Roast Balta up forward is the result of the historical failures of our recruiters to actualy draft and develop KPF.

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Balta needs a solid 10 to 12 games in the forward line with the back six (our strongest line) bloody well doing their job properly so he is not needed.

Miller Broad Gibcus Vlastuin Rioli Short Tresise Brown Banks are an above average line who should be able to accommodate most forward lines. We have had the right systems set for along time.

Even Kositche has played very well as a key back in recent years, not that you lot would have watched many Hawthorn games.

Balta has shown enough playing forward when required to indicate he could kick 40 or 50 goals a.year. He's only played 2 or 3 games in a row their, alons qith other single game spats, but he has kicked goals there including a small bag of 2 or 3 IIRC.

Natural athlete, quick off the mark. Great hands, great at ground and massive roost. His attributes are wasted in the back line.

He needs time. We probably ain't playing finals so there's more risk to our medium term success by not parking him there.
 
Balta needs a solid 10 to 12 games in the forward line with the back six (our strongest line) bloody well doing their job properly so he is not needed.

Miller Broad Gibcus Vlastuin Rioli Short Tresise Brown Banks are an above average line who should be able to accommodate most forward lines. We have had the right systems set for along time.

Even Kositche has played very well as a key back in recent years, not that you lot would have watched many Hawthorn games.

Balta has shown enough playing forward when required to indicate he could kick 40 or 50 goals a.year. He's only played 2 or 3 games in a row their, but he has kicked goals there including a small bag of 2 or 3 IIRC.

Natural athlete, quick off the mark. Great hands, great at ground and massive roost. His attributes are wasted in the back line.

He needs time. We probably ain't playing finals so there's no harm in trying.
when did you turn into a balta fwd type of person
 

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Draft guru states we've had 329 picks in all drafts since they began in 1981. In that entire time we've only successfully drafted and developed 2 quality KPF's (Richo fell in our laps so reality is its been 1/328 with Jack). Time and again we've drafted duds who failed to even have minimal impact. For context our next most successful pseudo fwd's were really rucks in Ottens and Vickery.

I've listened to and watched every draft of easily the last 20 years and some failed selections have had me slam my fist on the the table in frustration. Recent balls up no brainers were Brown over JVR, CCJ over Oscar Allen. Conca when Lynch was ripe for the plucking and a perfect ready made replacement after losing Richo a year earlier. Fiora over Pavlich...... the list is endless. The worst thing is Jay Schultz is the only KPF we've drafted that actually went elsewhere and turned out had some actual ability. Besides McBean dominating in SANFL all the rest fell into complete obscurity.

The really lousy thing is just by picking best available player in the Draft our KPF stocks would be healthy with a gun Oscar Allen, JVR developing with assistance from either Ryan, Bauer or Kozitsche fighting for a spot. Our KPD would be solid with Balta, Gibcus developing and Young. Losing Balta down back pretty much telegraphs the team will play Grimes, when realistically he shouldn't be playing. Domino effect is that really Grimes will be keeping out and delaying the development of Tom Brown and I'll be shocked if JVR doesn't kick 40 goals this year.

Even last off season they judged that Bradtke was better than Narkle. Bradtke came and went whilst Narkle played a few games in a dominant team and has been extended. I have little faith that we can actually draft a quality KPF before Tassie come in and compromise the draft for 3-4 years.

Seeing the crazy salaries that duds like Doedee, McKay, Ratagolea, Zerk-Thatcher all got last year I'm tipping no less than a dozen teams are watching the Balta experiment and if it fails watch all the buzzards offer a frustrated and jaded Balta 7 x $1,000,000 with guarantees of settling him in defence.


Can't agree.

RFC appears to have a fan base obsessed with KPF. Even from the days of Roach and Taylor and before that. We can never have enough quality key forwards and nothing is right without multiple great key forwards so when we won in 2017 it turned every thing upside down, Richo cried and JR was not a bad player.

I actually thing Balta is a awkward option as a forward for opposition teams, he seems to gel with Kosi as they are both handy at minimum and Lynch is a good player and Gibcus has real promise to so we do not lack for forward options but some in our fan base are never satisfied
 
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Balta has shown enough playing forward when required to indicate he could kick 40 or 50 goals a.year. He's only played 2 or 3 games in a row their, alons qith other single game spats, but he has kicked goals there including a small bag of 2 or 3 IIRC.

