I’m more excited to see if Draper comes on strong.
Phillips has been serviceable all year, but Draper could take this team to the next level. Durability is a concern.
I’m more excited to see if Draper comes on strong.
Phillips has been serviceable all year, but Draper could take this team to the next level. Durability is a concern.
It’s fun to watch us again.
And our pressure has been impressive, a couple of games aside.
said this in the review thread but…
im one happy bomber right now, im enjoying our footy. flogged a couple of sides, won Anzac day convincingly, competitive in losses for the main part with on the whole a young team. very, very good signs. we are way ahead of what I expected this year. its genuinely refreshing to watch new guys
we’ve beaten two teams by 70+ in a development year. its unbelievable.
there is a clear buy in. I think that shows with individual form - parish, hind, merrett, snelling, tippa and laverde are in career best form. hooker is looking decent. red dog is back to playing great footy. we are doing something right.
I must admit I was still concerned despite the 72 point win. North cut us up over and over in that 3rd quarter. I think they scored 5.5. We need to be better than that.
The biggest positive is that we finally seem to have a game plan that works and we’re applying it consistently, the execution will improve as we get games into the young players and we’re as not reliant on 2-3 players each week. The room for improvement is the scores we’re letting though and the scores from turnovers
One thing I’ve noticed is that they seem to have a decided plan to rest one of McGrath, Parish and Merrett more than the other two in any game - look at minutes played and they seem to rotate them to give the odd short game, on some kind of rotating basis. One of them will get 5-6 or even up to 10 minutes more bench time in any one game.
In the past, I reckon MgGrath has had longer % of game time than Merrett, who has often played 5-6 minutes less than other mids and been more of an impact player in most games.
You’d think they’d play it very even or a set % of game time for each player. But it looks like a definite plan.
Hopefully this is a reflection of Parish as he has noted getting his tank up and Merrett now combining his great burst game with slightly higher ability to keep going.
People often make comments about how so and so looked tired or gave up a chase without considering their overall game time load or what they might have had to run in the prev 5 minutes - even without getting near the ball. Without that knowledge you really have no idea whether ‘must be carrying something’ is right or they just have a bout of fatigue from interval running combined with collisions that might do in an Olympic athlete.
Watched the replay this morning. Paid particular attention to that 3rd quarter… We took a bit of time adjusting the way we were moving the ball after half time, we were trying to go to a slower kick/mark method to get around their spares and didn’t quite nail it. Still kicked 4 goals for the quarter so there wasn’t really any damage done on the scoreboard, they only closed the margin by ~10pts. What was pleasing was their ability to address it at 3/4 time and then run away with it again in the last.
I agree that they got the game back on their terms in Q4, but it’s these lapses that cost us games. We were never in danger of losing the game yesterday, but we can’t afford those lapses against better sides.
They won the quarter by 4 points and we butchered at least that many opportunities going inside 50. We just went off the boil a little and missed some short options around and inside 50 that we took at other times during the game. Probably also lost our intensity around the ball slightly.
It was hardly the 3rd quarter v Hawthorn though
Cox, Perkins and Jones for me have been the standouts this year so far.
Hind is close to being recruit of the year.
Im really enjoying this season. 1000x better than last year and it’s much more exciting then 2016 was for me.
So much to look forward too.
I’d say 2 areas of improvement are centre clearances and our defence on the rebound. Pretty happy with our scoring ability and we’ve kicked some good scores its just that we leak even bigger scores sometimes.
Cox, perkins, Jones
Don’t care where we finish on the ladder, I reckon we will improve significantly in the off season between 2021-2022.
We were playing the bottom team. They had 10 scoring shots in one quarter. We have had lapses in nearly every game so far. I know we are a young team and this is to be expected, but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be concerned by these lapses. It gives opposition teams hope that they can come back.
There are many positives to come out of our performances this year, but we still have a long long way to go before we challenge the top sides.
I don’t disagree. When we say lapse all i’m saying is that it wasn’t a total disintegration like we’ve seen at other times this year
Dunno about everyone else but with the exception of one turkey on this site, I’m enjoying the distinct silencing of the calls for a BBM
I’m probably of this frame of mind, albeit absolutely loving the ride. Thought it would be a year of torment.
Quite looking forward to Saturday against West Coast to see how we go. It could easily be another Port/Brisbane type game, however I think we have also improved since that Brisbane game.
For me, and many of us, we’re clearly performing better than expected. However, I think we’re still a long way from being a premiership contender; albeit, there are some green shoots. So my views:
EXPECTATIONS
It’s worth listing out what I expected here:
So overall I thought until injuries hit we’d have a good engine, but leak goals down back and have it bounce out of the F50. When injuries hit I expected even the midfield would struggle, and that we’d end up bottom 5 for the year.
EXPECTATIONS EXCEEDED
So where have expectations been exceeded, or just different things done?
DARK CLOUDS
Draft picks. I’ve said above I think we need more elite talent, especially if we want to challenge for top four/premierships, rather than just winning a final. That elite talent either comes through out-drafting everyone else, or low draft picks. Unfortunately, we’ve had a really soft draw, and have been going well against weak teams (4 out of 6 versus bottom 9 teams). Add in St Kilda & Collingwood totally imploding, and Carlton failing to progress to even mediocrity, and we’re probably 2-3 ladder positions higher than expected. This will impact our ability to get elite talent in.
Worth noting that we had more inside 50s in the third (15) than in any other quarter but our efficiency collapsed. We also had fewer touches, lost contested ball and gave up 17 inside 50 but our tackle count was the second highest quarter for the game. So we didn’t play well but it wasn’t a total crisis.
Nevertheless is the 4th quarter response to this from off was very very pleasing
It’s our defensive structures that seem to fall down.
Yeah, it happens when we don’t use it well going inside 50 and bounces out I reckon. Need to have a close look at the replay tonight
It’s our defensive structures that seem to fall down.
It’s not really… turnovers when we have the ball in areas that can’t be defended is what’s killed us more than breakdowns defensively. There have been poor defensive moments for sure but without having seen the stats I’d suggest we’d be bottom 2-3 for scores against from turnover. Maybe only North that are worse.