My point is not all teams make these switches that people bang on about.
As pointed out if our midfield improves then swapping key position players is irrelevant.
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Mike, have a look at the replay. Waite had six goals to half time. There is no way that we would have won without shutting him down. Have a look at the 1984 grand final. We were gone for all money before Sheedy rolled the dice and made multiple changes at the final break.
I agree with you that a stronger midfield will help our overall results but there will always be times when some key position players are down and changes will need to be made.
I think Woosha has been great for the club, adding much needed stability when it was sorely needed. However, he is ultra conservative in match day coaching and I wonder if he is going to be the man to lead us to our next premiership.
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Each to their own I guess.
We were rated first in offence this year comparative to how many opportunities we had and 6th for defence.
No doubt defensively we need to improve but it’s my belief that those improvements can be made through the way we structure up and the improvements we make in midfield.
Forwards have been getting off the leash for as long as I can remember and that’s not only at our club.
Making calls in Woosha in a season where most recognise that we are developing is unfair in my opinion.
This coming season is when I believe he should receive more scrutiny.
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And for the record Woosha was ranked number 4 amongst his peers.
I think that’s a fair representation of how well he coached in a year with many question marks.
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I absolutely agree. As I said, to date he has given us great stability. We now have a much stronger mid-field so I will reserve my criticism until the end of the year.
After 2019 we will be in the longest period in the history of the club without a premiership. Lets hope that we have one this year.
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I really hate to bring this up, but just one move almost certainly cost us the 1999 premiership. They moved Kouta onto the ball at 3 quarter time in the prelim.
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So true. I watched a replay last week.
I really don’t think we have the midfield for 16 wins. I still get flash-backs of Kennedy streaming from the centre square with three bombers hanging onto him barely slowing him down. The only change in the big guy department is an untried Stringer replacing a gun in Watson (although I’m the first to admit his form was poor last year). And Buddha is gone for security. And suddenly people think our midfield woes are over, and it’s 16 wins or Woosha walks? I just don’t get it.
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Why?
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I watched a little of Essendon vs Norwood and the Timmy jumps over a pack games yesterday.
I didn’t find any insights into how we can improve 2018, unfortunately, but it was fun.
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Tend to agree about the midfield still being a bit light on, although i’m less concerned about having ‘big guys’ in the midfield and more concerned about getting better players rotating through. If we get decent midfield contributions from Stringer, Smith and McGrath, we should be a better team this year regardless of the fact the latter two are on the smaller side.
16 wins sounds and/or any talk of a flag sounds very ambitious, but it’s been a very even competition the last two seasons with no dominant teams and i expect that to continue this year. If we get hot at the right time of year, we’re a sneaky little chance (as probably 6-7 other teams could legitimately claim).
what could possibly make you do that?
We’ll be better because we’ve got less big slow guys. That was our problem. They weren’t any better than the opposition at winning the ball and they were terrible at stopping the opposition doing what they wanted when the opposition got the ball.
That ability to stop the opposition doing what they want is where we will improve markedly. We mightn’t win more clearances in 2018 then we did in 2017, but I reckon we’ll be way better at harrassing our opposition when they win them, therefore making it harder work for the opposition to do anything meaningful. And with our pace, we might actually make more of the clearances we do win.
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I must say I’m a little shocked by some of the lukewarm feeling toward Woosha. I think he’s done fantastically well thus far, given the cards he’s had to dealt with since arriving. I hope he can stick around for a while if he can remain focused on the job without distraction.
I also think too much is being read into the Elim Final loss/margin. I reckon our playing list is quite strong, though after Richmond’s list winning a flag [no traditional CHF], who can say what a Premiership list looks like? I do say shame on the AFL for their lack of protection of key forwards, which has caused a scarcity of big hauls of goals.
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Indeed you may well ask.
If we learn from the mistakes and the games we should have won and lost last year, play as a team as both the Bulldogs and Richmond have proved, you don’t need the be the media’s favourite darling. We need a couple of youngsters to really step up and match it.
Mop up and do it diligently, support each other and play for the jumper and each other, we will improve. Even top 6 is more than possible. Then again, we might or might not have some surprises up our sleeves but we are building toward something pretty special.
Patience is the key.
Hird turned several games with that move and a couple of others, Woosha moved Hurley for with 90 seconds to go against foostracy when we were 4 goals down.
His commitment to bad match ups and not making moves to swing momentum is Knights like.
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Woosha put Hooker back as needed. But beyond that he backed the players to overcome their opponents; ultimately investing in the players resilience. Otherwise you’re left with players looking for a way out when things get too hot.
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Oh good. Now we are bagging Worsfold for his performance in a hypothetical.
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It’s no fun unless it’s rampant ridiculous speculation…
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