meher baba wrote:I still am strongly of the view that you can't play Zac, Max and Blake in the same team in a finals game. Well, I should say, of course you can do this, but only at the cost of blunting your edge elsewhere on the park...
I can understand the arguments about us being too tall. Clarke and Dempster aren't really ground level guys though. Raph's more of a receiver and Dempster's a stopper. I think no matter what the configuration of our backline, the only ground level guys we have in the back six are Gilbert and Fisher. We obviously need midfield guys to go back and help out. I don't think that's particularly odd. Geelong don't have anyone in their back six who's a noted ground level player.
I have named one too many defenders. I would expect Ross to mix things around with Blake, Clarke or even Gilbert or Dawson spending some time up forward if we named the team like that. In the end it could come down to a choice between Clarke and Dawson. I don't think any of Baker, Blake, Gilbert or Hudghton will miss unless forced out by injury.
In terms of midfield rotations, I think we're fine. Ball, BJ, CJ, Dal, Gram, Hayes, Joey, Ray are all onball types. Mini and Schneider can go in there if needed. That gives us ten for the rotations which I think is enough. Ross might opt for Dempster as an extra tagger. I wouldn't, but I can see the temptation. He might go in at the expense of one of the defenders.
Blake has hardly played KPD all year. He's mostly been rolling off Tom Harley style. Max, Zac and Fisher have been taking most of the key jobs. With someone like Collingwood you can play Max and Zac on Cloke and Anthony and Fisher on Medhurst. You can do a similar sort of thing with Geelong and even the Dogs. I think the defence is tougher as long as they're all in.