Natural athlete, quick off the mark. Great hands, great at ground and massive roost. His attributes are wasted in the back line.

He needs time. We probably ain't playing finals so there's more risk to our medium term success by not parking him there.
Bump 😉
 
This is OP is one of the more perplexing posts I've seen on this forum for awhile. We've won 3 flags in the most recent era and are now rebuilding the list so it's no wonder that we've prioritised other areas as opposed to KPF.

The reason we so sparingly targeted key forwards is because there are two spots available and arguably so few elite level key forwards available in each draft and we already had Riewoldt and Lynch.

You've aptly pointed out that we already had players in those positions for most of the previous 20-30 years.

Richo arguably ruined the development of other blokes as he was played deep forward and simply demanded the football all of the time. He destroyed forward structure year after year. It was on the coaching group to remedy that but they didn't because he had a force of personality and the backing of the fan base, but that's why blokes like Shulz and Ben Holland were shifted to the backline and played good footy there.

We drafted and developed Ottens as a forward initially only to give him away and piss the draft hand up the wall.

Previous to that we selected Jurica high up but footy moved on from big men who simply led up at the footy. Looking any earlier than about 1995 and you're looking at the under 19s where there were plenty of blokes like Hogg and Stewart Edwards who came through also

Balta was drafted as a forward. Yes he played some of his best footy down back where we needed someone to step in when Rance and Astbury went earlier but there's no reason, and the weekend is evidence, that he can't be a very good key forward.

You're obsessed with game breaking forwards when history shows that you need an even spread of goals since the early 90s to become a flag side and Collingwood just won a flag with Brodie Miochek up there.

Every side has a litany of draft failures, misses and otherwise on their records but the histrionics here over not taking Oscar Allen, who by the way appears to be made of glass and will very likely play out his career in a bottom dwelling side that targets him exclusively is pretty amusing.

Also characterising draft kids as 'no brainers' is ridiculous Captain Hindsight behaviour. At no stage were Lynch or JVR ever viewed that way and were consequently overlooked by half a dozen other teams. The generational KPF's of our time in Schache, Tom Boyd and Jesse Hogan have all panned out terrifically. They were all 'no brainers' but you don't seem as concerned about them.......

Drafting is an imprecise science and you don't get blokes like Logan McDonald or the King boys unless you're finishing down the bottom and when you are doing that you increase your chances of cooking them because of the overreliance on a 19 year old to do it all for you.

Let Balta have the time his talent deserves and back him.
 
Balta needs a solid 10 to 12 games in the forward line with the back six (our strongest line) bloody well doing their job properly so he is not needed.

Miller Broad Gibcus Vlastuin Rioli Short Tresise Brown Banks are an above average line who should be able to accommodate most forward lines. We have had the right systems set for along time.

Even Kositche has played very well as a key back in recent years, not that you lot would have watched many Hawthorn games.

Balta has shown enough playing forward when required to indicate he could kick 40 or 50 goals a.year. He's only played 2 or 3 games in a row their, alons qith other single game spats, but he has kicked goals there including a small bag of 2 or 3 IIRC.

Natural athlete, quick off the mark. Great hands, great at ground and massive roost. His attributes are wasted in the back line.

He needs time. We probably ain't playing finals so there's more risk to our medium term success by not parking him there.
No he hasnt, not since U18's

Agree with the rest, Balta will be a gun forward this year.
 

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Idk I think he has the physique of a CHF and he’s too dumb to be the main man in defence. Just stop moving him around so he can focus on one area of his game. Dimma has been doing him a disservice making him be Mr fix it.
 
The reason that Balta is currently a forward is that we have a coach who cannot see reality in front of him.

Never seen a coach go on death watch as quick as Yze, needs to ditch the cognitive dissonance and smell the roses build a back line that can play finals football around Balta.

Yze faced with a horrendous injury list plays a game plan as if he has the cattle on the park a bit like trying to play cricket without a bat the oppo will smash your middle stump out of the ground with each delivery.

