Okay, let's make something clear. I'm not bagging Sandi. He is a legend of our club and any near success wouldn't have happened without him.
My point/question is has the game moved on making his ruck style obsolete. He could have won 100 hit outs yesterday and we still would have lost. All opposition teams know they will lose the hit outs against us so coach accordingly. they either shark his knocks or sit right on our main midfielders and tackle them as soon as they take the ball. Is it the coaching because let's be honest it is so predictable.
Ruckmen who kick goals are like gold, especially in a low scoring, non functioning forward line like ours. Look at WB last year when they won the GF without a recognised ruckman but Boyd who did a lot of the ruck work around the ground took a number of huge grabs, kicked goals and was unlucky not to win the Normy.
Every year in the pre season the club trots out the same line about how Sandi will go forward and be a big danger to the opposition with his presence and marking....but it never happens! Griff is a similar sort of ruckman, and Clarke has never been of much use. It's too early to say what Darcy will be like but he certainly seems more in the lumbering big bloke category than mobile goal kicking big man.
There's been talk recently of how we've only ever recruited one good forward, but I reckon you could say the same about our ruck recruiting. Lack of a good mobile goal kicking support ruckman to Sandi never seems to happen.