Two things are standing out to me right now.
1) We are struggling to get clean clearances.
2) we are getting slaughtered down the line, so in the odd occasion when we do clear it and go down the line it ends up coming back.
The thing a lot of people are over looking is what Towners actual role was?
Is he there to get a load of the ball or is he there to get the ball to ground?
One thing he did better than either Soldo or Lynch was halve marking competitions, and he was doing that outnumbered and against much bigger opponents. For mine he stays in for this reason. If he's flying and spoiling, then he's not likely to be the one on the ground mopping up.
Soldo is getting right under the ball. He's not getting pushed under either, he's going under by choice, either to avoid contact or out of sheer lack of confidence. It don't look good when a guy 204+ cm has smaller opponents marking behind him.
Lynch isn't strong enough through te legs / hips to hold his position at the moment, and he's easily getting blocked out. It's easy to forget that he just scraped into round 1 for fitness. Maybe we don't see the best of him until 2020.
Now Towner.........
For mine he stays in because it's no use having smalls if the ball don't reach the ground. Townsend worked his bum off to get position to spoil. When Caddy is in the midfield, Towner needs to stay in or around forward 50 and hep the ball get to ground. Caddy on the other hand, as a mid i think needs to be our guy down the line, because Soldo is a disaster in this role.
When Caddy is resting forward, Towner has to get up the ground and be the hit up guy and at least half the marking contest.
Either that or we bring Chol in and let him do what a ruckman is supposed to do.
One thing for certain is that Chol seems to excell when given the first ruck responsibility. He killed it 3 weeks back, then had a bit of a stinker when Coleman-Jones dropped back last week. Now this week as the single ruckman up against 4 rucks, most of which have senior experience, he had another dominant game. We aren't losing anything by promoting him over Soldo to see what he's got.
