Ok after 15 mins to cool down here are my thoughts.
We are down 4 players who regularly play, Conca, Grimes, Pettard, Deledio. thats 400+ odd games experience at a guess. Thomas is also injured and a rookie.
The guys who are in as replacements are this lot and their disposals.
Matt Arnot 10
Kamdyn McIntosh 14
Matt McDonough 7
Nathan Drummond 5
thats probably 40-50 possessions less.
Also we have replaced Jake King with Sam Lloyd and we're definitely at a loss for that so far.
We are also playing Steven Morris out of position and it shows. I saw one instance where he did a great defensive effort to win the ball outside the 50 and then the ball went forward to Griffiths inside the 50m arc, it fell to the ground and he wasn't there to crumb it. He's half a forward pocket, just not the kicking goals half. I may be selling him short he may have been the guy kicking it into the 50, but I dont think he was.
Chaplin didn't play that meant our back half was two talls down. Astbury has too few games to replace Chaplin and\or Grimes.
Taylor Hunt went missing, is this why Geelong dumped him?
Ben Griffiths went missing too.
But other teams deal with being players down, I guess my original assertion that our list is shallow still holds.
We probably have 22 OK players to choose from but not 26.
