Lotsa close games. Listening to other supporters saying how proud they are of their teams for playing, trying and just losing. Different story on here, rubbish individual players, and sink the boots in to the coach …again
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Out of all the matches so far Hawks and Essendon had most to lose and we failed
We kicked 103.
I don’t think it was a super poor game, I reckon we got done for height.
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Stewart should have come in
Thats the Clarkson factor. The guy knows how to make adjustments and turn the game
Finding will never become Found, will it?
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Losing Dea before the game really hurt today I think. It meant that it was hard to move Hooker forward earlier and it was very clear we really needed him forward as shown by his impact when he eventually did get moved forward. Worsfold made the move as late as he could as a last roll of the dice and it worked but left us undersized and exposed down back. Dea also might of been a good match up for Gunston. Unfortunately we turned the ball over badly today with some skill errors and Hawthorn were ruthless on making us pay for it.
Yes we blasted away into the forward line too often but if JD or McKernan played we would have been able to create a contest I think and lock the ball more in the forward 50.
Its very frustrating and disappointing but a 4 point loss playing quite poorly is a sign we are getting more right than wrong. We actually won 3 of the quarters today, and we still fought out to the very end.
Belly looked tired today and as someone said before so did Zaha.
I still think the last 10-11 weeks has shown massive improvement over last year - I just hope we can close out the season well.
3 Likes
Something our coach i wish was capable of doing.
I’d argue we lost it in the first half. He was the only one keeping them in it and we should have been 4-5 goals up at half time. We had a real good patch and he kept them in it when it looked like we would run away with it
1 Like
agree
in fact really inexcusable not to have him in after we saw last week the lack of a tall forward
and needing to take stringer away and put him in the ruck
a la last years final- hooker out- no tall replaced him- daniher had to ruck- no other key forward
two instances in particular in the first half stood out
Guelfi IMO was a very big loss. the kid does not take a backward step and puts his body on the line everytime he goes into a contest.
Dea was a loss to, but imo not as much.
but it turned out to be a bad selection to replace both those guys with only one defender in mcniece.
Seemed like they were somewhat restricted in their ability to rotate players around when players were getting off the chain.
but guelfi was a big loss,
depends how you define a poor game, you can score alot and have a poor game, just like you could kick 40 points, win and have a great game.
Don’t think height was an issue persay, as you point out they kicked 103 points. the issue was turnovers and dumb bits of play.
also the forwards got sucked up the ground a bit too much again for chunks of qtrs, which was when the hawks were gaining control. they weren’t resetting quickly enough or at all.
guess you could argue a case it was a poor game, cos it felt like yet again it’s more a case of they lost it, rather than hawthorn winning it.
I get all teams make mistakes and turnovers and all that, but some of the mistakes these players make are just plain old ordinary, you just can’t plan or cover for it.
1 Like
You know what, ■■■■ that. ■■■■ Clarko’s Cluster and his zones. ■■■■ his team kicking 20 meters constantly and controlling the ball.
I watch football to be entertained. Yes of course i’d like us to win, but our 84,85,93 & 2000 teams won with flair. I’ve watched the replays so many times because we were entertaining.
Hawthorn are so ■■■■■■■ boring to watch.
We’ve been the most entertaining team by far between rounds 9 to 20.
Another strong & skilful inside mid over the preseason & another summer of development behind us and we’ll be top 6 and winning finals next year.
Of course it sucks that we’ve gone 14 years without winning a final, but I’d prefer we bat deep into September in 2019 and give it a serious shake with a fit version of our AA Full Forward.
9 Likes
Really? Weren’t they up by 11 points at half time and we only lost by 4 points?
I think we won the second half and if we ■■■■ down Mitchell in the first half we may have won that and the game.
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LMAO 
Can’t help but agree. We were playing much better football in the first half but didn’t contain the fast break out play and then couldn’t control the stoppages because Mitchell was touching everything… shut him down early in the 2nd qtr and we win comfortably imho.
Oh and maybe close the space around Gunston… he only destroyed us for the zillionth time… so I guess it was a big shock to see him playing up forward looking for the deep ball over the back?
I have to agree with this on Hep’s foot skills, or lack there of.
https://themongrelpunt.com/afl/2018/8/4/hawthorn-v-essendon-the-good-bad-and-ugly
Agree with this. Hawthorn position their players over the ground very well. They always had 1 or 2 sitting 15m off the contest behind the ball, and used them to bail out to whenever they needed to. They transition in defence to the central hole very quickly, usually from the opposite side, and then when there looks to be a chance to take the ball out of our forward line, they have players ready and waiting to run to the space on the wings. It was the players they held back off the contest, not just loose in defence, but all over the ground, that they use so well when they win the ball at the contest. They are very well drilled in their spread of players at all times, and blocked our ability to go where we wanted to kick the ball so often.
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From what I could see, we really didn’t have our zone defence and went man on man.
Then when we had possession Hawthorn zoned off. They committed 4-5 players in the centre square, even when we had the ball on the wing.
This stopped us from kicking into the corridor. We got sucked into hitting up targets slowly along the wings because we had options… as we had more players free along the wings.
1 Like