Watch out! Chef's running around like he's hard man in a Guy Ritchie movie...……. :)
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I get the initial disdain, but objectively Cox is a solid fit for us.
1. We need to accept that the club sees English as our #1 ruck and that's not going to change. I'd like Goldstein but it won't happen and so because of that there's no point going after a ruck who can only play one position. It doesn't fit with our flexibility mantra anyway.
2. Once we accept English is our first ruck, we need to fix the likes of Dunkley and other mids/forwards having to play minutes as a second ruck. It just doesn't work. Worst of all is that it compromises their own game - Dunkley looked absolutely spent a number of times in the last quarter after having to ruck. The Geelong game springs to mind, he could barely move late. With this in mind, there's not a lot of players on the market who can ruck and play forward. 2MP is a younger option but he's awful.
3. That brings me to Cox. He isn't a world beater but he's a good tall forward/second ruck option who is at the worst club in the land for his position. He's not going to get many ruck minutes given Grundy is phenomenal and in his prime and the Pies can't trust Cameron or use Mihocek as their #1 forward, so they use Cox in this way. He can compete, but he's not a number one target. Cox needs to go to a club that maximises his strengths, which is his ability to shift between ruck/forward given his mobility. He's inconsistent, sure, but he can take a big grab and he rarely ever gets outmarked - the latter was a huge issue for us in the EF v St. Kilda despite having Bruce and Naughton. He's also a pretty reliable shot at goal, is predictable to his team mates and has a bit of swagger which I'd argue we need/would compliment English's softer nature.
4. He won't cost the world. Collingwood are obviously struggling to fit all their players in and I'd suspect they would have interest in one of our fringe types (rumour is Dale). Cox will also be able to give us 2-3 years of service at least, which is about what English needs.
The problem I have with bringing Cox in is that we can't play him, Naughton, Bruce and Schache together. The latter isn't considered in our best 22 at this point and might be trade bait, Naughton is fine and can play back, Bruce.... well, that's the issue. My solution would be to play Naughton as a KPD and Cox/Bruce as our forwards which solves two problems - KPD and second ruck.
Can he just hold them to the contract? In theory it goes both ways.
Sorry DR, not aimed at you. It was just a comment on his perception as a player from the wider footy fan. I just get the sense that most people don't rate Cox and he cops it because, well .... he's an easy target as a foreigner to the game?
I won't begin to pretend I know the ins and outs of his ruck work, but from what I've seen it's reasonable - especially as that second ruck option who can also take the ruck when we're in the forward half of the ground.
We've also been using mids and Bruce/Cordy at times - fair to say he's got them all covered.
Cox is another attempt by us to fill a hole in our immediate 22 on the cheap that won’t make us a whole heap better and does nothing for us long term. So of course we’re into it.
We should be targeting a good first ruckman who can play forward. Cox barely spent any time in the actual ruck this year and on the whole had a putrid season save for one quarter of a final.
This is my concern.
Early impressions are that we are lacking vision with our targets, there are heaps of young emerging talents out there that are required players at their clubs that we could be pushing for, instead we tend to go for the ones we know we can get. I know we have targeted guys like Jack Martin in the past, but even our big name recruits last year in Keath and Bruce were both being pushed out of their clubs.
My impression of Cox is that he really struggles as soon as there’s any body put on him at all in a contest. He doesn’t have natural “footy craft” and the only game I’ve seen where he was good, the 18 prelim Rance was awful and let him have a clean run at the ball all night.
Ruck I have no idea as he rarely plays there. He’s certainly a good athlete for his size, but I’m in the steer clear camp.
This. How many more flaky, middling, fringe-22 types can the list feasibly bear? Hannan and Cox are hardly going to put us over the top.
Also a team crying out for quality crumbers and quick pressure forwards has *no* business entertaining a forward line that features Bruce and Cox.
What're we thinking? Lure some bona fide quality or commit to properly developing what we have.