I feel like ‘good tap ruckman’ gets thrown around too much for rucks who manage to get their hands to the ball first in the contest ignoring where the ball ends up. This especially happens for the tall, lumbering types who win the ruck contest for the most part just based on their height advantage. It is being used to describe soldo and 5+ years ago the same was being said about Hampson. Happy to be proven otherwise based on either of their stats but I don’t think just by watching the games that either of their hit outs to advantage ratios show that they are actually ‘good tap ruckman’. As in how often do we actually see soldo tap the ball down our mids throat like a nicnat, gawn, Ryder does? I get that it’s also partly down to our mids as well but I actually see him hitting it directly to our opponent quite often too, frustratingly even when he is uncontested or up against non-rucks.
Now you could argue nank is guilty of the above (hello elimination final) but he offers so much around the ground, winning clearances, contested possession, taking intercept marks which soldo just does not.
So the biggest issue I see with losing soldo is our overall ruck depth within our list if nank were to go down with a long term injury. However I’m sure the club can pick up a mature age ruck from the state leagues who is good to go should that happen and the club don’t think Ryan is ready to fill the void.
