TigerMasochist said:
If we go down the Garner path it will indicate a change in philosophy, one which assumes we've got the tools in place to bring the best out in him. To me, that suggests we will be doing our utmost to ensure he joins the midfield rotations. At the moment his numbers suggest he's coming from a long way back, only once has he chalked up 20+ possessions for Dandenong, and at the carnival he averaged 14.6 touches. I can only guess that we've done our homework on his aerobic capacity because there's not much to go on with regards to the draft camp. There's a lot of uncertainty here and one has to hope that the club has done their research.
As far as draft range is concerned, 15-25 is roughly where I would place him. That would be on par with a Nat Fyfe prior to him becoming a top tier mid. On the presumption he makes the transition to onballer, he would be top ten material and perhaps top 5 depending on how people rate a player like Fyfe. But this is where we're speculating. A lot has to go right with his development, and that's not even taking into account the shoulder concerns. It would be our riskiest venture since Ben Griffiths, probably more so considering Ben was pick 19.
The similarities with Fyfe also need to be put into some perspective because I would be horrified if we threw him in the deep end too quickly. Freo have been almost negligent with Nat's rehabillitation and it remains to be seen how this will impact upon his longterm career. The slow and steady approach is needed and there probably needs to a bit of realism about the prospect of further work being done if he lands awkwardly on his good shoulder. This happened with Griffiths after only a handful of games, so anything's possible.
Like I've mentioned a few times, there's a lot of unknowns at play here and picking Garner would be throwing a bit of caution to the wind. Francis Jackson could come out of this looking like a genius, or he could wind up with egg all over his face.
