AA was a pleasant surprise in the ruck last weekend, and shows he might be a pinch hit ruckman if we need one. But he did get very badly beaten at hit-outs. His value came because a combination of his efforts and those of the midfielders managed to make it a ground level competition for first possession.
I think Witts is a reasonably talented footballer and he's clearly pretty tall, even by ruckman standards. I suspect he's not the smartest ruckman going around, though. Put Aliir up against someone like Gawn, who is very tall, highly talented AND pretty smart (at least in a football sense) and he'd get trounced. Gawn would find a way to feed midfielders standing a little further away and the Dees would have the ball in their forward 50 before you can blink.
What the AA ruck "experiment" did suggest, however, was that maybe AA could occasionally be used as a ruck rover in the Goodes mould. Not regularly, but just occasionally, to change things up. He showed surprising agility at ground level and some of his close-in handballing was very good too.
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