bigcarl, i agree with much of what you've said here. however:
bigcarl wrote:Stanley's lack of body development might count against him in this regard, but he's zippy and a difficult match up.
i don't think he is a difficult match up, yet. i can't remember a game where he beat his opponent, and the stats back me up - in six games, he kicked three goals, had three assists and had around eight touches and three marks per game. this is not to say that he'll never be any good, but right now he's not an answer.
look, here are the goals per game stats for 2010:
riewoldt: 2.6
milne: 2.4
schneider: 1.6
steven: 1.5
goddard, kosi: 1.1
montagna: 0.9
dal santo: 0.8
gram: 0.6
gardiner, mcqualter, peake,
stanley: 0.5
armitage: 0.4
s fisher, gwilt, hayes, mcevoy: 0.3
geary, jones: 0.2
gilbert, ray: 0.1
all of those except armo and stanley are in our best team and all play up to their season averages, we kick:
15.9 goals per game
for comparison, geelong get to:
19.5 goals per game
and collingwood:
17.1 goals per game
doesn't tell us much except what we already know - that we score fewer points than other good sides. that might cost us in finals. but last year we scored about 70 points a game in finals and got close to winning it.
look, we know that to win big games we need a standout goal-kicking performance from someone. gardy against geelong last year. riewoldt in two finals last year. schneider against geelong this year. other standout performances in the last couple of years have come from riewoldt and milne (lots of times), bj and schneider (a few times), kosi (infrequently), joey (once).
conversely, in our losses both this year and last, we haven't had a player kick more than three, and certainly not take the game by the scruff of the neck and have us lose despite that.
to win a big game someone has to stand up and kick goals. do we have enough players capable of that? if milne could kick a real bag in a final that would be a huge asset. otherwise we're relying on riewoldt, maybe schneider, bj to pop up. that's only really four who can do it at all.
this is where kosi hurts us. he may be good for structure, but he just doesn't kick enough bags of goals. i don't care if he never kicks the ones and twos, as long as he kicks five a few times a year.
mcqualter is similar - he plays forward but he's never going to kick a bag so the opposition don't have to worry so much about him. stanley ain't kicked bags yet, and won't until he matures a bit. steven kicks goals regularly, which is admirable, but i'm not sure he's got five in him either. gardy can kick a bag but it's pretty infrequent.
with few truly damaging goal-kickers we rely heavily on roo, milney, schneider and bj. it's just the way it is.
stop those four and you've stopped st kilda.
yes, that's a worry.
