I did wonder at one point if there might have been a virus go through the club after the match, as my head frantically searched for some way to rationalise the result.
He might have been the bluddy culprit if there was eh??
(Pretty sure we’d have heard about it by now if so, so ,…)
But what about Heppell?
We saw more inspiration for footy last year from Goddard than we have seen from Heppell this year.
Heppell is a great footballer…but at what time this year is he going to stand up in crucial games when we are on the slide?
Correct me if i’m wrong with what he meant but i thought i heard him say ‘it’s a one off’. This has been happening for years and the week prior was the biggest choke iv’e ever seen. A bit outta touch if that’s what he meant.
Spot on and that’s something he must address himself.
He doesn’t look remotely like a captain right now and won’t look like one until he imposes himself on a game when his team needs him the most.
That’s what true leaders do. They don’t go MIA when the heat is hottest in the kitchen.
They run to the fire, not from it.
This might be brutal on Dyson but he has to be brutally honest with himself if he wants to be the captain he aspires to be and the team needs him to be.
You can’t go missing quarters at a time. I don’t understand how he can be so good one quarter then unseen the next. Then pop back up again. The consistency of our inside mids is our biggest problem by far. At the start of the year I would have said we have a great competitive inside mid group. Watson, Heppel, Goddard Myers, and Hocking. Then Howlett, and Bird as more depth.
But instead it has been our biggest weekness by far. Even when you look at our wins more often then not it has come from rebound footy, not clearances. You cant go deep into September with a week as water inside midfield.
The year off has really hurt a lot of our players we didn’t know how they would come back. But nearly all have been bellow par, our captain included.
The rest of our game is up there with the very best when we are on, but until this issue is sorted we are going nowhere.
Par is simply what they have been capable of in the past for some, for others (aging players) somewhere near there best. Hurley for example has been very good, maybe even better then his all Australian year. Hooker has been par for mine, been pretty good in a new role for him.
Colyer started well but has been pretty average for a while now.
Watson I didn’t expect brownlow winning form but he is not even a shaddow on that.
Stants I expected him to at least be still holding a spot in the side, his gone from been tagged most weeks to not even getting a game.
Hocking to be on the fringe of selection which he not.
Howlett about what I expected, he has never been brilliant but he is on the fringe.
Heppel I expected him to start where he left off in time (by now). He has shown great quarters, and a couple of good games.
But for the most part very inconsistent.
Its a huge ask for them to have to come back after what they have gone through and the deserved far better. What I am calling par is high expectation thats for sure. The saga has, and certainly still is taking its toll on these players. twelve months is a long time out of footy especially under those circumstances
No offence but that’s a cop out. You simply cannot judge a par performance unless you break it down week by week and only then when you know;
1 what are the coaching teams expectations
2. What are the conditioning limitations/expectations
3. Are there any mitigating circumstances ie illness or injury
It’s not a personal thing… it’s just these kind of judgements get trotted out here regularly and honestly we’re in no position to make them
No its not at all a cop out, its my personal take on what I thought par was for certain players. Sure different people will have different veiws expectations and be more or less informed.
The reasons you outlined could all be reasons why the players are not performing to what I thought they would. I have friends who play AFL at different clubs, and I sometimes know of there niggling injury’s etc. When others do not. So I do understand this. As well as the roles they are instructed to play.
However it is also pretty Obvious that as an inside mid Hep has been going missing for parts of games, why I do not know but its still not up to what I would call par for him. Does not mean I have given up on him, or that he wont improve in the second part of the year. But the fact remains.
Jobe is no longer using the ball near as well as he used to, this is not what I would call par for Jobe, is his role not to use the ball as well?..of course not… does he have a niggling injury? Perhaps… the reason I dont know.
What I do know is that an opinion is not a cop out.
I really don’t think Heppell has been that bad (let alone disappointing). He’s not near his best - and he’s not above questioning - but let’s be honest, the average footy forum fan has got very little idea what he is like as a leader and are basically just saying ‘play better’. Boy some people have taken the loss on the weekend hard around here.
