Come on, we’ve had a wonderful forward line for the last 15 years.
In all seriousness, I agree with the midfield thing. I think it’s mostly because it takes a while for them to gel and ours, although full of talent, is still finding their best together. Then, there’s the problem around the corner of retirements and depth. It’s probably not as bad as some think. There’s a bit riding on the development of Langford and we’ll obviously target some polish here in the trade period/draft.
I agree they need to continue to develop but I think their is lots of opportunity to improve across a variety of roles which will strengthen the team.
If the players I mentioned continue to improve which I think is a formality considering their age and talent, and then we continue to see improvement from McKenna, Francis, Laverde, Begley, Mutch, Ridley, Daniher, Fantasia, Walla, Stewart and a few others and we will have a formidable side.
I don’t think it’s hard to see we have quite a lot of talent in our side and with another couple of drafts and a trade or two I believe we will have a very strong side.
Our biggest assets are that we have a couple of elite small forwards along with Joe and Hurley which gives us a massive advantage over most teams.
I think this team has a flag in it over the next few years.
We will win 8 from our last 10
I just don’;t think this is enough for a sustained campaign deep into september.
most of those are forwards, we actually need more out and out mids that can step up into the firsts team.
Time will tell.
I’m excited with where the clubs at and I firmly believe we are on the rise.
I watch the VFL side every week and we have a lot of talent in there that I believe will create great competition for spots.
Further to the midfield thing and how ours is travelling. I suppose you could sum up the current situation (without mentioning the right mix of player types) as:
A grade: Watson, Heppell, Zerrett, Goddard
Mids with senior time: Zaka, Colyer, Parish, Howlett, Stanton, Langford, Myers
Mid time: Raz, Walla, McGrath, McKenna, Kelly
I think if we had that group for another few years they’d end up a top 8 midfield. We won’t, of course. We most likely won’t have Watson, Goddard, Stanton, Howlett and Kelly. That’s around half of them in a few years. Parish and Langford will hopefully fill the breach left by a couple of the classier types by going up in development. McGrath, Walla and Fantasia may end up spending more time in the middle which seems reasonable given what we’ve seen from them this season but then we need to find something that replaces their current roles.
Obviously we’d like to bring in a couple of jets over this time to really deck out the side which would pad out our depth with good drafting and would allow us to leave the Wallas and Raz types forward more.
I don’t think Howlett, myers and stanton make our midfield that much better, now or for the next few years.
You’d expect they’d end up as depth. Doesn’t really matter because two of them most likely wont be there and one of them has missed so much football that anything else is a bonus.
This seems like as good as anywhere to post this,
credit to Hurling People Now on Twitter
2nd best forward line, 3rd best back line in the comp, these are premiership numbers
2nd worst midfield…not so premiership
If we fix the inside 50s without changing the forward and back lines…we are on here big time. I’m still happy to put down bad wins in the first half of the year to team chemistry and game play learning, since Geelong game we have only had one bad game and that was against Richmond which we still could have won
Yep. was at the Freo game and I agree with swoodley. We were obviously spent at half time. Honestly think that the plan was “get a huge lead by half time and try and hold on”
DIdnt work (also - I think at the moment, other than the port game were we went on with it a bit) this seems like our gameplan this year
While our midfield may rank poorly YTD, it did just reasonably hold its own against the best ranked midfield on that table.
Heppell, Zaharakis and Watson have all shown big improvement over the past few weeks when compared to earlier in the year. Midfield still a weakness, but maybe not as much as shown.
Had to go find that Twitter account and look back through.
At the end of round 7 we were 16th on that table.
Mid-77.6
Off-99.9
Def-101.1
Since then we’ve played Geelong, West Coast, Richmond, GWS, and Port, and our numbers have improved across all three categories.
That really is a very big turn around in our teams fortunes.
I heard it said during the game that we had not prepared enough fluids for the match . I thought that was strange.
Keep in mind we were second last at the start of the season so have been steadily improving since then but yes a massive rise since the Geelong game
Trust in Woosha
Sounds like when you reckon a 6 pack will get you through a game but it’s a real spirited contest and they’re gone by half time.
At least Our losses were not at Richmond horrible level.
One or two guys were out with sickness, wonder if there were more affected?
It was our 3rd match in 13 days. Combined with the heat we were always going to run out of legs in that game.
Anzac Day - Tues
Melb game - Sunday
Freo game - Sunday
What really should have happened is we changed a lot of the team out in Melb game. Watson in particular who then had to miss Freo week after.
Yeah, the great unknown. Essendon has steadily built its form in the first 12 games. 10 more to go. Who knows which way it will go but importantly they’ve been competitive. According to the coach it’s this phase of the season where it will all click and the team will be more consistent in performance. Here’s hoping Essendon make the finals. They certainly have the tools to do it. Go Bombers!
We might.
