Tweet
Re: Welcome to the Bulldogs: Bailey Smith
Appreciate the clarification on Macrae (I haven't watched a lot of our games this year). The point remains that we need Smith to raise his game and take ownership of the midfield sooner rather than later - he has attributes we are in very short supply of on our list. He has his faults (we all know them) but playing him as a high half forward or on the wing actually exacerbates his weaknesses and doesn't align as well with his considerable strengths. He should be getting more meaningful minutes in our midfield rotations - for mine it is not an either/or but we need to have a bigger spread of starting mids. I actually think he also has some run-with qualities depending on the opposition match-ups akin to a Ben Keays type, but Bevo has never had this in his coaching repertoire.
I guess many of our midfield issues against the better teams start with having a non-dominant stoppage/pure clearance ruckman, so our mids can never really position themselves assertively at stoppage - so we might, through sheer talent, be able to win a lot of dirty clearances but they never seem to translate to scoreboard dominance. Collingwood had less clearances on Friday night but absolutely smashed us for scoreboard impact from clearances on the night.
Appreciate the clarification on Macrae (I haven't watched a lot of our games this year). The point remains that we need Smith to raise his game and take ownership of the midfield sooner rather than later - he has attributes we are in very short supply of on our list. He has his faults (we all know them) but playing him as a high half forward or on the wing actually exacerbates his weaknesses and doesn't align as well with his considerable strengths. He should be getting more meaningful minutes in our midfield rotations - for mine it is not an either/or but we need to have a bigger spread of starting mids. I actually think he also has some run-with qualities depending on the opposition match-ups akin to a Ben Keays type, but Bevo has never had this in his coaching repertoire.
I guess many of our midfield issues against the better teams start with having a non-dominant stoppage/pure clearance ruckman, so our mids can never really position themselves assertively at stoppage - so we might, through sheer talent, be able to win a lot of dirty clearances but they never seem to translate to scoreboard dominance. Collingwood had less clearances on Friday night but absolutely smashed us for scoreboard impact from clearances on the night.
Comment