I’m curious, does Lyon or the club get any plaudits for taking a mature-aged player with a reputation for being ‘a bit of a lad’ at pick 66, and helping him become a very good AFL player, or is it simply the case that all success belongs to the player, and any downturn in form belongs to the coach?
Ryan’s deployment does raise an interesting question though, about who our best shut-down small defender is. The last few years Spurr most often took the most damaging small forwards, despite a lack of flat-out speed, but he wasn’t used much as a rebounding player (for good reason). We’ve been blessed by having Johnno as both a wonderful intercept marker and creative rebounder. Wilson is a wonderful rebounder but only ok overhead, and Ryan is exceptional at reading the play, but rebounding hasn’t been a strength. How we structure the backline shapes to be a little more fluid than previous seasons, so fluctuations in the attacking side of Ryan’s game are likely.
I think if there was someone like Toby Greene on the park, I would want Ryan marking him. Asking him to then continually run off half-back at the same time is probably asking too much.