l will make it easy for you all to understand. Football is played more of who has what in the tank. A defender can go from defence to inside 50 following his opponent & back again within 90 seconds that the ball is moved that quickly. Sometime the defender is so worn out that when they do dispose of the ball it falls short of the target. l have seen Batchlor hit players on the wing lace out from 50 metres which he does in most games. if l remember rightly from where l was sitting he pinned someone perfect from defence to near the interchange with opposition either side of that player it was perfect timed kick for that distance. It takes time to build a team to win a premiership & then it must go to plan on that big day which hundreds of times teams go through a season undefeated to lose the most important game the grand final. If players are sore & worn out in todays game they are forced to make errors. That is the plan of running your opponent out of breathe. Why do you think they use interchange so often. You can have a different opponent 4 times within 10 minutes so the AFL cut the interchange. Football is not the same as it was 10-15-20 years ago. Its super fast & players are so fatigued they make mistakes. Rance, Chaplin, Batchlor, Vlaustin, Newman, Grymes, who then have players like B Ellis, Deledio, Cotchen, Maric, Vickery, Griffiths, Rewoldt, Martin, dropping back so again its the forwards who are running from forward to defence & back all within 90 seconds or less. It take a elite group of players to do that & pull it off properly. This is why skills drop in the AFL over the years. This is why forwards miss easy goals your everyday footballer miss because of fatigue. Our players are very fit & this is why its hard to bring players up from reserves to the next level cause its a whole different game plan & alot faster or loads more running. This is what our club lacked over the years, But now we have the facilities to train harder that the results come with it. So in saying all this if your at the game you see the whole picture of how much ground these players cover & how quick they cover it. There is really no term of defender / forward now days. They are all over the ground. So going back to Batchlor & watching him play & follow him you will see he is a major part of that backline & this lad does have alot of skill & good size. Go stand next to him, He ain't no small 3rd defender who plays on smaller forwards. He takes Rance & Chaplin opponent often. So don't look at football how we played it. Look at football as it is played & coached today. They are elite atheltic players who can play almost any position bar the ruck. But look at how the big men play like Maric, Vickery, Griffiths. They even rove their own ball. The Richmond backline is becoming the most elite in the AFL today & Batchlor plays a huge part of that.
