How many good ruckmen are there in the sport? Aside from Sandilands, there's Max Gawn, Todd Goldstein, you probably have to say Naitanui, maybe Sam Jacobs (although now we're starting to drop off), then who? Maric was good for a while, but he's been ordinary this year. Obviously Ryder is terrific. But basically it's a position where you most of the time just try to stop the other team from having too much of an advantage. And every now and then you draft a Gawn (pick 34) or a Goldstein (37).
Across a list of 40, you probably need 4-5 ruckmen. With about 5 players getting the chop each year, you probably need to draft a ruckman every other year, or thereabouts. The other thing that you then need to do is be more ruthless/capable in assessing whether or not a young ruckman you've been developing for a couple of years is ever going to make it. That's where we've struggled, and the fact that people on here are still suggesting that Clarke's best is ahead of him shows that it's maybe not that easy. But we definitely need to get better at it.
