Now let's be entirely honest....

[jono2707]

.....who had a season of Rugby in France immediately before coming to the Suns.

True - so he's a rugby league to rugby to AFL convert..... He's doing ok so far if I may say so too....

[Bas]

True - so he's a rugby league to rugby to AFL convert..... He's doing ok so far if I may say so too....

He only played in France so he could do the commercials.

To call Hunt a rugby player is like comparing his short season in rugby in France to Dermott Brereton being remembered as a Sydney Swan.

[Melbournehammer]

A very pertinent comment IMO. Once a team reaches a certain standard, confidence becomes an ingredient that creates a cycle of further improvement. Maybe the team doesn't yet have that confidence because it isn't quite good enough yet. But just a small increase in actual ability can lead to a marked increase in actual performance once that confidence kicks in. West Coast and Carlton are great illustrations of that in 2011.



It varies from player to player. Smith and Jack probably both looked out of their depth in their first couple of senior games. But by the start of the following season they had pretty much established themselves as senior players. Johnson and Hanners seemed to settle in almost immediately. Reid is a harder one to assess because he did have a full pre-season after his first game.

We just need to hope that the likes of Sumner, Johnston, Nipper and Parker use their senior exposure this year to launch their careers from 2012 onwards. It would be nice to see them each get another couple of senior games this season to give them more idea of what to work on over the summer.

I wonder whether you were more correct the other day when you talked about the cream Liz. Apart from Goodes and possibly mal and marty when we have players streaming forward with the ball you just wonder whether they are actually good enough to hurt their opponent. When you watch marc murphy (or judd or scotland) or luke hodge (or young or ellis) or brendan goddard or ryan griffin come forward with the ball you can be confident that they will either kick the goal or if a forward has a yard or two on the defender that the ball will hit the forward lace out. We really dont have anyone who can consistently hurt you.

I have hopes for jetta around this because he actually is an incredibly penetrating kick but in the absence of the cream we really have to hit the ball to contest to contest and hope to make the most of it when it gets there.

[liz]

I wonder whether you were more correct the other day when you talked about the cream Liz. Apart from Goodes and possibly mal and marty when we have players streaming forward with the ball you just wonder whether they are actually good enough to hurt their opponent. When you watch marc murphy (or judd or scotland) or luke hodge (or young or ellis) or brendan goddard or ryan griffin come forward with the ball you can be confident that they will either kick the goal or if a forward has a yard or two on the defender that the ball will hit the forward lace out. We really dont have anyone who can consistently hurt you.

I have hopes for jetta around this because he actually is an incredibly penetrating kick but in the absence of the cream we really have to hit the ball to contest to contest and hope to make the most of it when it gets there.

I think it is partly the cream that creates the confidence in the rest. Most teams only have 5-6 players who really count as cream. The draft and salary cap conspire to prevent a club building up much more than that. But those players, fit and in form, and a game plan that the whole team understands and believes in, can make the next level down look a whole heap better. And their confidence in the stars has to be a large part of that. Look at what happened to West Coast when they lost Judd and Cousins (but still had Kerr, before his injuries got really bad, Cox, Embley, Glass etc). They became an abomination. And now look at them with a creditable game plan, plus Kerr and Glass back to full fitness, Naitanui, Le Cras, Kennedy, an improved Hurn and the rest pretty much the same squad as they had last year.

I think the point I was trying to make is that although we're not good enough at the moment, and don't have sufficient cream, it is not like we have to discover a dozen superstars before we can compete with the best teams. We just need a handful, plus steady improvement from a few others, and improved confidence levels may take us the rest of the way.

[Nico]

I think we have 3 problems that are causing us not to go to another level.

1. Our centre clearance work is appalling which allows a high % of these contests to go quickly into the opposing forward line. This it turn puts constant pressure on the backline to clear the ball. Because of the forward press game it makes this even more difficult. The opposition knows this a glaring weakness of ours and we get exploited every week.

This is compunded by:

2. We don't have any run from the backline anymore which was a hallmark of our games for many years.

Kennelly is being coralled into making mistakes, Richards, LRT and Grundy are not quick, Shaw is playing a stopping role, Malceski is clearly not right and struggling and Johnson is very much in the mould of Grundy in his playing style. Mattner seems to have forgotten how to run in a straight line and is now adopting the Leo Barry shimmy style and stuffing up.

So we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to move the footy around to find a way out. We end up getting into numerous stoppages down back, over possess and finally turn it over.

When we do get free no.3 comes into play.

3. Our midfield apart from Jack is slow and really have limited kicking penetration. So Kennedy, Hanners, Bird and Bolton get the ball and kick it 20 to 30 metres and the opposition have all the time in the world to get back and out number our forwards. You can't fault their effort but all the disposals under the sun have limited value unless you use them to advantage. In other words we slaughter the footy.

Summing up; we don't get the ball into the forward line quick enough to allow our forwards to catch their defenders off guard or out of position.