enjoyed Saturday night - seeing a lot of young guys running around for the navy blue and we will be better when they are a bit more composed and a bit more experienced - a couple of examples(but there was plenty more )
Kade Simpson in the third quarter dashed away from 2 defenders and loaded up on the left only to spray it out on the full

Carrazzo left foot snap from about 20 out just before the 3 quarter siren which was a point

Murphy a couple of errant disposals after beating off a couple of players

Walker bombing the ball into the forward 50 on the left when he had more time to find an option

I like all 4 as players and each will get better with game time and experience

Enjoyed seeing Setanta being left on the ground and showing his skills - the debut of murphy blackwell and hartlett
Hopefully we will also see this season the continuing development of bentick carrazzo simpson waite fisher walker

Yeah I reckon you're right BIG FRANKY

Add 10 more occasions where our kick without pressure went straight to Scarlett or one other. We need to have either a flanker out on the 50metre line waiting for a short pass to stop such long nowhere kicks or train the kicker to take a bounce and go for it, even if he's under pressure.

Plus train them to kick for goal, geez, if I see another miss from 30 metres out I'll chuck

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Formerly: Ackland the Wonderkid / Army the Wonderkid / quivering mess / molsey / Tony Lynn Fan Club

Yeh, we just bomb it in, The cats killed us with their kicking to their forwards, our defence couldn't do anything about it. We cant just bomb it in like that, Walker shitted me how many times he did that, Murph you can understand its his first game.

Yep. Unfortunately that's part of being a newbie at AFL level. Apart from the rare exception (Judd) young players need time to pick up the faster tempo of AFL. When they pick up the pace they'll relax more and they'll seemingly have more time to think about what they're doing. Although young Flint needs a year or two to beef up I'm wrapped to read he's showing poise already, even if it is the VFL. I like the sounds of Flint.

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There's so much I could say...

I saw nothing in the game on Saturday that I did not see last year and the year before:

1) Inability to hit a target with hand or foot
2) Panic, kick and hope
3) A backline more interested in running off their man than playing tight on their forwards
4) When we do have the ball, no forward structure to take advantage of it.

I hope next years draft is strong because I reckon we are in the running for some early draft picks.

- Twinone

3 debutants - 2 new midfielders - a 6 foot 4 new defender - more midfield rotation - a new forward in Setanta - 6 foot 4 - yes the skills need a lot of work but the Cats are a good team and we were in front into the last quarter so not total despair
Also I would argue that we have more depth on the list given that longmuir davies chambers sporn wiggins and livo were not selected.The last 2 0r 3 years at least 2 or perhaps 3 of those guys would have been walk up starts for our pre-season side .

agree completley. comes with experience. hopefully the guys like carrazzo and simmo who have been around for a few years can really step up.

simmo actually kicked a point no OOF by the way. he scrubbed the kick badly though. only went about 35 m through the air not much over head height.

normally he would nail those you'd reckon

Simmo's missed shot wasn't a howler by any means. He had Byrne in hot pursuit, and he would have been worried about whether he had space. He jinked on to his trusty left foot and kicked virtually immediately. This left him off balance. Hopefully he will get better at converting such shots, but his miss was nowhere near as disappointing as the missed set shots well within 50.

I agree that the younger players have a tendency to kick long through a lack of composure. That is something that time and experience will hopefully cure. If we see Stevens and Skinny bombing it in regularly rather than trying to hit a target, we will know it is the plan. But if not, we can assume that it is bad execution and decision-making by the youngsters.

The other thing is that even when the kicks were long ones to static marking forwards, they were often to the advantage of the defenders - often over the heads of our forwards favouring a loose defender at the back, or kicked to the side favouring the defender. Just bad execution.

Unfortunately, the results of inexperience and a lack of confidence. Carrazo's miss maybe disappointed me the most, looked very gettable, Simmos was under all sorts of pressure. We shouldnt be too worried, plenty of the Cats young players were doing the same, Burns sprayed a couple.

On the positive side, Blackwell looked good a couple of times in heavy traffic I thought. Murphy was OK for a 1st gamer and big Setanta was ready to make a contest. Bentick also looked full of running.

