RE: Geelong, think that the match committee have a lot to answer for with the selection of Blake over Hawkins. Have long been a critic of using Hawkins in the ruck, because he doesn't offer enough around the ground to compensate what we lose at stoppages. The claws are out for Hawkins now, but he's still a 21-22 year old key position player, who will be decent. He's not a ruckman and should never have been played as one.
Ling's copped a fair bit over the past week too, and it will be interesting to see what the role of the tagger becomes with the increase in interchange, because it can become too disruptive and make your own team too reactionary if you have one guy following another everywhere, especially to and from the bench all the time.
I can see the logic behind Mackie's dropping, and the maintenance of Lonergan, but losing Mackie hurt us coming out of the backline because he's the most penetrative kick in the back six, which becomes important against the Pies and the Saints to stretch their concentration of players.