Great effort by a very much undersized Burger outfit. Giving away much height they were forced to come up with some unorthodox tactics, one being the master stroke by Collins of putting Polo on Franklin.
Collins obviously recognised Franklin has no defensive element to his game and had Polo run off him at every chance. Which he did. Absolutely towelled a petulant and “soft” Franklin up. He goes hard the Polo Bear and is very good in the heavy traffic and is good above his head. But I still worry about his class by foot and his 20m speed and whether it will be up to it under the quantum leap in intensity that senior AFL football brings.
Thought White did quite well. Incredible speed and stamina. He is showing that he can move up to higher levels by going from Calder to VFL seniors and adapting well, quickly.
Humm was pretty good. Fair bit of the ball. Ronaldson battled hard (albeit a terrible decision to try and mark the ball in the full back goal square instead of punching – which cost us a goal). Howatt and Shelton were very solid contributors.
McGuane. Not a lot of it but shows he has a good set of hands and can leap. Like Polo, worry about his class by foot though (very awkward ball drop).
Limbach looks like he’s lost the weight he put on over Summer ? Looks very skinny. BTW where’s his position ? He’s never gonna be able to play ff at AFL senior level because of his relative lack of height and his definite lack of body size and strength. Besides, we have Hughes coming through in that position as well. I’d like to see Collins move him up the ground onto a hff or wing so we can see what he can do there because there is no way he’s gonna make it into senior AFL football playing full forward.
Meyer – again, too quiet for my liking. Very talented, but still needs to go to the play more rather than waiting for the play to come to him.
One player nobody has mentioned is Sam Robertson. Sam’s a kid I mentioned a few times on PRE last year. Sam had a very good game minding Josh Wilson (the kid who kicked a bag for Eastern in the TAC Cup grand final a couple of years ago and a very good player himself.) Sam’s a 193cm backman. Very skinny (built like a whippet at the moment) but a very well skilled and courageous player who has a very good head on his shoulders. Think Thursfield but not quite as athletic, but a much better disposer of the footy. Sam was in the Vic Metro squad last year before getting injured and missing the U/18 Champs. He came back later in the year to hold down CHB for Calder and play very, very well (played an absolute cracker against Sandringham in one game). If he can put some muscle on, he’ll be one to keep an eye on......
And TigerBeagle, how could you possibly see yourself fit to give us a summary of the game ? Fair dinkum, no way you could have seen anything. You had that much hair going on yesterday you looked like one of those old English sheepdogs !! Add to the fact you were staggering around under the burden of what looked like 10-12 cans and hopelessly trying to chat those girls up, and quite frankly TigerBeagle, I dunno if we can rely on your account of the game !!! Haaaaaaaargh haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh haaaaaaaaaaaargh haaaaaaaaaaargh !!!!
