jack has footy smarts one of the biggest needs to play chf. his lack of pace doesnt count so much when you have to run all the time. at ff jacks lack of pace has regularly cost us dearly its one reason why he struggles on frawley . frawley easily has him covered on the lead and out bodies him with greater strength 99 time out of 100.
we have an ideal structure to develop up forward but we refuse to go down that path.
vickery in a fp allows us to have him play significant development time in the ruck. he is the resting ruckman there. why play him in a key post only to lose your structure for 40% of a game do collingwood geelong wce etc do this not on your life. are we really going to ask him to play chf and then spend significant time in the ruck. we really cant have it both ways.
so who plays or who do we develop at chf for when vickery is in ruck bloody hell we cant find 1 chf yet alone two.
griffiths at ff as i said in the other post. hes a natural ff who provides just about every option you could wish for. size height strength speed and hopefully contesti=ed marking.
riewoldt at chf and in the short term while griffiths and vickery develop we may lose a bit of scoring power by playing him here. just my opinion but jacks attributes a better suited to this role than ff.
looking at the list imo astbury should be developed as a chf and todd elton as a second ruck come forward. that leaves us needing to recruit another young ff to round out our list of forwards.
finally while it is certainly possible based on what ive seen of both astbury and griffiths playing as defenders they have done nothing at all to make them standouts in fact i see them struggle with key aspects of the role. i have already said i believe post has shown more as a defender and we cut him.
imo they have far more value and upside as forwards.
to me a lot of it comes down to having just a bit more patience and reign in the expectations. this is what happens when you build a list with smls/med first you sort of stagnate while you wait for your structure talls to develop.
looking from my list perspective we have
tall forwards
riewoldt mature, griffiths junior, astbury development, elton junior, mcguane mature. definately need at least one more genuine tall forward.
tall defenders
chaplin mature, rance development , grimes ijuryhow long?? junior , mcintosh junior, darrou junior. i personally would like us to target at least one more tall defender even a mature one like kyle hartigan,
that would mean we could afford to actually develop one of astbury or griffiths or both as a tall forward where they should be developed imo.
rucks
maric mature, derickx mature, vickery ruck/for development, mcbean ruck/def junior. a good number it does lack a junior of marics type. with this all i can say is they must relly think derickx will come on in leaps and bounds yet they have hardly played him as a ruckman.
so not only do i think astbury and griffiths more suited to key forward roles by developing them there we actually go a fair way to balancing the list out properly and have development occuring to cove all areas and provide some sort of depth.