All those sides (with the exception of St Kilda's Barker) were teams that won premierships or played in GF's.
By implication, they had the support to send their Key Forwards up the ground.
You also had some teams with incredible midfields in the past 10 years that did not have elite forwards playing up the ground. Recently you have had Geelong with Mooney, WCE (in 2004-6) with Lynch and even the Swans with Hall and Lions with Lynch as predominate stay at home, leading forwards. All amazing midfields (with possible exception of Swans) who could run the ball deep inside 50 to a leading forward. Just no need for a roaming forward up to the wings.
To me, its a bit of horses for course. If there is a need for Jack to play up the ground and we have the support inside 50 to capitalise, I can see that ploy breaking up the congestion in our F50.
But until we have a Griffiths, Post or Vickery prove they can step up, we may just see the ball coming straight back over Jacks head which is what happened last year when team ganged their defence up on him.
The other way of looking at is they were top sides because thay had such quality players roaming around CHF. it could become a bit like the chicken and egg though, which leads on to the horses for courses, which i think is a fair call, particulary the part about breaking up congestion in the F50.
Either way though, as you hint at, we need other options.
Those blokes were true CHFs. The weren't leading up past true wing to take marks as a first option. Teams zone off and are quite happy for N. Riewoldt to take a mark 90-100m from goal if it means they have time to get blokes back into F50 to stop the contested mark. If you are waiting for your number 1 target to get back into F50 (as St Kilda were so often last season) I think he will become less effective and your structure breaks down.
That said, Collingwood won the flag and will be raging hot favourites again without a great marking forward.... I just reckon Jack is an elite contested grab, great core strength in one-on-one body contests and changing his game towards one suited for players with different qualities to Jack (and for players that don't have Jack's qualities) should be the least of our focus right now, develop a structure where we get it long to him early, and develop the smaller forwards to works off his tap-ons and soccer kicks.
I'm not sure what different qualities you look at for a CHF, but wouldn't elite contested mark and good core strength be highly sought after attributes for a CHF?
Nick's an interesting one. From what I've seen he really only gets up towards the half back when the ball is struggling to get down to him. It seems it's more of something he does off his own back as there doesn't seem to be any plan for someone else to push up forward to cover for him.
So if Jack does move further up the ground, if he is meant to be working as far back as CHB, hopefully there will be plans for someone else to push forward as he does.
I also have a suspicion that Jack will be asked to run deep into the forward line from CHF to create options in a similar vein to what he does at the 11sec mark in this video. (with longer kicks naturally)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lpCcg5WSRM(notice astbury also working deep forward to provide an option too)
I remember a couple of training reports early last year mentioned how there were drills specifically aimed at kicking to space and having someone run with the flight of the ball to mark.
Hardwicks reaction in this video could have the caption "I love it when a plan comes together".
I'm happy to see jack tried at CHF. If it doesnt work, so be it. I just don't want to see a game plan revolve around him, or any single player. You need to be more dimensional than that.
