I like Arnot too, but how do you reckon Arnott would go against Drew Petrie, Robbie Tarrant or Aaron Black?
Batchelor is being played out of position and being asked to do jobs that he's not physically equipped to do. He's a half back flanker who is a bit one paced but is usually pretty good overhead and a reasonable kick. I was hoping he might mature into a defensive midfielder but I'm not overly optimistic about him anywhere at the moment. Presently he looks devoid of all confidence, couldn't even get a fist on the ball in a few instances. He's double fisting balls that he should be marking. His kicking and decision making is terrible. The holding the ball decision against him was warranted, he made no attempt and then had the stupidity to mouth off. Completely undisciplined. He wasn't always this bad but he's going backwards right now.
The other options for his spot (ie third tall) yesterday were Matt Dea (who came in for Houli anyway but not tall enough), Ricky Pettard (too small), Griffiths (no form), or Elton (still raw). Really highlights the importance of Grimes.
We dont match up well against teams with 3 tall forwards. I feared West Coast with their big tall forwards would smash us like North did yesterday. The difference with West Coast was that we smashed them in the midfield even with Natanui dominating. North beat us in the midfield and, on the occasions we did win it, we gave it back to them by bombing it into our forward line where Hansen, playing loose or double teaming Riewoldt, mopped it up. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I'm not sure if the smaller ground at Etihad contributed but I reckon we're a team that likes space. We don't like 4 quarters of tight smashing in footy which is exactly what we'll get against Freo and Sydney.
So who replaces Batchelor against Gold Coast? How many tall forwards do Gold Coast have? Sam Day injured his groin yesterday and Dixon is injured. As such the talls probably wont be an issue and it'll be Houli in for Batchelor and we'll revisit the issue when we next play a team who presents us with 3 big talls in good marking conditions (ie under the roof at Etihad or a fine day). How many are the Swans playing with Tippett now in the side? The Swans game (small ground, no space, tight contested footy) has all the hallmarks of yesterday, hopefully we learnt some lessons.....
looks lazy and is playing scared and has no urgency about him and definately no courage :-[
