Hope the Rosman injury is minor. We have been tackling better in recent weeks than we did over the second and third quarters, so hopefully we will do better in finals. We certainly do have players who are strong tacklers, with Hird 4th in the league for total tackles, Hobbs equal 14th, and Tovey equal 22nd. (The VFL app won't sort all players by averages, just totals, but among VFL players in the top 40 for total tackles, Hird is 7th for tackles per game.) Hobbs is also 10th in the league for total disposals (and among players in the top 40 for disposals, he's 8th for disposals per game.)
Yes, Penry's development has been great. Grant also showed a great deal of improvement since last year and was putting together an impressive season when he was injured. When I tried assessing most of the list last year I really didn't account sufficiently for players improving. Pleased with Stubbings' improvement as well. And although Hawkins and Rider haven't played every game this season, they've generally been solid role players when they have played, which is also a step up from last season, so good to see. I think one factor in our win over Collingwood was having a broader range of solid contributors - obviously we also had individual star performances, with Alessio likely to get 10 votes for his 6-goal performance and, as you noted, Downie and Gahan excelling also. But it also looked like for us, everyone was ultimately contributing something, which was not as much the case for Collingwood. It looks like we do have a pretty good system now, with the ability to adjust how we're playing (moving relatively slowly and taking marks vs fast handball chains) according to what's happening in the game. Certainly it still breaks down sometimes and we could stand to be more polished in our ball use going inside forward 50, but the team is gelling much better than last season.
Hope the Rosman injury is minor. We have been tackling better in recent weeks than we did over the second and third quarters, so hopefully we will do better in finals. We certainly do have players who are strong tacklers, with Hird 4th in the league for total tackles, Hobbs equal 14th, and Tovey equal 22nd. (The VFL app won't sort all players by averages, just totals, but among VFL players in the top 40 for total tackles, Hird is 7th for tackles per game.) Hobbs is also 10th in the league for total disposals (and among players in the top 40 for disposals, he's 8th for disposals per game.)
Yes, Penry's development has been great. Grant also showed a great deal of improvement since last year and was putting together an impressive season when he was injured. When I tried assessing most of the list last year I really didn't account sufficiently for players improving. Pleased with Stubbings' improvement as well. And although Hawkins and Rider haven't played every game this season, they've generally been solid role players when they have played, which is also a step up from last season, so good to see. I think one factor in our win over Collingwood was having a broader range of solid contributors - obviously we also had individual star performances, with Alessio likely to get 10 votes for his 6-goal performance and, as you noted, Downie and Gahan excelling also. But it also looked like for us, everyone was ultimately contributing something, which was not as much the case for Collingwood. It looks like we do have a pretty good system now, with the ability to adjust how we're playing (moving relatively slowly and taking marks vs fast handball chains) according to what's happening in the game. Certainly it still breaks down sometimes and we could stand to be more polished in our ball use going inside forward 50, but the team is gelling much better than last season.
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