Thought the comments that were made by the commentators last night were ill informed and based on past history rather than present performance. Even Richo's comments seemed a snapshot of Rance's weaknesses from when he played along side him rather than how he has executed by foot over the past season and a bit.
Rance was close to our best player last night and was excellent by foot for most of the game. I saw two notable exceptions but considering the amount of ball he had in his hands and the pressure he was constantly under, he was fantastic. There are very few defenders his size who can dispose of the ball well consistently.
The raw hard evidence of 82% efficiency is hard to argue with... 
Stripes were you at the game last night. our backline create's most of the preasure on themselves by standing 20 metres off thier players & moving up the ground being caught out on simple turnovers. They are using too much energy to get back to contest the ball. By playing this way, once they do get back on thier man that they are waisted & have no strength or energy to contest leading to them being over-powered. This is basic football. If you were at the game you clearly see this. If Hardwick & his coaches cant see this, then we are done & dusted.
Always that balance of either being too defensive and keeping on your opponent/guarding space even when we have the ball or being more attacking and moving up the ground and leaving your opponent to give us more options moving the ball through the oppositions zone defence.
Did you feel Rance should have stayed back and left the midfielders to move the ball forward?
l'm not laying it on Rance, l said the backline & all 6 are guilty last night at some stage. Even the 6 forwards are guilty of this.
If the 6 forwards aint maning up then the backline has no hope because straight away you have free runners & when the midfield applys preasure then that gives the next link of free runners going until it hits the backline where again preasure must be applied to thier mids from our backline which leaves Cloke, Blair, Pendles, Swan, Dawes Fasolo all free.
The problem lies with players like Rewoldt, Jackson, Edwards, Martin, Vickery all culprits last night. you will see in other threads where l mentioned Jackson who was the main culprit all night. A backline like ours will always fall to extra preasure put on them from players up the field which is not fair. Rance, Grimes, Morris would be in my best players last night. Its hard to explain but the main problem is our lazy forward & our forward coach. players clashing for the ball is another problem.
But Rance, Morris, Grimes can only do so much
