It would certainly appear that not just St Kilda believes that essentially the new interchange rules take us back to where we were pre-2005 regarding ruck rules.bobmurray wrote:There's a touch of GT about our current ruck stocks.....
I wonder if Ross has ventured down to the archives and browsed through GT's game plan......or maybe it was the game plan left in the coaches box by some loony tune.....
As much as recruiting, the Saints got hit by the implementation of the centre circle. The circle rewarded pure height where previously the best ruckmen combined athleticism to get a great running leap with pure physicality. For the first half of the decade Jeff White and Clark Keating were much lauded. Post rule change, White was good but not great, and even if Keating's body had held up (which the rule change would have helped with), he would have become undersized at 197.
The change encourage Freo to persist with the Sandilands experiment as teams scoured the country for 200cm athletes.
Now with the limit to the interchange, the (unsurprising) preference seems to be that the guy that can be done without is a 2nd ruckman who is a liability if anyone but another ruckman gets hurt. Better to have forwards and or backs that can pinch-hit in the ruck than to have multiple "true" ruckmen.
Expect to see Jason Blake rucking again. The circle killed him, he has a ridiculous running leap on him. Expect to see Kosi rucking. All of Gardiner, McEvoy and Stanley will be expected to spend time forward. McEvoy's 10k time becomes critical - with no 2nd ruck, a lot of rotations will be to forward. Even if he remains slow at the beginning of games, if he's outrunning his opponent in the 4th quarter, that's a huge bonus.
