Our backline is very, very good when the ball's in the air (Lynch toweled up and Reiwoldt well held after a quick start). Weiters and Jones are a great combination and have shown they can get the job done when the midfield plays their part in holding up delivery.

I'm concerned that Doc, Plow, Simmo and Newman, while serviceable, aren't quick enough to hold the Daniel Rioli's, Charlie Cameron's and such players. All the contenders have them.

SPS doesn't play that role, he's a sweeper (and a great one at that)... and he isn't all that quick. Who do we have on the list that could play that role?

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O say does that star spangled banner yet wave.

Bit of perspective.

Premier missing one best 22 player vs bottom four team missing two key forwards. Lose sole ruck in 1st quarter so the only remaining key forward has to play ruck.

Surprised the game finished as close as it did to be honest, but it's bemusing to read people crucifying individual players as though a couple of shanked kicks here or iffy decisions there were the difference.

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"One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds." - Frank Zappa

I actually thought the lack of key forwards made us less predictable. We still bombed the ball in but at least there was pressure when the ball hit the ground.

Martin was excellent, while Cunningham doesn’t get a lot of the ball he’s at least hits the scoreboard.
The backline was very good once they got support upfield.

Cripps was Cripps

Career over

I wish Kreuzer all the best but we should have retired him and Simmo last year

Good clubs make these type of decisions

The Daisy decision looks like a mistake to me. There was probably more to it.

Individually each of the smaller players on the backline can play

Simpson
Newman
Plowman

But there is no zip amongst them. No breaking lines. Thats why I’d like to see Williamson get a game. I think he adds something none of the others have

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Go Blues

Love your Pros and Cons Stefchook and agree with all you say, plus some

Loved the fightback after quarter time break.
Just couldn't take advantage of our forwardline pressure: Betts and Charlie would have helped.
We aren't that far off. When Kreuze went down we had no tall target other than Jack and he wasn''t targeted, and his leads not honoured.
We need to improve our tackling, a lot, or recruit some tacklers...Mitch Robinson anyone?
We were too rushed. Hampered by perceived pressure. Need to be smarter



Dow Gibbo Setters were passengers.
Setters lost his early preseason form 3 weeks ago.
Dow hasn't shown anything in competitive hit outs in preseason
Gibbo went missing gain. Not enough speed for a small imo

OBrien, Stocker, Williamson, De Koning should be considered next game

We will take a lot out of that game against the reigning Premier...still feel we can beat them.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

Too right

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

Creating and having run from the half back backline is so important in the modern game

You are right, although they give their all, those players are simply serviceable

Crying out for a penetrating kick from the backline who can open up play

did we?
took him ahead of trent cotchin in the draft....say no more...

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one you knock back is one you never have

I'll preface this by saying that I'm as frustrated as anyone that we've started a new season and we still have the same flaws as we always do. Every year it feels like 'if we just clean up this aspect of our game we'll win', and every year it seems like we don't.

However.

Dow kicks his two.
Murphy goes back and kicks his one instead of handing it off to Plowman.
Silvagni goes back and kicks his instead of trying to hit Setterfield at the top of the square.

That's the margin.

Dow doesn't get pinged for a marginal infringement in the protected zone in the first minute resulting in a goal...
Simpson isn't penalised a 50 when Lambert was clearly off... (Lambert probably would have kicked it, but still...)
The Tigers don't get a cheap one when Presita is the only player on the ground not to stop due to the Umpire's whistle...

Curnow hits Casboult when he's in the clear in the 50 with his kick instead of contriving to miss him by 10 meters...

And we win.

Also, we lost our ruckman early which resulted in our no.1 forward playing ruck all night in an already undermanned forward-line.

So, that's the silver lining. We're *that* close to the reigning premier. You can see the moments where, for all our other flaws, we had legitimate opportunities to score and, possibly, win.

The downside is that our average losing margin to the Tigers in seven years is about 27 points and we lost by 24. It's an average loss to them, so how can you say we're any better than before? A good portion of their goals came from our errors, and when we got chances to score, we didn't take them as often as they did. If they kick 5.4 (instead of 7.2) in the opening term to our 2.1, it changes the game.

I like him as a player, but Dow needs to go back to the seconds (if only there were some), and either play on ball 100% of the time with the view that he will replace Murphy eventually, or play as a permanent forward and get shot after shot after shot at goal in match-pressure situations. I like him, but he didn't narrowly miss his shots on goal - he completely botched them. Casboult has shown that you can, after about a decade in the system, become fairly reliable. Dow has to do it in a tenth of the time.

I thought our backline all played well individually (especially Weitering), but not that well as a unit. The Tigers forwards are all individually dangerous, so everyone had to worry about their own opponent, and that meant there wasn't much third-man action. Also, our defenders all tend to attack the ball in the air - there isn't a natural reader of the ball off the pack in defence (SPS and Doch and okay at this but not elite) - so we have a tendency to go all up to kill the contest, leaving us vulnerable to small forwards. We've lacked a specialist small defender for years, and as good as some of our smaller defenders are they're not naturals at that role. I agree that we probably need a pacy small back there, but... who?

Our midfield works hard but turns it over too much. But that's been the case for 20 years. Cripps is very good and I love Walsh, but he had a scrappy first outing for 2020.

Our forwards were good, I thought. If the tactic was to make up for our lack of height by making big contests and then feeding off the scraps, then we did that. Martin is very exciting, Silvagni played well and reminded us of his quality (even his kicking was on), and Cunningham has good goals sense. McGovern had a crack, but he really doesn't get enough of it for my liking.

