KK, I thought Hawthorn are still dominating even without Roughead and Franklin playing. Because they still have the likes of Mitchell, Lewis, Hodge, Smith etc... playing in the midfield.
I really really struggle with this widespread infatuation with KPPs.
Look at the premiers of the recent modern era. Apart from Port Adelaide's 2004 premiership, largely due to brilliance of a real quality KPF in Tredrea, pretty much all the premiers have had dominating midfields. Often they have had very poor forward KPPs.
For example;
- the Slime '05 & '06, Judd, Cousins, Kerr (Cox) had Q. Lynch as their KP Forward.
- Brisbane had Black, Lappin, Voss, Akermanis, Headland, Power.
- Collingwood (2010) had Swan, Pendlebury, Didak, Thomas (Jolly) with Travis Cloke as their KP Forward.
- Sydney (2012) had Kennedy, Hannebery, OKeefe, Jack, McVeigh and used Goodes and Jetta as their Forward goal kickers.
- Geelong had Ablett, J.Selwood, Bartel, Corey, Enright, Ling and using Stevie J and Mooney as their goal scorers.
People are very quick to forget the years Pav had to play in the midfield instead of as a KPP because we just couldn't win the contested ball out of the middle to get it in to forward 50.
For the same reason I cringe everytime I hear talk of Fyfe playing up forward (with Barlow) while we are now being smashed in the centre clearances and stoppages ... that was our stand out strength over the last few years because of our big bodied mids.
