Completely agree on Bird - his VFL form had been better he would have been ideal yesterday.
He absolutely has to play against the Crows this week.
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I want Kelly to become a coach for us. If this year buys that 100% worth it.
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Sorry - havenât read all comments so far but seems to me that weâre missing inside grunt that we hoped Hocking would provide, and a bit of X factor in the backline especially. Bird and Francis need to be unleashed and soon.
Franga may not be fit enough to run out a game but he wonât give up. Probably break himself in the effort.
Really think we would have been better with Smack in the conditions. Anyway.
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Donât think you should include Goddard and Kelly in that.
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Yep. I was right next to the scoreboard on the top level. It was an ugly game, but would have been uglier if they had kicked straight. Activate prayer power!
I think Smack and Ambrose on ball for an entire quarter would work in those conditions, Just create space and get the ball forward by running through packs.
3 Likes
Pretty disappointed at yesterdayâs game, I think the assessment of our form and where we are at is pretty simple and itâs not worsfold or any youngster having a bad game.
Premierships are won by the core 24-30 y.o. Weâve got a couple of aging champions in Watson, Goddard and Kelly all over 30. We have a heap of exciting youth starting with heppel 24 and under. But the core 24-30 hasnât been up to scratch.
For mine the only player in that age bracket thatâs been good all 3 games is Ambrose.
The players that have been patchy or not up to there previous standards is pretty lengthy. Hurley, Hooker, Bags, Howlett, Hocking, Looney, Zaha, Colyer, Stants, Brown, Smack with only Bird and Myers that havenât played. Not going to single out any of them, some have played a good game and some are returning from injuries or suspension. But as a whole they are not giving enough.
The core needs to lift and quickly if they want to be a finals threat.
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Where the fark did I say my thoughts were what the club thinks?
Heppellâs thoughts
âTheir ability to get a spare man back â they were quite good at â and we didnât think our way through the game to really man up that seventh [opponent]."
Hockings thoughts
âWeâd kick it forward and their spare would mark it, so we didnât quite get that right.
âA lot of the times we were kicking to an outnumber, so that isnât what we want to do.
âWeâll put our hands up and get better at that and help communicate that throughout the game.
Worsfoldâs thoughts
"We obviously talked a lot about [the conditions] and we had opportunities to just scramble the ball forward and weâd try to find a perfect little handball and cough it up.
âThat was some decision-making on our behalf but it was also some really good pressure around the contest from Carlton that made our players think they couldnât get that kick away.â
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There is a disconnect in the above statements.
Maybe they werenât scrambling the kick because it kept going to the spare in defence.
Clearly out-coached in my opinion. Now backed up by player statements on our own website.
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I think weâll be right for inside players but we need to realise there has been a shift away from really big bodied midfields. Sure you might have one really big body, maybe even two but beyond that it is smaller fleet of foot contested ball winners and harassers.
I could see McGrath being very well suited to and growing into a luke dalhause style midfield role. Parish will be at least as good on the inside as libba. Zerret is capable inside and out. Complement that lot with hepp and Langford together with a couple of outside spreaders and a utility or two and you have a pretty good set up IMO.
The problem with our midfield had never been itâs contested ball winnning ability its been how well we can spread from that contest both offensively and defensively. It is stating the obvious but the reason that is the problem is that jobe, hepp, Myers, bj, Hocking, howlett and Stanton are all very one paced and have no ability to explode and accelerate quickly whether that be too break away or to close space.
In 3 years time our midfield will be;
Inside: hepp Langford
Inside/outside: zerret parish McGrath and probably mutch
Outside: colyer laverde (injuries permitting) with support from tippa and Fanta
Yes we will still be expecting to add a few names to that list but I think it is shaping up well.
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It was painfully â â â â â â clear from early in the second, I just canât fathom why there was no direction from the coaching box on the issue.
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Or there was and as Heppell said they didnât think their way through it.
Bizarre stat - we have, statistically, the best defence in the league after 3 rounds.
And probably the worst midfield - given we have lost clearances, CPs & I50s each week, making the Defence performance even more meritorious.
Weâre slightly below mid-range for attack right nowâŚbut itâs hard to score if you donât get the ball in there.
Woosha/McKenna - go and fix the midfield, that is your #1 priority. Because unless you do our Defence is going to break under the load and the year will be wasted.
We can defend really well, we can score really wellâŚwhen the bit in between actually does itâs job.
We have too many halves or quarters where we are destroyed in the midfield. It didnât cost us the game the first 2 weeks but it did cost us the game yesterday.
5 Likes
I think perhaps that itâs more the players didnât stick to the game plan/structures. It became more obvious as the game progressed.
If someone was told to go and man up their spare and they didnât do it for 3 quarters it is still a coaching issue. Maybe the role needed to be reassigned, maybe somebody needed to be dragged and given a spray. However you look at there is no excuse for letting a spare dictate the game like that.
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Yep got that impression too
That may be the case but I still think that is a failure on the coaches part to communicate properly and take steps to ensure what they needed was being carried out. Itâs like saying we told hooker to move to half back but he didnât. It is just rubbish
1 Like