Source :- PERTH NOW NEWS
Marc Pittonet is an unashamed “ruck nerd”.
The Carlton big man wears a big grin as he dissects the heavyweight battle he thinks will go a long way in deciding the Blues’ chances against Melbourne.
On Saturday, before a packed MCG, Pittonet will collide with Max Gawn – a colossus of the game he concedes to having never truly beaten.
Pittonet feared that centre ball ups, forcing ruckmen to jump, would kill off experienced ruckmen like he and Gawn.
But, as Pittonet sees it, tactical chess and execution in the middle has never mattered more.
“Early in the year I had an idea of where I thought it would go and it didn’t quite go to where I thought,” Pittonet said.
“But what’s given me my point of difference is what I thought, you might have picked up, I jump off both legs pretty evenly and I hit both hands pretty evenly.
“The fact I can manipulate my starting position, it’s become so much about timing, particularly at centre bounce, because the ball is not up there for as long.
“If it’s a low (throw), there’s not much time to do anything. If it’s a high one there’s lots of time to do stuff.
“But you’ve got to know how high it’s being thrown, what angle is it coming from, is it going to be on one side of the circle or the other.
“If you can then vary that up so the other guy’s timing is not the same, it can give you an advantage even if the other guy is taller, jumping higher.
“Like Gawn for instance will grab it out of the ruck by doing a two-hand push; if you see how well he does the two-hand push … it’s that sort of granular detail that a lot of the rucks like Gawn have picked up on.
“At the start it was a matter of ‘Have we taken away the art of ruck work at centre bounce?’… (but) we’re starting to find ways.”
Pittonet’s ability to jump off both legs and hit with either hand is not off the cuff. There’s a laundry list of variables he assesses before each reset.
“The umpires are a cue. That’s why you’ll often see me standing there and going ‘Which way are you going?’” Pittonet said.
“Sometimes, even if I don’t think I can win it, I can pick which side I want to manipulate which way I want him to hit.
“But there’s things like that: which way is the umpire going, which leg is the other guy jumping off, does he run straighter, does he run more of an angle, does he jump higher on his right or his left.
“Because if he can only jump left, so right leg up, is he open here (ribs) and I can get into his body more, if I hit him here, is he back or forward.
“I am a bit of a ruck nerd. As our mids coach likes to say, ‘You and Cruze (Matthew Kreuzer) go talk ruck because you guys just talk another language sometimes.’”
Carlton’s newly-appointed coach Josh Fraser was once a star ruckman.
And as Pittonet discovered, the former Collingwood and Gold Coast Sun is fluent in ruck chat.
“We came in at halftime of one of our games and (Kreuzer and I) had our ruck chat,” Pittonet said.
“(Fraser) comes up and goes, ‘By the way, don’t be surprised if dah, dah, dah happens’ – I can’t remember what it was.
“But (I said) ‘that is just great ruck coaching, no, no one has said that to me, that’s great by you’.
“I wish I had remembered what he said, but it was a nice input by him.”
Gawn has remarkably delivered what could be his greatest season.
Pittonet knows his ego will need to be left in the bowels of the MCG if he is to curb Gawn’s influence.
“I have played him many times and, really, it’s a matter of if I can split that match-up, it’ll go a long way to winning,” he said.
“There will be times on the weekend where I will have to put my ego on the hook for the team and just go, ‘It’s not about my hit-outs, my marks, my touches, my goals’.
“If I can do what I need to do on him, limit his impact, then we’ll go a fair way to winning.”
As to whether Gawn is the best he’s ever played, Pittonet is willing to go one step further.
“I think he’s the best ever – I think he’s a freak,” he said.
“What is he? 35 (years old) and what did he have last week? 28 (hitouts) and 10 clearances. I think he’s a gun.
“The fact he’s been this good for this long is just incredible.”
