Very good pick up. 
Based on what
I guess on the basis we won't have Maric for about 8 weeks. Inspired decision if you ask me.
Valid point although it sounds as if they never anticipated this injury (not that you ever do) and expected him to get through the year so sounds more like a lucky decision than an inspired one. I'm undecided on him as most will acknowledge he has had a poor to somewhat average at times start to his career but he is a giant athletic ruckman who usually come on a bit later in their careers apart from the freaks. Will reserve judgement until a few games into the year
nothing lucky about it. we had to take a ruckman who could come in and give maric a decent chop out. every single poster practically acknowledged that before we took hampson. if it wasnt hampson it had to be someone else.
basically i agree with your sentiments. all i have constantly been at pains to say and point out is hampsons 7yrs to date are nothing to inspire and if we base our judgments on his 7yr performances to date there are no guarantees he will make it.
for me id prefer we went after a different ruckman based on his 7yrs that is his performances to date and his age. he should have truly esatblished himself by now and it just hasnt happened.
thats about all i have argued about here. i certainly am critical that we used a second rounder on him and we didnt really bother looking at any other ruck options both short and long term. im also critical and hampson was a part of it that we could only take one kid right across the board this yr.
personally i would really like another two junior ruckmen in our system say one around 18 20 another with some real development in him around 22. what id like to see is a real succession plan put in place with juniors who have a real chance of becoming #1 ruckmen.
we need to be able to say well orren is for the knackery and not really for afl anymore there should be a junior in development.. we need to be able to say ivan is getting on and will always have issues with his body and is more likely than not going to be a short term prospect so we should have someone in our system in development.
finally we need to be able to say what if hampson stays at the level hes been at for 7 yrs. we need to have a plan in place for this and have say a 22 yo in development.
if we had a decent succesion plan in place there would never have been a need to go out chasing your marics knobels simmonds hampsons etc etc etc etc.
believe it or not i am hoping like mad that hampson can become a consistent decent player for us. once the season starts i will give him the yr to either prove himself or fail.
i do know he cant be worse than vickery or derickx, i question if he will offer more than orren as a first ruck atm. he has a long way to go to even get close to marics output.
yep i get it people have had enough of my criticisms about us taking him. i realise i am going over old stuff and its become a bit too repetitive. it is time for me to stop and give him the time to show he can become a good player.