On Setanta though, needs to practice his kicking in open play, that shot he sprayed for OOF wasnt even close. I know he has come a long way, but every chance he gets isnt going to be a set shot.

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"Who discovered we could get milk from cows, and what did he think he was doing at the time?" Billy Connolly

This was the only thing that dissapointed me about Saturday's game; it seemed like he was just blazing without even thinking about what was going on ahead of him. I can remember his first game against the weagles when he was running along the forward flank, set himself to bomb it to the square then cool-as-you-like hooked and inch perfect pass to a leading option just inside 50. I thought "what vision and skill under pressure". These days he seems to be going 100 miles and hour all the time, the only tagging job i wanna see walker do this year is on nick dal santo so he can see that 'poise' first hand.

*Pops head in, looks around, starts to panic*

I would think, as the team gets stronger part of that is individual and shared composure. By having confidence in teammates, that rubs off on individual composure.

I only have limited reference, but Ang never seemed hurried when kicking to Kouta. Ang could often appear hurried and flustered at times, but never when kicking to Kouta, and 90%+ of the time Kouta would hold the mark, which no doubt helped Ang's composure.

The really strong teams, think Brisbane of a few years back, from 1 down to 22 could depend on their teammates beating their opponents. This reliability goes a long way to strengthening composure, and has often been why some of our senior players have looked rushed and sloppy.

It's still a way off, but whilst Houlihan and Stevens etc still blaze away, the flow on of composure will be limited. Hopefully, if the youngies really take off the seniors will have greater confidence and it will permiate across the entire team in a ripple effect.

/crackpot theory #23

I don't think Carlos is the only player with kicking problems after watching 5 of the weekends games. Will get better with confidence, like the majority of our players, well i'm hoping anyway.

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Mjonc signing off at 8888

Well I haven't, which is why I'm keeping my mouth shut.

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And so while others miserably pledge themselves to the pursuit of ambition and brief power, I will be stretched out in the shade, singing.

Verbs.....never have I seen a more sensible comment in this Forum.

Players take years to know each others habits & styles and become a TEAM. They don't panic when kicking under pressure because there will be a team mate already making position downfield, they just know what is about to unfold. Ang & Kouta......Black & Power......Ratten & Blues forward line.... and so on..
Sadly, this takes YEARS of playing together......and this side is just starting off.

Patience my friends….patience!! There are no short cuts.

Interestng arcticle in the Sun Re Goddard but the interesting info was the 2002 top 10 Draft picks.

Only 2 of the 10 have played 60+ games the rest range from 1 - 33 Games

So this tells me the issue with kids except maybe a Judd ect is that only a handfukl of drafts will play near full seasons

Of that list
Goddard: 61 Games - Still searching for a Position though played 61 games
Wells: 62 Games - Good player with good skills and shows them has made AFL
J Brennan: 21 Games - Had Injury and similar to Walker played a great Debut but showed in the NAB first round has talent
T Walsh: 1 Games - Havnt seen him so cant comment
Salopek: 26 Games - A Talent but hasnt shown consistancy maybe this year he will step up
Mackie: 23 Games - Shown some things and could be a good prospect
L Brennan: 16 Games - Not a regular
Mcintosh: 1 Games - Shows somethin for North but still not realy tried
Laycock: 17 Games - Shown something but not a regular

This shows me will take between 2-4 Years to get some consistancy except for a few exceptions like Judd / Delidio and handful of others. Most Drafts even top 10 usually need some patience and a chance to develope..

Prob with the Blues is that we are struggling and lack a soldi middle tier of players and want these kids to step up quickly we dont have the luxury of the past where we could have them in the Reserves getting gametime and develping.

So i guess we just have to patient

i'm glad to see some people actually know whats going on with the club.

i know its frustrating from the sidelines and of course we all want wins every week but i saw a LOT of positives from last saturday, but realise we have a long long way to go and are going to have some more lows along the way.

we have some good kids, lots of the actually, but we have to persist with them and be paitent with them to see them succeed. the good thing that uncle john spoke about is yes it does take years for teams/player to gel and be confident, but we have such a big crop of talented yongersters coming through together, by the time we get there we should be a mighty force again.

in 5 years time we will be a Power house again.

hopefully 2-3 years finals contender.