Yeah or Neah - 8. Kayne Pettifer

[Tiger Spirit]

I’d agree with you om21, but then you have to ask why Cogs, Newman, Krak and Zantuck didn’t get to spend so much time on the bench as Pettifer has for almost his whole career.

I don’t agree with the way he’s been treated either, but you have to ask why a coach would put so much faith in some players and not others.  If a coach knows he can rely on a player then I doubt that he’s going to keep him on the bench if he thinks he can help win the game.  Unless of course he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

We don’t know the whole story, but I still believe Pettifer needs to take a fair amount of responsibility for the way things have happened; otherwise it doesn’t make any sense.

With Fiora I think that comes back to Danny having too much faith in some players, because we rarely got to see players dropped for poor form.  It’s only been in recent times that has happened.

In many ways, that, as much as anything else, has helped bring about Danny’s downfall.

[om21]

In saying that, apart from Zantuck the rest you mentioned are a cut-above the rest. Yes I do understand your point but not every kid is going to be upper-class a-graders which are the qualities and attributes the above 3 have. I think Petters is a squad player who will do a job. He wont burst packs like Cogs, or even produce magic like Kraks.

But your right...maybe he has turned the corner attitude wise.

[Tiger Spirit]

Terry Wallace said that we can be too quick to judge players and that it can take 4 years for players to really start to develop and show what they are capable of.  Because, last season, Richmond supporters wanted to trade Pettifer, but seem to have changed their minds about him now.

Would like to have asked him about his assessment of Jay Schulz, from a few months back.  Is happy to give Pettifer 4 years, but Jay’s not up to it when he’s only played about a dozen games and has just turned 19.     Maybe he didn’t do his homework that day.

[Harry]

IMO Pettifer lacks footy smarts.

In terms of footy smarts I refer to awareness, vision, balance, evasiveness and composure.  Being able to quickly and instinctlively sum up a pressure situation and quickly solve the problem via being aware of your surroundings, evading a would be tackle, spotting an unmanned teamate and having the balance and skill level to execute the transfer of the football to that teamate.  These skills and instincts are god given and are very hard to make drastic improvements in.

IMO Pettifer struggles in this area and this could be the downfall of his AFL carreer unless other aspects of his game are at a more dominant level that would outweigh this apparent lack of footy smarts.  The other aspects in Pettifers game that might compensate for this lack of footy smarts are physical presence, accountability, aerial capacity, and precise and penetrating disposal.  The only way I can see Pettifer becoming an effective AFL footballer is if he became a strong at the ball and man, tagging type back flanker who can effectively use his frame both in the air and on the ground and who can also use his long penetrating kick to the teams advantage. 

He should mould his game to someone like Soloman and Archer, both of whom I consider to not have alot of footy smarts but make up for it in other ways.

[mightytiges]

Amazing what a run in the backline and a bit of confidence does. As much as Danny tries Kayne is not a forward but Pettifer made the most of his goalscoring opportunites today and kicked 4 straight in windy conditions.