Overall I'm almost happy with the way we played, but the same mantra repeats - if we just clean up our ball movement and take our chances we'll be in with a big show against the Dogs (a team we match up okay against).

But It seems like I've been singing from that song-sheet since the start of the @#$%&! century.

Great post.
Great perspective.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

Did a few cameos last night but overall a limited player
One thing I noticed is how often he falls to the ground and how often he goes under the ball

As I said soooo many times whatever SOS was thinking when he gave 3 players for a guy who hadn’t delivered that much in Adelaide is mind blowing
In saying all this when he went in the ball he looked better

Will be a freaky forward line if we can see the best of Curnow, Mgov and Martin all at the same time.

If this was a normal season Id be quite confident we would build into it nicely after seeing last night.
However, I think will probably unfold in a way that wont suit us schedule wise. Too under developed to front up every 4 days and then have a month off and then start up again.

...it will probably be shutdown by Sunday night.

Agree this is a quality post.

Would love to knock the tigers off again one day soon but the reality is they’re the best team in it and have been for about 3 years. We’re still not at the level to compete with them for 4 straight quarters.

I think we can learn a bit from the tigers. The way I see it, they always show us up in three key areas:
(1) Skills. They recruit highly skilled kids regardless of other limitations. They don’t have many players out there that can’t consistently hit their targets. We’ve struggled in this area for too long.
(2) Speed. They’ve got a couple of guys with line breaking space - Rioli, Bolton, Stack. Our quickest player last night was probably Martin. There’s no quick fix but we need at least one player who can cause havoc with speed.
(3) Stoppage method. The tigers always send one to the ground ball contest and then want to ping it by hands (often multiple handballs) to find the player in space running towards goal who assess the options and make a rational decision. We like to send a few guys to win the hard ball - and we’re good at it with Cripps and Ed. Problem is we don’t (or aren’t directed to) use handball to release the free man running towards goal. Instead, we often blindly kick forward or just bomb it high and long. That is currently too easy for defenders, especially given no Charlie and H at the moment. I think Fisher and Walsh add a bit with outside run but we still need more.

Anyway, that is comparison against the absolute benchmark. The team who’s last game was a 90 point win on GF day.

I believe we’ve still got the game to knock off many in the comp but if we can improve a few of those areas (undertand speed and skill might take some recruiting to fix) I think we will be much better going forward

Our first quarter was deplorable
Our second quarter was better but more concerning for me
We had control of the game in the first half of the second quarter but butchered the ball movement.
Our players make it so hard for themselves because of poor skills and poor positioning

As some poster said Williamson should be playing because he can move the ball quickly

The fight back was better than getting obliterated the whole game but the game showed we are miles off it.
The Tiggies relaxed but the game was well and truly over
Too many “ifs” in your post
We are a good contested ball team when we our on and one of if not the worst team in the comp at ball movement and non contested footy and there is little Teague can do about that with what he has to work with

Absolute flower in transition. Total breakdown across half forward.

Plan A was so bad forward of centre that there was a marked improvement once sacrifices had to be made to cover the loss of Kreuzer.

I'm not overly fond of the idea, but the reshuffle might need to see Casboult go back & bring Jones to CHF to improve the group workrate. It'll never replace what Harry brings to the table, but we can't carry on with all marking targets being two kicks behind in their game awareness.

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"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter" - Winston Churchill.

Harsh on Simpson I reckon.

Correct re Williamson though - plus he can slice the game open with his kicking.

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"I had to eat"

I think this might happen in a couple of weeks. Problem is Dow has no VFL to focus on midfield time.

Cuningham got the goals, but not a single tackle as a small forward.

Setterfield wasn’t on at any stage, need to step up next week or replace him LoB.

Dusty ragdolling Murphy with contempt was pretty funny

Most of what I would have said has been said already but I would like to add to a comment someone made about Dusty Martin.
After the soft 50m penalties we were pinged for, there was one where Murphy had a free in the middle and a scuffle ensued. When it was all over and the crowd had dispersed, Murphy was getting up and Dusty went back and had another go at him right in front of the umpire.
Now if entering the prohibited area is a 50m penalty, going into it and giving the recipient of the free a decent couple of shoves into the ground as an added bonus should be worth one.
Dusty is a protected species. The commentators even mentioned at on stage how he covered the ground to get involved in another scuffle later in the game to stand up for his team mates. That's OK, but last week in the praccy match when Doc did it, he had a free reversed.
I rarely bag the umps but their lack of consistency regarding the actions of some players, and Dusty is one of them, is pretty glaring.

I was fuming at the end of the first. it was all too easy and our back 6 looked completely lost as the goals came so easily and from close in.
I was fuming at half time at how we had wasted 15 minutes of the quarter to let it slip away in the last three or four.
I felt better at three quarter time when we decided to run the footy instead of bombing it to the defensive sweeper, which seems to have been a tactic of ours for a generation.
I felt nothing at the end because in my mind I can't see this season being anything more than a debacle from the perspctive of the AFL and the danger it poses to the viability of many clubs, one of which may be ours.
Someone posted above, take Reiwoldt, Lynch and Rioli our of Richmond and see how they go. That's us and we went OK apart from about 20 minutes.

I feel for Kreuzer but IMO we are going to b better without him going forward. The Dogs have Tim English, who is a young, mobile jumper and TDK should be more able to run with him and jump against him.
Enough has been said about the good and not so good contributions of the various players. I just hope we get to see an improvement against the Dogs. They are a good outfit when on song.

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Let slip the Blues of war (with apologies to William Shakespeare) (and Sir Francis Bacon, just in case)