Has shown bugger all in the VFL.
And where do people get the "skillful" idea from?
Quick yes, but skillful? Setting the bar pretty low for skills if that's the case.
Was super clean and very skilled as a junior. He has plenty of skills but for some reason these kids seem to lose them when in our vfl side.
When you look at how poorly the vast majority of our juniors perform at VFL level how their skills drop away their ability to find the ball etc then something is seriously wrong.
It is a constant theme and if the criteria for our juniors is to consistently play well in the ressies then we will never ever give a game to any of the kids.
I liked the look of Butler when we drafted him. but i agree im not sure what he has done to demand a game.
Imo he does have the right attributes or he did!!! to become a good sml fwd. Pace, Decent skills, Goal sense, and is a good tackler and works hard without the ball in hand.
Personally i think we need to bite the bullet and acknowledge the need to play kids in an attempt to find out who can and can not play at the level.
Playing these kids means we will take the step backwards that they spoke about as far as results go. The only other option is to go into denial and continue to play blokes who clearly cannot take us anywhere but may enable us to win a few more games than we would with such inexperienced kids like Butler.
As acollective we are either prepared to take a step backwards or we are not.