Originally Posted by
O'Reilly Boy
Part of the issue is that one of Wicks' jobs is to be where the ball isn't, so television is not going to be interested. As I see it, his role is to turn up in the peripheral vision of a defender in order to close off an option. This means that he doesn't always set up to be at the drop of the ball, and that he spends time shuttling around in no man's land, where he does pick up occasional possessions as the ball spills out of a contest, or a defender is forced to dump a relieving kick under pressure. That's where his goals have largely come from: you'll have noticed that he seems to come from nowhere to take an unexpected, uncontested mark, for example. That was certainly what was happening last year. This year, teams are playing a bit tighter on him, I suspect, so he's not getting those opportunities as often.
Bell strikes me as a hybrid wing-forward, with the ability to get well up the field and the tank to cover the often thankless laps up and down the ground. I agree with the analysis of his lack of composure as a finisher, but his effort is terrific, and I do think that, as is the case with any player, the opportunity to put a string of games together, to build confidence and connections with his team-mates, is what he most needs.
Someone asked whether Stephens could play the small pressure forward role. I think that he is a hybrid in and out mid—someone who can win his own ball and then do something useful with it, and that while that aspect of his game could be sacrificed to play defensive forward, there would be no point: I don't think he'd add anything to what Wicks offers, and we'd be taking him away from the game he should be developing in the midfield group. Chances are, were he to play that rather thankless, invisible-to-television forward role, we'd be having the same conversations about his low stats, lack of impact etc, simply because that is the nature of the role.
The problem for Stephens is that he has not pushed his way up the mids depth chart sufficiently, and is still ranked by the MC behind Mills, Parker, Warner, Rowbottom, McInerney, Florent, Heeney, Gulden, Kennedy. I can't see moving him out of position will be that useful for him.
On another matter, I am interested in what people think about Lloyd's future. We are playing a different game out of the back half these days, moving away from the system in which the ball was worked towards CHB (used to be Malceski's role) and then distributed down the line or to a running half-back. We seem to have much more variety in our exits these days—which is good, as teams will work out our plan A (this happened around this time last year, as teams moved quickly to deny the corridor and take out the Pyke channels option and the short 45 inboard kick from Campbell), so it is useful to be able to ring the changes within a game.
And I am also wondering how Rampe fits into the new set-up, now that we have the twin McDonald towers relieving him of taking on a big forward. I'm not being critical of either, but am thinking about how their respective roles are changing/ have changed, and whether some of the rustiness we saw in their games in recent weeks are about the adjustments they are having to make.
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