samoht wrote:Hickey is injury prone, is not as robust as Longer.
That's his only shortfall.
I don't rate hitouts - and Longer doesn't average more than Hickey does, anyway.
And on hitouts to advantage - on a good day a ruckman might get 10 hitouts to advantage and 6 hitouts to disadvantage (yes, these do happen).
So for a net of 4 hitouts to advantage - which don't guarantee anything, anyway - the advantaged player still gets tackled or chased and the chain still gets broken down more often than not.
So given the uselessness of hitouts - a ruckman who is in the thick of it has to average, let's say, at least 10 kicks, take 6 important marks and dish out 5 accurate handballs - a measly 15 possessions around the ground -to earn his keep.
Longer is not doing that!
Hickey could if he had an injury- free run, but his body won't allow that.
PIerce - why isn't he getting a chance?
Not sure I agree with the premise.
In isolation, a hitout isn't game changing.
But nothing in footy these days is in isolation!
Freo for example. They are a different team when Sandilands plays, as are West Coast with Natanui.
And it's not just because they get hitouts - it's because they structure their game around the ball being in certain parts of the ground. Every player knows where the hitout is going, and players setup across the ground accordingly. Sometimes we see what you mentioned above, that "the advantaged player still gets tackled or chased and the chain still gets broken down more often than not" but what we don't see is that regardless of that incident in isolation, the game is being played on their terms and where they want it on the ground.
It's kind of like Melbourne Storm roosting the ball out of bounds on the 3rd tackle about 20m out from their own goal. The average mug sees that and thinks 'Dude, what did you do that for?? You just gave them the ball when you still had 3 tackles left and were only 40m from your own line??'
But what they're doing, is trying to get the game into a position that they've trained for and prepared for. They know they won't score immediately from doing it, but they are confident that their opponents having the ball 20m out from their Defensive line allows the Storm to set up defensively and try to score in 2-3 sets time.
It's the same for a lot of teams with good tap ruckman. They get to play the game on their terms.
( God help me)
and despise the Pies, the Blues, and the Injectors.