2018 Pre Season Discussion

You don’t need to upgrade rookies anymore to play them

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He’s starting from further back than most of the (other) mids.

As I understand it, the club doesn’t expect him to have a midfield tank until after next preseason. This year they’ll settle for cameos in the middle from him.

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Ah right cheers.
Cameos sound good.

I don’t care how great a poster he’s been in the past, I demand that Nickers be served with a very strongly worded PM by the chief Mod, for scaring the living daylights out of us worry warts.

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I think there should be an inquest into insider panic dollar trading

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I too had heard this from a source within the club. Not the worst result getting pantsed by the Tigers.

A few at the club just a little complacent with how good our list is at the moment. Hopefully its a bit of a wake up call that we still need to put the hard work in to get results.

I’d rather have the issue of a talented list that gets ahead of themselves then a talentless list that tries their hardest. At least theres room for improvement in our case.

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I’d personally probably take the 2017 Premiership.

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This would imply Richmond has no talent on their list which is incredibly wrong. They have unquestionably the best Midfielder and Defender in the league.

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I don’t read it quite that way.
Most clubs have a couple of elite players.
I think the comparison between Richmond/Western Bulldogs and GWS/Adelaide is a reasonable one.

I think what we are seeing is,there is a difference between a true ‘buy in’ from a list that leads to on field success.

Opposed to a ‘lets get our membership numbers up’ speak over a preseason by coaches and players.

We will see soon enough which category we fit into.

Even if there was a bit of head wobbling going on and naturally we should be feeling more confident with the SSS inclusions that was not a key factor in our performance in JLT1 IMO

  • Club clearly valued our own training moreso than the game itself. Players flogged on track in training block leading up to the game - and then 4days off.
  • Heavy fatigued legs of players going into game (which means get run over & makes it look like they aren’t trying comparatively to opposition) and also careful management of others
  • If you assume we basically lost Zerrett and Stringer early, 12 of our best 22 were missing as opposed to only 3 for Tigers
  • Gastro had an effect on a number of players who still fronted up for JLT. Energy drained.

But a loss both in that game and in next if it happens (I kind of hope we do) should have them not feeling content at all and absolutely fired up for round 1. They will be freshened up to attack the Crows with everything we have got.

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It sounds like there is a bit of head wobbling which I still think is important to have, it’s important for any successful team to have confidence in their own ability. It’s about channeling it into the right format. Sunday’s game will be interesting viewing.

In hindsight, I think the mandated 4 day break somewhat explains the poor showing. The training loads would have been ramped up, knowing the guys would have a 4 day break to recover. This would give us the highest training load possible with eyes on round 1 to be peaking.

I’m not happy about being smashed, but I’m not panicking.

I’m wishing this pre-season will never end

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I assume a lot of these were from the full back kick outs where Hurley would kick like clockwork to the right hand side of the ground every fricking time & every team in the comp were sitting back there ready for it.

Mark Harvey escaped a lot of criticism last year, but the lack of imagination from kick outs last year was unbelievable & would have accounted for a lot of these defensive turnovers.

Let’s hope this year they mix it up, use Conor for a lot of the kick outs, try to utilise Saad’s run & give him some serious protection through blocking & shepherding to give him space to work with.

We need to start being heaps more unpredictable on our kick outs, & start getting the opposition second guessing.

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I’m not sure about that.
It states in the article that we only conceded 772 points from turnovers(albeit without any context) so going long and wide with numbers means its unlikely to come straight back in.

If you miss a target in an open area of the ground you open yourself up to far more pain.

No doubt kick ins need work but I thought it improved as the year went on.

Turning it over off half back was a far bigger issue for mine.

This is why so many Dons supporters are on edge and are desperate for success of any kind.

Even when we have managed to get into finals, it has been a disaster.

2017- def by Syd 65
2016 - Not eligible
2014 - def by Nth 12 **dont underestimate the pain of that one!!!
2013- demoted out of finals
2011- def by Carl 62
2009 - def by Adel 96

My God the pain of it all.

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All it takes is 1 final win to get that monkey of the back once that happens anything can happen.

Uppa re

Please don’t write this ever again.

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