reckon just about everyone in this thread has lost true perspective at some stage.
we had just come off finals . we had openly stated we wanted mature players in the team and younger blokes were going to have to really earn their spot.
tuck had retired, people remember him dont they, a real big unit 189cm/90kg not overly quick ball winner. i dont growl because we promoted thomas who had a decent pre season as well,he was a like for like replacement. it made sense. in many ways he too had earned his spot.while i dont and didnt agree with promoting thomas instead of miles i dont look upon it as a huge mistake and understand the good reasons why they went that way.
its not as if there were no good reasons for promoting thomas.
we then had our best ruckman not available and instead of promoting miles we promoted stephenson. once again the logic behind this move is not and was not wrong, so again they had some good reasons as to why they did this.
my gripe here is a little different to most others id say. that is in promoting orren we have failed to play him. imo it seems he has done more than enough in the twos to get games.
imo where they have gone wrong is not finding a way to also promote miles quicker especially as he kept on tearing it up in games. to make him wait so long when we did have options to promote him earlier was a mistake. for me without hindsight it is probably the only real mistake.
we bag the club over this but looking at an overall picture i ask have they really got these things so badly wrong.
imo both thomas and miles deserve their chances others may disagree on thomas.
i can hear the abuse even now if we had failed to promote orren, and hampson went down in week one.. as poor as hampson was in most areas he was more than competetive at ruck contests.yep damned if they do damned if they dont with orrens promotion
i think it becomes too easy for all of us to just look at what has transpired,and in the process lose sight of why we did things 6 months.
as for other things like continually playing under performers,failure to play kids, failure to reward good seconds form well they are things for another time.
I don't think the size really matters, Miles offers us that strong clearance winner in the middle and did so before the start of the season + he offers better skills than Tuck or Thomas have ever given and is certainly a smarter player than Tuck and probably Thomas.
The thing I think that annoyed most people was the fact we could promote Miles earlier (King? was on the LTIL) but we didn't and when we finally did, they still kept him in the VFL for a few weeks.
as far as size goes i reckon miles is the exception rather than the norm when it comes to the role he playys.
ive already stated that we failed to promote and play miles quick enough. all im saying is before a ball was bounced there was some pretty good reasons why thomas got promoted and orren as well.
it was not my sort of scenario ffs i was against taking thomas at all and wanted us to draft a young ruckman like darcy cameron instead of keeping orren.we didnt do that type of thing.
so the thing is at the start of the yr maric was gone and hampson another i did not want and ffs hampson was uinproven and i said it at the time was the only real viable ruck option we had. it was clear we had to cover our bases and promote orren.again im taklking start of yr not now with hindsight.
we promoted the mature thomas instead of miles again not what i wanted but ffs they had good reasons for it.
i agree what they got wrong was failing to place maric on the ltil or and promote miles or even promote miles as soon as king got hurt.
i reckon people are so disgruntled with the club and whats has transpired, me included im as peeed of as anyone, they are purely takloking in nhindsight.
you know i didnt see too many disagree with keeping orren or only take one kid, most defefended the thomas selection as well.
fact is both thomas and miles earnt a promotion they took the senior bloke maybe because they thought vhe would give more. they kept orren and promoted him when ivan went down because they were concerned about our ruck options with out him and rightly so.
you lot can bag em anything and everything, me i will bag em only when i think they deserve it which by the way is pretty regular.
