The fact that he wasnt impressed with our performance yesterday shows that he wont settle for mediocrity. Some big calls to come this off season from him.
He would have been very frustrated that we got out to a circa 20 point lead 4-5 times through the game couldn’t go on with it and bury them like we should have.
Nearly every time we turned over the ball - typically through excessive use of handball like the Carlton game - and let them back in. They also kicked 3 or so goals out of their backside.
Live at the game we looked a 6-8 goal better team - a whole class above - except for the last 10 minutes of Q2 when Hurley refused to take shorter options on the kick out and kept bombing out longer to where we were outnumbered.
You only had to see our two coast-to-coast goals early in Q4 when Goddard and Zach Merrett hit up shorter options from the kick out and then a player (e.g. McGrath) provide run from behind and we ran the ball up through the corridor and cut them wide open. Like the Hawthorn game our leg speed relative to our more fancied opponents was a decided advantage.
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I really like that he is challenging every player. Not just the young ones.
Two years ago Chappy mentioned we need to challenge each other more to get the best out of ourselves. That message was replicated by Goddard and Heppell on the Footy Show that year too.
I’m glad to see some more critique coming towards our players in the player threads as it shows we as supporters are demanding better performance in particularly towards our more senior players (Watson, Bags, Stants, Zaka, etc). . They’ve been great in the past, but we need them to earn their games on current performance rather than on past ones.
Ditto with our guys who are still developing (Gleeson, Langford, etc). It is harsh on them but they cannot be ‘babied’ along their career and turn out like Zaka who doesn’t end up fulfilling his full potential. More will be required from these guys once we make tough decisions on senior players and these guys need to realise that what they are producing at senior level isn’t quite good enough.
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In general we are good when we have the footy and play our style.
Unfortunately most of our guys have been wired to play the Hawthorn style of waiting for the opposition to make a mistake in our backline and letting Fletcher, Carlisle and Hibberd mount an attack from there.
What we are focussing on is how to get the game on our terms when things aren’t going our way and the best way is through pressure and tackling the opponent.
That’s what I looked for at the game and you end up catching players give up on a chase early or struggle for fitness. Gladly the players noticed it and went straight to the bench.
We did this in the entire game against Hawthorn, too.
It didn’t hurt us much, so I guess they figured it wasn’t an issue.
Given that, though, maybe leave off Hurley?
Even if it wasn’t an issue in round one, which it was, we actually have tacticians watching every play and a system where people can relay messages to the players.
Oh, and FFS.
Didn’t Woosh intimate Hurley was following instructions by saying the mids were pushing too high when they were never going to get used thus creating the outnumber 60m out on the flanks?
One thing Woosha and the coaching staff are not getting a lot of credit for is player development, which is surprising as I think it has been off the charts. Easily the best its been in the modern era. I think a lot of the good coaching/development is being downplayed via comments around depth and recruiting as though its all just happening.
The Blue Chips - Merret, Daniher, Parish and Mcgrath all reaching their potential and improving week to week. Before you say that’s expected, remember a time when we all hoped our high round picks like Myers, Jetta and Melksham were going to be our next great players. God its good to know with confidence our players will reach their potential.
The Value buys - Tippa (rookie), Raz (hail marry pick), Ambrose (rookie who wasn’t much chop pre woosha), Brown (hail marry pick), McNeice (rookie), not just good role players a lot are becoming integral to our side and stars of the comp. Some of these guys are so much better than i thought they could ever be. Did anyone really expect Ambrose to be this good, or that Tippa and Raz had this high a ceiling. Our expectation on our value buys used to be a Howlett becoming a good solid player.
The Kids - Everyone we get a glimpse of just looks promising. Mcneice, Francis, Begley, Laverde, Rideley etc play and I think wow we’ve got another promising one here. A lot is getting attributed to Dodoro, but he was picking the Dell’s, Nobs, Atkinsons, Kavs, T Slatts etc which when played I never really got excited by and always made the cupboard look pretty bare.
Hats of to the coaching staff at the moment, amazing job.
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All under the tutelage of neeld.
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Neeld is great at developing players.
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You have to give Hird a little credit with some of the players too.
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It’s funny how no one is asking for Skipworth’s head anymore.
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Does deserve some back-tracking by many on here.
I include myself in that.
You cannot argue with the performance of the forwardlines work within the F50. Could get a touch cleaner on transition still. But difficult to be even remotely unhappy with how things are progressing.
Getting Hooker more involved is the next big step of improvement that could be made.
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There is no point really.
He has somehow managed to survive through the Knights era and the Hird / Bomba era.
By now it’s a given he’ll at least last until next year.
Whoever is in charge of our midfield will be highly scrutinised.
from this I’m going to assume you don’t know who our midfield coach is. You don’t know that it’s Bluey McKenna. Who’s a good friend of Worsfold. With whom he holds great trust and confidence and a long held relationship. Who Worsfold specifically identified and brought to the club as his first appointment…
In short, McKenna would be pretty comfortable with where he sits with his boss…
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Yes
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The midfield is our biggest weakness right now.
The forward line is progressing well, the backline has some problems but is stacking up well.
Our midfield is where all out older players are playing and historically the midfield has been the reason our forward line and backline struggled from time to time due to lack of midfield defensive pressure.
If the midfield is imune to critique due to Worsfold having his mate looking after that role, then we seriously need to readjust our goals to being the second coming of Ninthmond (maybe Ninthington will sound great).
I don’t care who is in charge of the midfield, if it isn’t performing, then criticism is warranted. At the moment, it is just working ‘okay’ for a variety of reasons. I’m hoping by the end of the season we are performing better than ‘okay’.
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Of course they’ll be continually reassessing how the different lines are tracking but as a coach I doubt McKenna will be under anymore pressure than any of the other coaches.
He hasn’t to make some tough calls on a variety of players. And justify why he plays certain players.
Has to give Myers a crack.
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Worst Fold
Starting to get sick of seeing us lose games at the selection table
ZAKA? WHAT DOES HE HAVE ON YOU WOOSH, TELL US IT’S OKAY
Gleeson, just because the previous coaches overrated him you don’t have to too
YOUR MIDFIELD HAS HAD A 5 DAY BREAK, MAYBE PUT SOME FRESH PLAYERS IN THERE EH?
McKenna gets instant call up after one bad game and a suspension, wtf?
Meanwhile Stewart and many others in the VFL are playing their hearts out to get on the team, no wonder the VFL side gave up today as well, selection day must be a complete personal WTF you to a heap of hard working players on our list.
I went and looked at Bird’s stats over the last few years and at Sydney, and I cried at the tackle column, then cried at the clearance column, then came back to this thread, and ask again, WTF John.
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^This
Absolute baffling decisions.
Sick of the same offenders getting leave passes each week