White Winmar wrote:
Critiquing a player after a poor performance is part of what the forum is about. Writing players off as being terrible, overrated, useless, never make it, etc. is not. Especially in a week where someone like Newnes was clearly our best player. That is bizarre. At least wait until he plays a number of stinkers in a row and gets dropped. 35 touches at 83% efficiency and 7 tackles this week and 71 votes on this forum. He has probably been our most consistent player over the past three years. Also labelling him a poor decision maker and has suspect disposal are also claims that have not been backed by any evidence. His career stats would suggest he is very proficient in those areas. You don't go at 83% if your disposal and decision making are poor. His career average hovers around 74%. Hardly shabby and above average at least. If you're going to bag someone as not being up to it, at least provide some evidence, other than your confirmation bias riddled opinion.
Although stats aren’t everything, if we now need to ‘prove’ our opinions (I’m sure the irony of that sentence is not lost on everyone) I’d suggest the below figures strongly suggest that to say Newnes is an A-Grader, is overrating him.
But first, just to be clear, this is what I actually said about Newnes:
"Newnes is closer to D grade than he is to A-grade. He's so overrated by Saints fans it isn't funny. "
"His decision making is awful."
"And his possessions dont hurt one bit."
"I don't rate him."
"Dont get me wrong, he's not completely hopeless."
"But he's far from being a star. "
"Newnes is overrated by most Saints fans"
"Don't get me wrong, I like Newnes. He tries hard, is pretty tough and is durable."
"He's a reasonable defender - but a terrible on-baller."
Hardly shocking and earth shattering stuff I'd have thought.
But anyway...
He’s played 100 games – and hasn’t polled a single Brownlow vote.
He’s
70th in the comp for
Disposals.
He’s
not in our top 15 for
Effective Disposals. Considering how appalling our ball use is, that’s not a good sign for him!
He’s
75th in the comp for
Effective Disposals!.
He’s our
2nd top for
Clangers.
He’s our equal
2nd for
Frees Against.
He’s our
7th worst for
Goal Kicking Efficiency
He’s
not in our top 15 for Goal Assists.
He’s
not in our top 10 for Inside 50s
He’s
16th for Disposal Efficiency with only 72.4%.
He’s
not in the top 100 in the comp for
Disposal Efficiency!
The stats don’t paint the picture of an A-grader to me.
And unfortunately, what the above stats don’t tell us – is his decision making. If you have a good option, but ignore it and instead kick 40m+ to a 50/50 contest – that counts as an Effective Disposal. Even though it was a gross f*** up for the team, it counts as an Effective Disposal and adds to your stats in both the Effective Disposals and Disposal Efficiency. And this is the area in which I’m most critical of Newnes. Ha takes the wrong option far too often.
So as bad as his efficiency stats already are, if these errors in judgement were also being counted also (which they should be) they’d be far, far worse!
So to summarise, Newnes tries hard and is a reasonable defender. But he is nowhere near A-Grade. Not even close. Hence, as many Saints fans see him as such – he is overrated.
To use the fact that he’s been one of our most consistent players over the past couple of years is utter folly. We finished 9th in his first year, 16th in his second year, 18th in his third year, 14th in his fourth year and 9th in his fifth year. Yet we’re beating our chests because he’s been one of our best?? Please. We’ve hardly been a bench mark.
The only other thing more ludicrous than that argument is that he’s in our leadership group!! Have you seen our leadership group? Mav Weller is in it FFS! And Geary is our captain! With all due respect to those guys, we're not exactly brimming with leaders down there at Seaford.
As I’ve said earlier, I like Newnes. He has a crack. But he’s very overrated by most Saints fans.