They swung the axe, but there was nothing but dead wood left!
Their list is totally stuffed, they cannot even drop Hill. Geeze, Freeman might have been a handy pickup.
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Ratten came out today and essentially said they don't have enough depth to drop anyone!
Thought he was going to say it was because of COVID seeing as though no VFL means the dropped players couldn't play this weekend.
What they have to tell themselves to sleep at night. They don’t want the headlines of dropping Hill which they should’ve done. I mean, we dropped Tom Boyd in 2016 and he came back a different player late in the season to the GF. We did a similar thing with Stringer too. No one should be safe from pathetic performance no matter their surname or salary. I guess that’s why we are at where we are at and they’re a dumpster fire.
Remember those crazy rumours about us chasing Jack Lonie. If they were true thank god we woke up. Averaging over 8 games just 12 disposals, two tackles and a grand total 4 goals, 4 behinds. His four goals came in two games, so 6 games he’s gone goalless. As an experienced forward.
He’s every chance to be delisted. And I’m even more wrapt he’s not clogging up our list.
What leads to players such as Butler, Lloyd, Gowers etc??
Fringe player at a club after having done some random good things for them. Gets traded to another club and in the first year absolutely kills it to win the goal kicking. Then after that they plummet back to their typical lows and soon enough delisted from recognition. I find it strange how they can play good enough to lead a club in goal kicking for a year and then basically vanish after that.
I never thought Ratten to be a weak coach, but it seems he is. Hill should’ve been made an example of 4 weeks ago, and where to now for the match committee. A saints friend of mine said Hill should be dropped but they only had 28 players to choose from against NM. I replied “yeah but some young kid playing his first game would’ve got more than 6 disposals against NM”. Ratten needs to pull some heads in...very very quickly.
There are some things to learn from both the Saints this year and us last season.
The Saints haven't been able to get the two ruckman that served them well last season on the park on a regular basis and we have looked a lot better since embracing having two ruckman in the line-up.
We stuck with the out of form Bruce last year and the Saints are doing the same this year with Hill. I think it sends a bad message across the playing group when players are selected regardless of form.
When we played poorly last year we coughed up some big losses and the Saints are doing the same this year.
After winning a final last year and having an impressive season the Saints thought it was just a case of topping up for 2021 and in comparison we added the experience of Martin, Treloar, Hannan and of course the number one draft pick.
Who knows what our approach to managing the list will be at the end of this season but there could be some lessons to learn from the way the Saints went about it.
For me, I think it just goes to show how quickly form and therefore the perception of how strong your list is can change at a club.
And it would be the confidence Marshall/Ryder would’ve brought to the group. At one stage both weren’t playing and the team looked VFL standard. Hill, butler, coffield and a few others, look shadows of their former selves. With no defensive pressure Howard looks like a deer in headlights after looking so strong last year. The new additions of Higgins and Crouch haven’t set the world on fire. My saints mate reckons they are in for some serious pain if they can’t get Marshall back to 100% fitness.
Carlton legend Stephen Silvagni has been announced as St Kilda's new list manager.
Good luck with that one.