James Gwilt Appreciation Society

I'm pretty sure he was dropped, not injured.

 

Round 1 - 18 touches playing on the resting ruck
Round 2 - 20 touches on the resting ruck (Giles - who kicked 4 goals ffs) and 4 frees against
Round 3 - 14 touches playing on the resting ruck
Round 4 - 14 touches playing on Josh Jenkins who kicked 4.1 and beat him so badly he had to go forward
Round 5 - 24 touches and beat Daniher. Very good game
Round 6 - 21 touches and beat Merrett. But Merrett hasn't won a matchup all year to be fair
Round 7 - 9 touches playing on the resting ruck and conceded 2 goals to Hale
Round 8 - 13 touches and ran around like a headless chook all day. Worst on gorund.
Rounds 9-13 - Dropped
Round 14 - 11 touches and was beaten by McGovern who got 3 goals
Round 15 - 20 touches and let Tyrone Vickery get 2.2
Round 16 - 15 touches - conceded 4 goals to Levi Casboult
Round 17 - 17 touches and probably beat Aaron Black who scored only a goal. But Black's lost most matchups to be fair
Round 18 - 19 disposals (not incredibly damaging though) and broke even with the resting ruck. good game though.


He's got KPP eligibility in CPL though. If a player constantly matches up on the third tall/resting ruck I tend to look at the games when they're not and Gwilt matches up on KPPs occasionally whereas he doesn't ever match up on smalls.

He accumulates a bit of the ball from defence so with him you do get some rebound but you're not going to get the damage that you'd want from a 188cm rebounding defender, by foot he's by no means great and his decision making is questionable. Defensively he lacks pressure and doesn't stick to structures well.

To an extent he's a victim of St. Kilda's lack of depth in key defence as he's significantly better when matched up on non keys. When he plays on genuine key forwards he's smashed to the extent that if he did it regularly he'd be leading the reverse coleman.

He's just a bit of a no-rounder. Defensively he can be relevant in the right role but due to his height/frame/skills the right matchup is so rare so he's very often played on players he simply shouldn't be and gets smashed. Offensively I just think he's too shaky by foot to really be a rebounding defender yet he always looks to.

in an ideal world he'd be a handy depth player a bit like Silvagni and Cheney. But St. Kilda are shit so he's not.

 

To be fair none of the guys he's matched up on are prone to big bags. Most have had one of if not their best game on him.

 

yeah exactly. He's not a spud and he's unfairly maligned at times. I know there are lots of players like this in basketball - think they're called tweeners or something? Gwilt's an AFL version of one. Size is really quite important in the AFL, just unlike basketball it all depends on your role. If Gwilt were an inside mid he'd be the perfect size. But playing as a defender he's just inbetween heights for the role he plays. Too small to take the bigs, too tall/big to take the real smalls. Players like that have to be offensive minded and to his credit he tries to be but he just doesn't have the skills.