Bombertalk

Thought he had an excellent game tonight

Taps were good and showed a clean pair of hands.

Worth holding on to I think, can never have too many ruckmen.

Good game son, well done.

Looked pretty good. A major problem he has suffered from is a lack of consistency. I still don't think he will ever crack into the team.

Yeah i mean he may not stay because of the lack of opportunity.

But you really cant say that he doesnt have any ability there.

I think it was a good rehersal for the SANFL or WAFL club he may turn out to be a good player for.

Just not sure he can read the play well enough. I noticed several times tonight when he just got in the way of team mates.

semmed to put the effort in around the ground, along with his ruck work. should have been played instead of Ryder ealier on in the year

Alright game, tried his heart out. Can't really see him staying. 3 young ruckman are all ahead of him at the moment.

Nah his tap work was the best I've seen from a Bomber ruckman in along time. you were right J-mac. Keep him for another season

Maybe they should just keep them all. You never know when a ruckmen is going to go down, and with our luck recently, who knows.

There is no problem with our ruck department, they are just young. The backline is the problem. Midfield will be fine going on. Forward line speaks for itself.

Just draft some young key position players for the backline and away we go!!

I too thought he has improved a fair bit. His ruckwork was fairly good and he got his hands free.

But as Rusty said, i too think its our backline thats our problem. We have a good counter attack but we are a bit careless and scrappy at times.

Yeah was pretty pleased with how he went, certainly a better game than his ruck partner Hille (not knocking Hille, he's had a god year).

I think he's worth retaining. Athletic and moves fairly well, and with the constant injury cloud hanging over Laycock and Ryder not quite ready, we need him for depth at the very least.

CameronClayton wrote:Nah his tap work was the best I've seen from a Bomber ruckman in along time. you were right J-mac. Keep him for another season

f***** yeah.

I'll tell you what, Cartledge has shown more last night than Hille did when he was 21. I respect Hille as a leader, but his ruckwork still stinks (apart from one tap per night) and he is a big lumberer.

Cartledge moves extremely well for a 2m guy and when he gets first hands to the ball, his taps are good. The one that really stands out was straight after the first goal - taps it straight down to Stants who goes wide to Dyson who kicks long into the 50.

I said last year (perhaps only semi-seriously) that Laycock and Cartledge would be the future ruck combo for Essendon and if Sheeds has his head screwed on right and Cartledge and Laycock continue to improve (and Lacyock stops getting injured) it could well happen.

Cartledge looked good last night. I was impressed with both his tap work and a lot of his movement around the ground. That big spoil was exciting to watch. Got a long way off the ground. Only thing that would have made that better is if he got two hands to it and marked the ball.

That was a good moment and he often threw himself onto loose balls. Good desperation. It would be a shame (not to mention a huge hypocrisy) if he got cut at the end of the year.

Based on what we saw last night, I'd like to see him stay on the list and get a decent run throughout the year, rather than the 3 (?) games he got this year.

Yes, we've got Laycock and Hille and Ryder and Cartledge but I don't think we'll see too much of Ryder next year (of course I'm most likely wrong). Laycock is very useful up forward, although with Lloyd, Lucas and Johns that's a very tall forward line. He's also handy floating across half back.

Those four guys will be useful. Just have a look at what happened to the Doggies this year. They lost 5 talls in the space of a couple of weeks. Could have crippled them, and probably should have, but they worked through it and now they're playing in a finals campaign. I don't expect them to go too far, but "any given day" and all...

has a long way to go, but really showed alot of improvement tonight.

will be borderline if he is on the list or not next year