Position 2022: Midfield Discussion
- Thread starter KLo30
- Start date
Midfield chat has gone a bit quiet, guess we all know who the super-premos are 
I keep coming back to one guy other though: Jack Macrae hit his first 120 season when he was 23; Oliver hit his first 120 season at 22; Steele was a 'late' bloomer at 24 haha.
Around 100 games of footy in and an age profile of 22-24 seems to be when the midfielders that can do it will hit the holy grail of a 120+ season. I guess before then they are still developing and effectively setting up their career scoring patterns.
It's part of the reason I was so keen on Walsh - he hasn't shown us his best yet, and his 'growing into his best' was 115+!
So that finally brings me around to Andy Brayshaw. He's only 22; last two seasons of 100 and 107. Second half of last year he seemed to find the ability to turn his down games into 90s instead of 60s but also found his beast mode for the first time with that 190.
If he puts a full season together where his worst games are 90s and his best are 160+ then he's a top mid. Don't know if I'll have the guts to pick him though!
I keep coming back to one guy other though: Jack Macrae hit his first 120 season when he was 23; Oliver hit his first 120 season at 22; Steele was a 'late' bloomer at 24 haha.
Around 100 games of footy in and an age profile of 22-24 seems to be when the midfielders that can do it will hit the holy grail of a 120+ season. I guess before then they are still developing and effectively setting up their career scoring patterns.
It's part of the reason I was so keen on Walsh - he hasn't shown us his best yet, and his 'growing into his best' was 115+!
So that finally brings me around to Andy Brayshaw. He's only 22; last two seasons of 100 and 107. Second half of last year he seemed to find the ability to turn his down games into 90s instead of 60s but also found his beast mode for the first time with that 190.
If he puts a full season together where his worst games are 90s and his best are 160+ then he's a top mid. Don't know if I'll have the guts to pick him though!
Cripps under David Teague - 47 games at 95.3
Cripps not under David Teague - 50 games 113.8 (includes his pre breakout season, ~118 without that).
Now we know Teague had this weird belief that Cripps was a good forward, he said it many times, and taking a midfielder completely out of his flow to play him in a possession he's poor at is always a potential explanation.
There's also a laundry list of injuries to explain this just as well. Truth is probably a bit of both.
Cerra should really help him, gives a very high quality ball user to handball to instead of trying to kick but also a guy who will hit him as a marking target around the ground. Hewett doesn't mind a short pass and ball retention, both increase the pie for teammates but he also should steal some clearance work and targets.
For mine, Cripps is a very high risk, high reward guy. If he stays fit he's definitely capable of 115 again but he needs to stay fit and that's been a major issue. Someone who adds 10kg and then loses 10kg from o***eason to o***eason is someone with a broken body trying something different to see if they can find the right spot and unfortunately at a certain point it's just the broken body that remains when all the options are exhausted.
Cripps not under David Teague - 50 games 113.8 (includes his pre breakout season, ~118 without that).
Now we know Teague had this weird belief that Cripps was a good forward, he said it many times, and taking a midfielder completely out of his flow to play him in a possession he's poor at is always a potential explanation.
There's also a laundry list of injuries to explain this just as well. Truth is probably a bit of both.
Cerra should really help him, gives a very high quality ball user to handball to instead of trying to kick but also a guy who will hit him as a marking target around the ground. Hewett doesn't mind a short pass and ball retention, both increase the pie for teammates but he also should steal some clearance work and targets.
For mine, Cripps is a very high risk, high reward guy. If he stays fit he's definitely capable of 115 again but he needs to stay fit and that's been a major issue. Someone who adds 10kg and then loses 10kg from o***eason to o***eason is someone with a broken body trying something different to see if they can find the right spot and unfortunately at a certain point it's just the broken body that remains when all the options are exhausted.
Thoughts on Ed Curnow? Averaged 86.1 in both 2017 and 2021, rebounded in 2018 with a 101.7 average so think it's fair to expect he'll do similar this year. Only had 6 disposals on Friday night but looked good, will be a great POD imo if he can quintuple his production which I think is a reasonable ask
