It starts with the senior/experienced players turning the ball over regularly by foot coming out of defence - Hurley, Heppell, Zaharakis. Heppell looks so slow he should never attempt a side-step again as he gets caught nearly every time. As for Mitch Brown…perhaps that should be the last game he ever plays in the seniors.
The second reason we lost was our inability & composure to use spare players up the ground given Freo kept about 2 spares back. They really came to play and their pressure was immense resulting in many rushed kicks forwards. We aided them by making unforced errors and not slowing the game down for a few minutes and forcing their spares to come up the ground to man up…poor coaching on one hand but senior players turning the ball over by foot off half back when they clearly had teammates free exacerbated the problem.
We want to play fast football regardless and don’t have the skills under the pressure to execute with almost the sole exception of McKenna. We had senior players spraying the ball under no pressure all night but he can still hit Bellchambers lace out through heavy traffic late. He barely missed a target all night.
The only other player who could truly hold his head high was Devon Smith who worked his backside off all night. I also give kudos to Bellchambers who worked hard to make Sandilands accountable and kicked 2 goals as a result.
As for Daniher If he’s injured stop playing him. If he’s not, drop him. He has had 2 very poor games in a row where his attitude has been deplorable and bordering on unprofessional. If he wants to play like it’s a party and doesn’t matter, he can do that in the VFL. Pick someone for whom playing in the seniors really matters because it doesn’t seem to matter to him right now. He plays like a millionaire and looks for soft free kicks at any hint of body contact. He kicks for goal like he doesn’t really care as he has another million shots at goal coming.
Daniher was our second worse player after Brown who was bad as any KP defensive player I have ever seen since Danny Jacobs in a final against Adelaide years ago. Jacobs never played for Essendon again (traded to Hawthorn and he didn’t last there long). Seriously, we are better off playing Ridley next week than playing Brown.
Another coaching faux pas was starting Stringer on the bench. He needed to start in the middle and his physical presence may at least have prevented the all-too-typical home interstate team first goal inside the first 40 seconds of play.
We will not do better than last year based on tonight’s all-too-familiar performance against a bottom 8 interstate side.
The definition of an optimist -
An Essendon supporter who expects us to back up a good win with another good performance interstate against a low ranked team.
Was at the game. In broad brush strokes: lacked intensity, skills were terrible, Freo wanted it way more and were desperate when trying to stop it leaving their forward line. A couple of specific mentions: TBell was honourable against the man mountain, Joey and Tippa were terrible, with Joey just so out of touch it’s not funny. Stewart shows much to like. And the new footy ground is awesome!
The biggest positive is that somehow we stayed in the game till last 7 minutes with minimal contributions from Zac, Joe, Stringer, Tippa, Goddard. This is good. Next game when they’re all firing we’ll do well. And when the injured return we’ll do even better.
Devon Smith would be farking awesome in a good team.
Stringer applied pressure more than once.
Heppell kicked a decent goal.
and no injuries, at least there were no injuries.
On the other hand…
Folded again under real pressure. They failed the test. again.
The midfield was ordinary. Too easily shut down and tagged out of games, not big enough, can’t mark, struggle to control the ball and either hold onto or arrest momentum when its required.
Daniher should forget all the ‘best forward’ talk, he is nowhere near it. His inability to kick to a decent standard consistently along with his extremely suspect awareness and concentration is a huge liability and probably worth a couple of goals a game to the opposition.
The lack of forward pressure and our inability to lock the ball in our forward half let alone our forward 50 will ensure that we finish no higher than mid-table as usual.
Down back I reckon McKenna and Saad continue to play to a pretty reasonable standard given how the midfield is hanging them out to dry. Brown and Hartley are the beneficiaries of having literally no other defenders on our list. Marty Gleeson is a much bigger loss than expected.
Hurley has now played about 14 decent minutes across almost 4 hours of football. Needs to work on forming fists with both hands and punching the ■■■■ out of the ball because he is obviously unable to mark with any consistency. His kicking has mostly turned to ■■■■ as well.
The thing that turns me into a frothing madman about this group is you can see every game before it happens. You spend the whole week saying it’s a danger game because we had a good win and now we’re playing interstate against a pissant team and you’re just hoping for one fkn week that the team will prove you wrong. But nope. Same. Fkn. ■■■■.
Saad, McKenna and Dea. I thought our small backs did alright, if our tall backs (+Heppell) would mark the ball, not get beaten and not spoil our own players. Saad and McKenna also gave our only (limited) run, and I thought Dea was dependable.
Belly had the toughest ruck assignment around and I thought did alright.
Hooker and Stewart did alright, with shocking delivery from the midfield and no support other than Green.
Begley did ok, but only against the “young player” standard.
I don’t think anyone else can hold their heads up.
When will Heppell learn to stop second guessing right before being tackled. It’s becoming weekly.
Stringer is a worry
Langford just doesn’t do enough to be there. Rather have parish or McGrath spending more time guts
Fumbles Brown is not AFL standard
Tippa is out of form
Not sold on Dea either
I agree that we recruit top line mids yet they play second fiddle to fumbling senior players
Llyod will rip us a new one on FC you watch only had to read his article about how Essendon need to win on the road if they want to become a top 4 team everything he said in the article we did the comeplete oposisite tonight.
