Time to stick a rocket up Anthony Rocca.

[Sly]

Last year, Presti improved markedly. Now while you have to accredit Mick Malthouse and the Coaching Staff, I wonder whether having Simon Hawking on the List vying for his spot provided Presti the impetus to improve or lose his position. (And then, at any rate, you'd have to go back to accrediting Y2M once more).

Regardless of whether it did or didn't, there's no doubt that competition for a position helps motivate players to continually improve. The players who have the position to themselves are usually the slowest to improve.

Now, just to go off on another tangent for a moment, but Football's getting to the point where one-position players are on the way out. Unless they're exceptional, guys who can only play the one position are soon going to find themselves edged out of the game. Perhaps the only positions where players may be safe are Ruck and Full-back, and then even with the Ruck you'd prefer if your Tall could drop forward, take a few marks and kick a few goals.

Shane Wakelin's doing well to hold the Full-back position and despite being killed by Wayne Carey on Sunday, Mark Richardson has been a revelation ten years in the making at Center-Half Back. And at least Richo can pinch-hit up Forward and in the Ruck.

At the other end of the ground, Jarrod Molloy's improved his fitness to the degree when he can have stints on the ball, further up the ground and even down back if required. It's actually nice to think that Molloy hasn't been required down back, whereas possibly last Season and definitely the Season before he would've continually found himself down there.

Anthony Rocca's the concern. He can pinch-hit in the Ruck (but has a tendency to be hot or cold - no in-between), but in his years at the Club there's been no evidence to prove he can play at either Full-forward or Center-Half Forward.

Sure, he's had good games at Center-Half Forward. He killed Carlton. But even Craig Kelly played a blinder or two at Center-Half Forward. So the moral here is: everybody has their day. Just because Anthony's had a handful of good games doesn't mean he's performing serviceably there.

Now I like Anth: he can kick long, take a mark, pinch-hit in the Ruck and maul the opposition with his physicality. I don't subscribe to the fact that he's unfit just because he stands there with his hands on his hips puffing away - that's just a posture. But he does have a record of letting his opponent run off him: for God's sake, Mick Martyn ran off him last week.

So I think it's time to start giving Anthony Rocca competition for his spot. The Brama Bull, Dale Memphis Baynes is the obvious candidate, but his progress has been hamstrung by one minor injury or another. You'd hope that he can get them out of the way and come good. But so far, his one game has been against Geelong last year when he played on David Mensch. (As another aside, you never play anybody for just one game - that's just asking for a player to become a trivia question).

There's other candidates in Ben Kinnear, Jason Cloke and even Guy Richards, but presently they're VFL-fodder. Instead, I think we should turn to a Senior candidate. As I've Ranted and others have mentioned upon this Board, that candidate is Simon Prestigiacomo. Presti was a Center-Half Forward as a junior, can generally kick okay, take a mark and has quite a nice turn of pace - certainly more than Anthony, at any rate.

Now this goes back to my point about one-position players disappearing from the game. If we could cultivate Presti as a Center-Half Forward, even if he's no more than competent, how useful would that be for the Team? Shane Wakelin's going on 27 and Mark Richardson's going on 29, so you also have to ask how long they're going to be around. At this stage of their respective careers, a serious injury could end either one.

Presti's certainly not getting any development sitting on the Bench for whole games at a time, so my suggestion is to send him down to the Reserves and have him played at Center-Half Forward for three weeks. Then (unless he's truly terrible and lost), promote him into the Seniors - even if he's only gotten 3 kicks in that time.

Then you could have the potential rotations of:

Ruck: McKee-Rocca-Fraser.
FF: Molloy-Rocca-Fraser-Presti.
CHF: Molloy-Rocca-Fraser-Presti-Richo.
CHB: Richo-Wakelin-Presti-(Kinnear).
FB: Richo-Wakelin-Presti-Molloy-(Kinnear).
Presti could fail miserably at CHF - but if he only get 1 or 2 kicks that'd put him equally on par with what Anthony usually does every week. And look at the options it opens up. As I Ranted at TCR I was extremely pissed on Sunday that Malthouse didn't do anything about the four key match-ups where we were getting killed - Molloy at FF, Rocca at CHF, Richo on Carey at CHB and Wakelin on Rocca at FF.

Having a tall who can play back and forward opens up an array of rotations and increases our versatility. Sure, we have Clement but he's more of a tall-flanker as opposed to a tall key-player. But the simple fact is that while we can cover the spinal-positions we still don't have enough leeway to juggle players around, other than to swap Richo and Wakelin at CHB-FB, for example.

Finally, with Simon Prestigiacomo on the heels of Anthony Rocca's CHF - even without the potential rotations - then perhaps Anthony will find the motivation to continue improving and to maintain the consistency.



<B>Sly.
<FONT size="3">MTA.</FONT s>
The Collingwood Rant. </B>

[timagpie]

Your exactly right sly. Ant Rocca has survived the Malthouse clean out of last year not like his brother sav.
As Malthouse said that he needs to rise to that next higher level and what better way of forcing him to do that is to promote competion for his own postion in the team.Then the results should speak for themselves. Not like at the moment where he is up and down.


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