Turn it into a boundary line rugby match limit the severity of the losses until the troops (bats) filter back into the team build cohesion then think about your new game plan.

Yze not doing well under trying conditions times ticking for the lad.
 
The reason that Balta is currently a forward is that we have a coach who cannot see reality in front of him.

Never seen a coach go on death watch as quick as Yze, needs to ditch the cognitive dissonance and smell the roses build a back line that can play finals football around Balta.

Yze faced with a horrendous injury list plays a game plan as if he has the cattle on the park a bit like trying to play cricket without a bat the oppo will smash your middle stump out of the ground with each delivery.

Turn it into a boundary line rugby match limit the severity of the losses until the troops (bats) filter back into the team build cohesion then think about your new game plan.

Yze not doing well under trying conditions times ticking for the lad.
lol pull ya head in , as if anyone could perform any better when you literally have 25 odd players to choose from . Any examples Einstein?
 
It does not require Einstein to play a lock down game to limit the losses and place your best defenders shockingly in the back line. Yze needs to come to terms with reality he has no cattle and play ugly accordingly, the fact that Nathan Broad came out in support of the coach he knows games like that are coach killers.
 
Name one quality KPF we could have drafted with the picks we've had over the last 10 years.
Oscar Allen

Neo Magazin Mic Drop GIF by ZDF Magazin Royale
 
Oscar Allen

Neo Magazin Mic Drop GIF by ZDF Magazin Royale

Our drafting is often hard to comprehend.

Drafted Jack Higgins with our first pick when we didn’t need anymore small forwards.

Drafted Coleman-Jones, only need to take one look at the bloke move to know there is nothing AFL about him. Not a ruck, not a forward and not currently getting a game in the shittest team in recent AFL history.

Could’ve drafted Oscar Allen and Tim Kelly at a time when we needed a KPF and midfield depth. Lucky we got Balta but there were also plenty of other good players in the second round of that draft.
 
It does not require Einstein to play a lock down game to limit the losses and place your best defenders shockingly in the back line. Yze needs to come to terms with reality he has no cattle and play ugly accordingly, the fact that Nathan Broad came out in support of the coach he knows games like that are coach killers.
Clearly Yze has a picture of Mark Neeld hanging in his den at home

How many 100 point losses before he was goneski?

Edit: Neeld was 1-9 with two 100 point losses in his first season as Head Coach at Melbourne ... the similarities so far are a bit eerie.

He survived to the next season by getting 4 wins for the year.

I wonder what Odds I can get for Yze being sacked before the mid season bye next year?
 
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From 1993 we had one of the best in the game in Richo. From 2007, we had one of the best in the game in Riewoldt. They overlapped for 3 years. While we didn't draft him, from 2018 we had one of the best in the game in Lynch. He and Riewoldt overlapped for 6 years. We're due for our next generational forward now. There's no guarantee picking an extra one up in the last 20 drafts would have made us any more successful than we have been. We just need a gun Tasmanian forward in this coming draft to overlap with Lynch for a couple of years.
 
From 1993 we had one of the best in the game in Richo. From 2007, we had one of the best in the game in Riewoldt. They overlapped for 3 years. While we didn't draft him, from 2018 we had one of the best in the game in Lynch. He and Riewoldt overlapped for 6 years. We're due for our next generational forward now. There's no guarantee picking an extra one up in the last 20 drafts would have made us any more successful than we have been. We just need a gun Tasmanian forward in this coming draft to overlap with Lynch for a couple of years.
Clearly that is not the right formula ...

And maybe if we had drafted more we would have had more success ...

Lynch and Jack together led to Back to Back premierships.

If you end up with too many ... you can always trade one...

In the end you just need goal kickers - 2017 success was that Butler, Rioli, Castagna, Shed, Lambert, Caddy where all as dangerous as Reiwoldt.

They were all natural forwards
 
he needs to be down back

wasted forward

its bizarre we are going through this again

it didn't work then and it isn't working now

adapt the plan to the cattle and save some dignity fight like tigers in our best roles and go down by 10 goals no fugn worries for me

be stranded out of position not even manning up looking lost getting belted not great for morale
 

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