What that would mean though al is that we would be down a midfielder and therefore considerable rotation options. We have been playing a midfielder out of the forward line to increase our forward pressure, create a mismatch for the opposition once the ball hits the ground and to enable us to have an additional midfielder we can rotate through the middle. With Foley going down this option has diminished somewhat but the ideal players for this position is of course Dusty followed by Cotch and Lids.
Bringing in a second ruckman makes us less flexible unless the second ruckman is flexible. If they are like Vickery who can play the genuine forward/2nd ruck position then this is an asset to the side rather than hindrance. If we were to play another pure ruckman then he can only rotate with the other ruckman depriving us of interchange options and meaning we will struggle to compete in fitness levels as the game progresses.
I do like the idea of attracting another capable ruckman but unless they can play as a tall forward or extra man in defense then it would hurt us to have two specialist ruckman playing in the same team.
yeah, it would be a little of robbing peter to pay paul.
i dont think it would so much mean a midfielder down if we went to a smaller forward line, but it would affect the rotations as more would have to be done midfield to forward line rather than midfiled to bench.
to me the extra workload would be shared amongst a number of players, while vastly reducing the workload on one single player, which i see as a valuable trade off.
that one single player is also a very important player, because we ( and many other teams) don't really have a replacement for our number one ruckman. it also means it's impossible to recruit another ready to go pure ruckman, which reduces your options.
The only way to have a back up is to recruit and develop your own youngsters, which takes time, and if you get to a point where they are performing well in the VFL, but cant get a game, they will be offered more opportunity somewhere else. Unless of course you only recruit blokes that can hold their own as a forward as well, but as i said this vastly reduces options, and therefore chances of actually getting someone who is good enough.
if you went back a two talls in the forward line setup, it wouldn't really affect flexability, as we would have a similar mix to what we have now with a three pronged forward setup, just shuffling the deck a bit.
the key would be having more blokes play on the flanks and pockets that can rotate through the middle, something we should be aiming for anyway.
