If you had a combo of Ball/Hayes/Armo in the centre, you'd have a lot of grunt, but whose the next disposal? Until last year, Hayes played the inside-out game moderately well (i.e. mix of playing in the trenches and using the ball, ala Dal Santo circa any year but '08), but was last year much more in-and-under. Luke ball is in-and-under only... and what I've seen of Armo to date leads me to believe packwork is his calling, not the next step.saintsRrising wrote:Sorry to disagree with BJ... BUT Ball and Hayes will be arounda long time.Jimmy1972 wrote:
Also said hard for Armo because of Ball and Hayes. Has to work harder due to this but will be a great player.
Armo is not after their spot....but needs to play WITH them.
Harvey retiring us opened upa slot.....
...and quite frankly we need some young mids to step up and play good football to displace the like of McQualter.
Our 2008 midfield simply was not classy enough...and we need Armo, Steven etc to STEP up to become good mids to play with Ball, Hayes and Dal.
Fine to have all 3 of them on the ball around the ground, but as a centre combo, that's going to struggle.
I very much see him as competing with those 2 if he wants the prime time minutes in the centre square. They're both better than him in his primary stength areas, so he ends up being part of the 2nd tier of mids.
(btw, I got what you meant by classy - all around good - and agree. I hope throwing Goddard and Gram into the mix can rectify this, but it really would be better to come from Armo, Mini, Eddy, Geary, Jones etc. Moving those 2 above guys still requires 2 of guys like Raph, Gilbo, Ray to perform as "class" players to make up the diff, and while they've all shown signs at times, none has ever (with the possible execption of Gilbo at times in '07) done so consistently over a course of 10+ games)