting injured is pretty high and he would definitely be the best third ruckman in the league (and also highest paid)
Sinkers and tippo is a better combo than nainsmith and tippo.
Watched the reserves game closely and whilst Dawson did some good work, his work rate did not impress nor does he exude pace.
This week will be about matching Melbourne's ability to win the ball at stoppages and holding them up when they have the ball and forcing them to kick over the mark.
On Friday, Sinclair contested admirably but we'll need more than players being merely competitive we need them to win the contests, create opportunities through turnovers or impact contests.
Tippett may not be ready, Allir may not be ready (sorry Ludwig), Naismith cannot compete with Gawn all night, so regrettably that only leaves Sinclair, or we use Towers or someone else in the same vein as Richmond.
I didn't think McVeigh showed enough to prove he was ready for Melbourne on the MCG on the contrary, he may have played for the full 100 mins but he did so standing at FF or forward of the square.
On that basis, I cannot see any change except for Florent for Jones.
We need a Goodes type to chop out ion the ruck, where can we find one of those?
As far as going with one ruck, this is not the week to be talking about that coming up against Gawn..........We should probably play 3 rucks to try to break even
But tippet with Naismith is the go, as you can see by time on ground, Sink/Naismith give us nothing up fwd. Tippett if fit can at least give us a target
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