Mark Blicavs

Looked much more confident with the ball in his hands on Saturday.

 

Showed some courage tonight with that marking contest too.

 

Was just playing around with the stats feature on the AFL website.

Of every player who has played all 6 games this year, Mark Blicavs tops the ranks in disposal efficiency at 87.3%.

 

Yeah he looked real good. Doesn't detract from his shitness in the week/s before though.

 

No I watch the games. Don't have him in any fantasy leagues so I don't know how he performs.

It's pretty fucking difficult to play two full time rucks with the 3 man bench. I get West can play forward a bit but he's still a ruck in my eyes. Both rucks have to be pretty bloody good to justify it (i.e. cox/nicnat) and even then, often it's not structurally good enough (Goldstein/McIntosh for example). I don't really think West or Blicavs would make the 22 in any position aside from ruck, so to me it's pointless playing both even if they were both top 10 rucks.

When Vardy comes back it's justifiable though as he's a good enough forward. Unless they'd drop West over Blicavs (which I doubt), Blicavs has to be relatively gun to keep his spot and continue justify playing two rucks. He's essentially taking a game and rotation away from the midfielders.

 

As have I - but like most rucks, a lot of his disposals are handballs to the runner. He's only had 16 kicks all year. I've liked him when he kicks but he shies away from it too much.

WRT R4/5 - to justify playing two rucks, getting one kick in each of those weeks and a few cheap handballs just isn't enough - especially when he's only getting ~10 hitouts so his ruck time isn't down. he didn't pop up for the odd goal, he didn't tackle like a lot of rucks try to, he just used the ball well for one kick and 3-4 handballs each game. It's not enough. 6 kicks/12 touches, 12 hitouts and a goal I could somewhat accept - but the weeks before were shit. If Steven Milne got 6 touches all of which were effective but did nothing else, you wouldn't say it's a good game. Likewise 11-12 midfield touches at 85% eff isn't a great game. By that logic, nor is 4 touches as a ruck.

 

When I heard Blicavs was up around AFL standard I've gotta say I definitely expected him to be a different mold of player given his background; more of a mobile/quick ruck but he's very standard in a lot of ways.