london blue wrote:
Sidefx wrote:
First quarter was woeful, it had me thinking we needed to trade out more players than we did.
I couldn't stop thinking of that training video when they kept missing targets and thought, this is going to be a long season.
Good to see they got into a bit of a flow after that and started moving the ball a bit better.
Not sure what is happening overall with our skills department though, but there are a lot of players that need more work.
At times the ball movement was what we expected to see but then you would see the same culprits from last year bombing the ball or missing targets under little or no pressure.
There were also a couple of times when players moving the ball into F50 were looking for a target amongst a packed pocket when there were easy options laterally or on the far side around the 50 line.
They need to start taking these options to open that F50 up more and be less predictable.
Thank goodness players like Ainsworth, Hayward and Byrne made them pay when they had their chance, we look a lot more dangerous with options like that in the F50, even with poor delivery.
Ainsworth would've had to have been close to best on ground for us with his running capacity and goal kicking.
We still need more of our mids troubling the scoreboard, 2 goals is not enough IMO.
Smith is going to be a gun for us, he moves so well through traffic and the forwards will be able to trust him hitting them lace out, Cerra and Walsh need to step it up this year or he will walk straight past them.
I just hope after that game, new levels of acceptable and unacceptable disposals are set at the club.
I liked Dean, we got to see his white line fever the club has talked about, he just needs to rein it in come Rd0 and not give away frees.
I thought Wilson did some nice things and Lord was still a little patchy, needs to work on consistency and he'll be a gun also.
Young was alright, he still dropped marks and bombed the footy out of defence, he needs to tighten this up.
Derksen, sign him up.
Elijah, nothing special from him, hopefully he just needed to blow some cobwebs but for a bloke getting a second chance you'd have hopped he'd have been a bit more damaging.
Chesser, not sure about him yet, I didn't really see his elite boot or speed.
Ollie, still too weak and drops tackles, still can't kick. I actually seen his foot the first time when he kicks, he's one of those players that lets their foot go like jelly when they kick, it's no wonder he misses targets, he needs to point his toe more. Give the kid some ballet lessons because we know he can get the pill, it's just what he does with it once he has it that is disappointing.
Reidy was ok, without stats he looked like a good VFL ruck.
Harry........well not much has changed, but with the same delivery at times, what can you expect.
I didn't even realise Ben Campo was playing until they mentioned his name.
As someone has said already, Williams needs to be on a wing, put Ollie back on the HB line and let's see what Williams can do going forward.
Florent done some nice things but when the rest of the blokes around you are playing like 2025 then what more can 1 player change, can't wait for Newman to come back.
As for the rest, I didn't really see much improvement from last year.
Anyway, it was just a practice match, so I'm probably being too harsh, hopefully they can build on this and we might finally get to see what we were promised this time last year.
thanks Sidefx....on an individual level, your comments make sense. However, I would add that we were significantly better at connecting as a team. There were some moments which set the benchmark for the season. This said, before considering the change in personnel and the time it naturally takes to build cohesion.
I agree, as the game went on they definitely seemed to gel a bit better.
I really liked the fact we are dangerous in the F50 now, even if a target is not hit.
But I still wish we had players in the middle that can cut opposition teams up when entering the F50, Jagga looks the goods but opposition teams will shut him down early if he gets too much of the footy.
He needs some mates.
Like I said, it was only a practice game and maybe I am being a bit hard on them, but I am sick of our players poor disposals, especially under practice conditions pressure.
They need to man up and take poor disposals a bit more personally, not the relaxed attitude some of the usual suspects had post poor disposal in the game.
Their personal standards need to be lifted higher if we want to be competitive, or we ship them out at the end of the year for players more with more pride, favourites or not.
Florent, Hayward and Ainsworth should be our new standard going forwards, IMO they made a lot of our players look average in that game.
However, I am looking forward to how we develop as a team this year, so it's not all doom and gloom from me.
And I am most looking forward to seeing the hard running pressure game style we tried to execute last year but failed to deliver for 4 quarters.
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