SO WHAT is Jack Watts’ best position?
Back, forward, midfield, even in the ruck?
According to Neil Craig, Watts is now a utility.
Speaking in The Craig Report on Dee TV, the Melbourne coach said Watts had demonstrated he could play in each area and it was now his challenge to keep building in each area.
“I want to keep the flexibility that Jack’s starting to show, because one of the great characteristics to have in this sport at the moment is an ability to play in a range of different positions. He’s also developing into a reasonably good ruckman as well,” Craig said.
“It’s great for the player in terms of selection and it gives the team such great flexibility to be able to move your team around as well. So we’re going to continue to allow Jack to play up forward at the moment. He’s developing good skills there and we’ll give him bits and pieces of the ruck work to do.
“I know he can play in defence from what he’s done in the past, so flexibility is the key word for Jack Watts.”
Reflecting on last Saturday night’s 19-point loss to the Brisbane Lions at TIO Stadium, Craig said Melbourne’s preparation in Darwin was perfect, but its ball execution in the contest was frustrating.
“Unfortunately, the result was nowhere near what we wanted, so there are some major disappointments there, but we also saw some good signs for the future,” he said.
“[The] effort [was] outstanding. I loved the attitude of the players. [It was] combative, fierce, but it’s really important that our No.1 priority is about our execution of what we’re doing.”
Craig added that the Demons were strongly focused on their ball movement for the rest of 2013.
“We’re working on it and hopefully we can continue to see improvement as we work our way through the end of the year,” he said.