Ok, Disclaimer. I must admit I wasn't overly thrilled when we drafted Matera as I viewed him as a player who has his fair share of injuries and to be honest never really looked like he had an appetite for getting amongst it. Therefore I have given him 10 rounds before bringing him to task, but after todays performance, enough is enough. Wet weather, perfect weather for a small forward, should have lots of tackles and the opportunity to get amongst it. Two tackles for the entire game and he didn't even bother hitting the scoreboard. I know we have a dysfunctional forward line but he had the opportunity to impact on the game around the ground, and not for the first time, he simply didn't.
I have been looking at his statistics for the first 10 rounds this year as opposed to his 10 last year at the Suns, and he is marginally down on the key stats such as kicks, handballs, marks and tackles. However, when it comes to what we drafted him for, goal kicking, this time last year he had 22 goals, this season he has a mere 9 and doesn't look like really threatening in any aspect of his football.
Then I looked a bit deeper into his goal kicking exploits and found the following:
2011 12 games for 15 goals 8 behinds
2012 17 games for 11 goals 16 behinds
2013 10 games for 7 goals 13 behinds
2014 16 games for 27 goals 17 behinds
2015 19 games for 18 goals 12 behinds
2016 17 games for 24 goals 14 behinds
In fairness to Matera his stats this season are still better than Ballentynes, in all key facets, except Ballentyne has kicked one more goal than Brandon, so really that is nothing to really brag about.
Therefore the question is, did we trade in a crab or has Ross already sucked the life out of him with whatever semblance of a game plan we allegedly possess??