Cressa the Evergreen

[snajik]

For anyone anticipating an about-face by Cresswell re his retirement, an interview with him on Fox footy the other night would suggest otherwise. Apparently his house is already on the market, and he is moving to Brisbane to be closer to family. Quite adamant that this would be his last season. Just as we have had to cope with post - Kel and Dunks football so too we will need to cope with life after Cressa.

A couple of other issues that he raised -

He felt that Eade was a great coach for whom he has enormous respect, and rates Roos very highly as well.

Believes that A Goodes will be the next captain.

[penga]

i know in the 'aker to sydney' thread i stated that it would be good to get aker as a semi replacement for cresswell... i realise a lot of people are against recruting a team however i think a first round pick to port would go nicely for nick stevens, he isnt resigning with port and we would have the money (due to vast salary cap room) to wave in front of his nose to certainly persuade him!!! that would certainly be a lovely compensation for our midfield after cressa's retirement!!!

[penga]

FWIW, stevens will be 23 at the beginning of next season... he got 37 possessions over brisbane in rd 2 and is averaging 27.6' possessions per game in 2003

[Newbie]

Has Nick Steven improved lately ? We need a line breaker and a hard-ball getter, Steven is neither of those. I would have gone for Aker instead Steven given a chance. Still though, I dont think we should trade our first pick for either of them.

[penga]

Originally posted by Newbie
Has Nick Steven improved lately ? We need a line breaker and a hard-ball getter, Steven is neither of those. I would have gone for Aker instead Steven given a chance. Still though, I dont think we should trade our first pick for either of them.

once again, i have to admit that i havent seen that much of stevens, however i did see a bit of that rd 2 game and he was instrumental in their ability to stay in touch with the lions... he will be 24, not 23 as well...

if we had someone in the side capable of getting 25+ possessions a game we would have a real goer team, just that much control off one player would be great... IMO, with our current list our best players arent capable of getting on average above 20 possessions a game... ie except for williams and he'd only be just above 20...

[penga]

Originally posted by Newbie
We need a line breaker and a hard-ball getter

i disagree, we have a line breaker in kennelly and a hard-ball getter in jude, both are showing further signs of improvement

IMO, we need a play maker and thats what stevens is...

[Newbie]

I view Kennelly and Bolton probably as the core of our next generation midfield. If we look at Brisbane fab four: they got two hard-ball getter (Voss+Black), one like breaker (Aker) and one playmaker (Lappin). That is a sound midfield structure. Of course Voss is more than a hard-ball getter.

Bolton cannot play alone hand in the midfield, he needs a partner in crime. Cressa is playing that role at the moment. He is going to hang his boots up soon. We need another hard ball get to take his place. That is the priority.

Kennelly's weakness is the contact part of the game. Even though, he has improved this part of his game significantly and thus could break the line if required, it is not his bread and butter. We probably be better of with him playing as the distributor/linkman role (i.e. a playmaker).

With Kennelly, Forside, the young McVeigh and Goodes, playmaking would probably the least worry part of our midfield structure and we would be better off to direct our resources somewhere else.

[treespirit]

During the MMM after match discussion last Saturday they said that Schneider was expected to become a midfielder once he got to full AFL fitness.