Ants, unless Smack actually does a massive stool in the middle of the ground in the second half, you’ve waaay over-reacted.
Had one garbage free kick against him, been given two free kicks himself. Genuine contribution.
Heppell picking up the tempo. Colyer had a nice early purple patch.
Tippa barely sighted.
McGrath impresses again, as does Zaka.
Bird or Hocking? You’d think Hocking, but I haven’t seen him yet.
Stewart has something. Needs time in the twos to develop it.
Parish to Watson, oh my.
Langford, again, is friggin’ dire. Needs to play the next game more than anyone.
Brown did some good things and some bad things. Hard to see him ahead of others at this stage. I like him, though.
Bags, again…Elliott is a good player. This isn’t Baguley’s best game by a long way, but neither is it a disaster. Footy’s a game of inches and sometimes you’re just not quite there.
Jerrett has kicked out of defence to Tippa in a two on one and Baguley in a two on one. More than anyone, this guy needs to use his head and make his possessions count.
Zaka did some nice things and looks like he’ll be a handful in the real stuff.
l reckon Collingwood would have more to worry about over their performance, or lack of it for three quarters, than a tired Essendon does for the predictable last quarter fade out.
Mason Cox got pushed out of the ruck contest a few times and got a free kick for it. Now every ruck contest has two blokes pushing against each other…if they give a free kick to the weaker bloke we should start telling our ruckman to push then flop
These are so terrible to watch, Zero intensity, heaps of skill errors, makes it very hard to pass judgement on much at all really. Got to see some glimpses of how we want to play, and some good signs from some of the players already mentioned. Gee I like smack in the side, he adds so much but where the hell can you play him?
In the reserves?
Seriously, the bloke can play, but it doesn’t seem to translate to AFL level.
I must be the only one that was disappointed tonight.
When we roll over, we roll over like real bad teams do.
Not the only one. Collingwood was bottom 6 last year, and they beat us. How anyone can be happy at blowing a 4 goal lead like that, regardless of who was off, I'm staggered by. We were insipid. And that is a terrible sign.
We were missing one clear cut best 22 player from the defence, but they looked rubbish all night. Bags looks done, hopefully he regains form. I don’t think our defence took an intercept mark all night. It was a good thing Collingwood kicked accurately for goal as we showed no ability to get it out of defence, reminding me of both the last two years. We showed no ability to run it out or cut out via disposal.
What of our best 22 forward line was there looked good. Green and Fanta were potent, and I’ll assume Walla had an off night. Stewart was ok, but didn’t really provide a target. McKernan had some cameos. We were really crying out for some more linkup play, say Langford, or if he’d played Laverde.
I’m surprised at the views of McKernan here. I thought he was individually the player most responsible for the loss. And that was him playing well! He can’t ruck. He gave away free kick after free kick. In the last quarter it wasn’t his inability to get a tap that cost us the win. It was his inability to stop Grundy (?) give Collingwood’s second string midfield an arm chair ride. If we have to rely on him in 2017 to ruck, we’ll finish bottom four like 2015. That he had two great moments up forward won’t get him a free pass for his pathetic display. Because it’s not a one-off, it’s a continuation of his form since he joined us.
Generally I actually thought Myers did some good things, but nowhere near enough. Same for Hurley and Howlett. All three hopefully just taking off rust. Watson looked good, Heppell got a lot of it but wasn’t clean.
Overall I didn’t think we showed a great deal more than 2016, which was pretty disappointing.
Was Tippa no good?
No good. Looked slow, missed a goal and just completely off the pace. Had one gifted goal and a few pressure bits. He did make a few good positions in H1, but he wasn't honoured.
Seriously feel sorry for how ridiculously incorrect your view is and the waste of time you made sharing it.
We had a team with 7 who haven’t played a game between 400-500 days. All of whom were rested at half time.
The team also had out an AA key position player and arguably the most exciting full forward in the competition. Add Stanton, laverde, Hartley and possibility bell chambers to the fold, with a few more hit outs under their belt and we win by 4-5 goals even with Pendles and Tralor.
Watched the game late last night - got home from cricket training to find the mrs watching some show about AN ACTUAL REAL LIFE MERMAID GIRL.
Anyhow… some thoughts. Not too in depth - because pre-season week 1.
McGrath’s hands are phenomenally good. Very composed, and rarely (if at all) fumbled. Good decision maker. Would have liked to see him kick the ball more. He will be a very good inside mid in time.
Forward line: Smalls looked dangerous. Green - good. Fantasia - excellent. If he can get himself 6-7 shots on goal regularly, look out. He will carve up a lot of small defenders.
Heppell took some time to find his feet - but noticeable that when others started to tire, he was still running, and I thought his skills improved as the game went on.
Watson - still elite at clearances. And it was really nice to see him laughing and smiling out on the ground. Even when Stewart dogged him by marking his shot on goal.
Myers - looked rusty - but will still be first picked in my supercoach team. Bargain.
Very excited at one point to see Watson, Heppell, Zerrett, and Parish all around the ball. In all honesty, our midfield is very good, and “bats deep” (I’m still in cricket mode)
Thought Hardingham should have played though. Would have been good to get him in the action early.
We won three games last year; developing a winning culture is a big task. It may have been a “practice” game to some but the opportunity to beat Collingwood, please the supporters, get more Members, should never be under-estimated.
We won three games last year; developing a winning culture is a big task. It may have been a “practice” game to some but the opportunity to beat Collingwood, please the supporters, get more Members, should never be under-estimated.
I reckon being in complete control
and plenty up at 3/4 time and then ripping all the keys. . . as well as the only true ruckman off the park, and running experiments in the last with half or more of the best players not on the ground, would be plenty for those that can see past an irrelevant practice match scoreboard. This is not the end of the season where shitt like that matters, . . and it’s a long year.
This is almost a “Marketing mob running the team” type attitude, . . which was rightly pilloried earlier.Do you think we get more sign ups from winning this, … or by being 16 wins going into the finals?
Priorities mate.
Watched the game late last night - got home from cricket training to find the mrs watching some show about AN ACTUAL REAL LIFE MERMAID GIRL.
Anyhow… some thoughts. Not too in depth - because pre-season week 1.
McGrath’s hands are phenomenally good. Very composed, and rarely (if at all) fumbled. Good decision maker. Would have liked to see him kick the ball more. He will be a very good inside mid in time.
Forward line: Smalls looked dangerous. Green - good. Fantasia - excellent. If he can get himself 6-7 shots on goal regularly, look out. He will carve up a lot of small defenders.
Heppell took some time to find his feet - but noticeable that when others started to tire, he was still running, and I thought his skills improved as the game went on.
Watson - still elite at clearances. And it was really nice to see him laughing and smiling out on the ground. Even when Stewart dogged him by marking his shot on goal.
Myers - looked rusty - but will still be first picked in my supercoach team. Bargain.
Very excited at one point to see Watson, Heppell, Zerrett, and Parish all around the ball. In all honesty, our midfield is very good, and “bats deep” (I’m still in cricket mode)
Thought Hardingham should have played though. Would have been good to get him in the action early.
Nice review of our first PRACTICE match. It sure beats “Bags is done” and “Smack lost us the game”.
I also thought BJ was very good and while Ambrose isn’t super at getting his hands on the ball, good luck to any of his opponents who think they will too.