Hasn't Sharpe played like 3 times the games at halfback and was showing real promise.
I don't get the Sandon is a must in the halves TBH. He played a couple of really good games there and some bloody ordinary ones as well.
No. The “he was a halfback as a junior” thing is massively overstated. He played halfback for the Goannas and has been a fullback since SG Ball. He played about as much “halfback as a junior” as David Klemmer did.
Going in circles here but the best team performances with him at 6 - besides the one against that reserve grade Souths team - were the Manly and Dolphins games, when he was moved to the right, and almost always positioned outside his back rower rather than inside, so sort of playing with two fullbacks either side of the field, with Crossland at lock taking on a lot of ball playing responsibility at 13.
That is a lot of shuffling around to make him work there and I have significant doubts about how effectively the same set up works against the better defensive teams - Dolphins and Manly are okay teams that don’t defend that well. Also have significant concerns about how a middle with two sub 90kg guys in Crossland and Smith holds up against elite packs.
The weird stuff with Brisbane’s attack that they had to figure out as they want on is that certain players engaged defenders and moved the ball very quickly and cleanly (Mam, Walters, Smoothy, Hunt at 9 rather than 6) and certain others could slow them down and gum up the works a bit (Carrigan, Hunt and Reyno as a halves duo). That’s reductive but it’s also reductive to say Walsh hard carried them, if they had Hunt 9 Reynolds 7 Mam 6 Walsh 1 all fit all year it would have been industrial light and magic.
I’m very very convinced that we’ll move the ball better and quicker with Sandon 7, Brown 6, Ponga 1, with a genuine middle forward at 13 who’s only getting involved sometimes rather than heaps. I think Crossland at 9 is fine. Maybe we’ll see that configuration in first grade and it’ll suck and I’ll look dumb, who knows.
