Rance has had good games on power forwards in the past and TBH i'm not sure there is a defender in the comp that can go one on one with Cloke all day and come out on top without getting a chop out from his teammates and having someone drop back into the hole. That was the biggest concern for me. No-one was getting in front of Cloke to block his leads, no-one going third man up. I'd be filthy if I was Rance at the lack of support.
Even more concerning is that there was really no other marking threat in the forward line, particularly when Lynch was on ball.
With a loose man in defence to remain with his player, both Chaplin and Grimes could have gone third up more easily than in any other game.
This.
If anyone saw AFL Insider last night then they would have seen King give this game quite a bit of attention. Without saying it directly he was implying it was the fault of our midfielders. Blokes like Chaplin actually didn't do anything wrong. When the ball was going into our back 50 half the team went pedestrian. Guys like Grigg and even Maric were standing around scratching their nuts when they were all well within reach to take Chaplin's and Grimes' opponents so those blokes could then roll back onto Cloke and give Rance a hand. They showed the Lynch 50m penalty where our blokes only strolled back. Maric dawdled to the 50m arc and every Collingwood player then lead out to clear 30m from goal and isolated Rance on Cloke. Even Eade acknowledged we weren't rolling players on and that's why they kept doing what they were doing.
To vindicate Rance and Chaplin a bit they did show a couple passages when our defenders did win out one on one and took some intercept marks. Rance isn't a bad player, but it just goes to show how important having that drop off player is when the opposition are going to do everything they can to put Rance at a disadvantage.
