Dogwatcher wrote:That is an important piece - do Bays supporters believe they've picked up someone of his equivalent?
And just WHO is going to replace Willitts in defence for the Bays?

Yep Gibbs is hard to replace but name one other SANFL club that has lost its best junior but had it replaced by the fifth best kid in last years National draft Travis Boak?
Not saying Travis is as good as Bryce but he is a handy replacement, mind you it is likely he won't play the full year but if he does go up at could be at the expense of Logan who was leading our B&F until he got promoted.
If anything our midfield is stronger than last year with Willoughby, Murphy, Kane and Cook, replacing Burdett (reserves) and Sundqvist.
This week Backwell is an out from our last game in 2006 but we welcome back a state player in Fisher who didn't play the last half of last year.
So if anything our midfield is stronger than last year especially once Backwell comes back in.
However as all astute SANFL followers would know we are short on height so that will be a problem so one of our better young forwards last year is going to play back (Kirby) so in some ways we have robbed Peter to pay Paul with the Power insisting Willits be a forward.
So this Bays fan is quietly confident of us doing as well if not better than last year but fully aware that the job is ahead of us this year. In other words for us to make the finals we are going to have to see consistant levels of performance as we saw against Centrals (rd 4) Port (rd 18), and Eagles (rd 2). Efforts like we saw agaisnt Sturt (rd 10) last year and it will be a long year....
Let that be a lesson to you Port, no one beats the Bays five times in a row in a GF and gets away with it!!!