Review Thread- no finals this season

Lol. Lots of people (although unsurprisingly not you) understood:

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I should use that sometime

Silly question but why wasnā€™t he tagged, he was allowed to run loose. Or someone gave him a bump like Jaeger got.

I think Simon was before Bill Stephen took over as coach. But what an exciting group of young players he brought through. These players debuted either under him, or just before or after, and all were Premiership stars:
Timmy Watson - debuted at 15 years of age - just imagine how good he must have been!
Paul van der Haar - sensational debut and was named the leagueā€™s best first year player
Merv Neagle - runner-up in the Brownlow a could of years later
Shane Heard - later dubbed as the ā€œPrince of Taggersā€
Gary Foulds
Glenn Hawker

I may have missed a fewā€¦

Has the old " they travelled to Perth on a Six day break so they will be tired" been true, ever?

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Itā€™s true when weā€™re the ones travelling back!

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Read or heard somewhere that they had 11 of their premiership team playing yesterday. Thatā€™s a lot of experience & harder, bigger bodies. I thought our young guys struggled to hold many tackles.

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Hmmm, ā€¦ Iā€™m guessing when Wanganeen Mercuri Hird Misiti et al came along would be hard to beat, ā€¦ the years when we got our fresh batch of Baby Bombersā„¢.

But I canā€™t off the top of my head remember who came in when, or if enough of them debuted in the same year to beat this one.

One of the Game / Stats nerds will know.

Iā€™m just as gutted as anyone else here, but to look at it glass half full, we have the best list since our 99/00/01 team. We finally found an identity and have a brilliant young core group of players.

Whilst I hate the last 15 years of ā– ā– ā– ā–  weā€™ve fished up, the next few years could be exciting if we put it all together.

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Went into this game fearful that we would be outcoached, which we were. Clarkson might be a prick but heā€™s a great coach, and very adept at dictating how the game is played, which is what happened yesterday. We played slower and wider than we have for weeks, largely because the usual channels had been denied to us. For the most part we fell into a pattern of play to minimise the risk, and on the occasions when we reverted to our game we looked much better.
We still might have won but gee, some crucial and regular turnovers and simple marks being missed cost us how many goals? They made their share of mistakes, we just made more.
Finally, we were late making changes that had to happen. Mitchell had to be stopped but we let him go too long. And moving Hooker forward in the last 15 minutes was too late. We were one tall forward short all day (forward structure poor also), and it shouldnā€™t take until the game was just about gone to make that change.
So, barring a miracle, weā€™re out of it now. I think weā€™re well set up for next season. Weā€™ll have learned a lot from this year, particularly from the mistakes we made. A revamped coaches box and a better appreciation of the work required should see us challenge for top 4.

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Yesterday I resigned myself to no finals this year, but after hearing Hooker say they havenā€™t given up (&Adelaide spruiking this too), Iā€™ll give my finals hopes a reboot & hope the cards fall our way next week. Am flying down for the Richmond game so would love it if we were still in with a chance & could pull off a miracle (will also be sitting with friend who barracks for Tigers!)

It seems like we have a lot of players longing for the end of the season, too many carrying niggles and managing injuries, but considering all of those issues and a lot of our players performing below expectations, it took their absolute best to beat us.

We were clearly outcoached on game day and the Hawks were clearly more drilled in the late game scenario than we are, which could be attributable to their more experienced players as well as the coaching, are coaching team will need to be addressed post season if we want to be serious challengers next season.

This loss could be a blessing in disguise, if we use the remaining games to trial a few things for the next season. We should be playing the younger guys (Parish, McGrath, Guelfi, Langford etc) in role with more responsibility that theyā€™ll be playing for the next 8-10 years.

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Good on him. Resilience is learned behaviour. So is quitting.

So, ā€¦ Iā€™ve found out Hird Misiti Mercuri, Calthorpe, Symons, Glen Manton. all debuted in 1992 (So Far)

Fk me, ā€¦ And Ses. (Alessio), ā€¦ I believe we have a winner.

He hasnā€™t been setting the world on fire and I suspect that is why he wasnā€™t picked. An extra tall would have helped enormously though and I hope the coach at some point backs him in to come good.

Very big loss and it affected our structure terribly.

His manic pressure through the middle would have been a big help yesterday. I have noticed in other games that when we turn the ball over he is one of the first players to stop the rebound by using pressure. That was missed yesterday and underscores how much of a good find this guy is.

Fletch too? or was he 93?

Fletch, Olarenshaw 93, ā€¦ Wangas 91.

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One of the latest crowd turn ups Iā€™ve seen, did people think the game started 2:10?

Would have been 50k at most in the stadium 5 mins before the bounce.

68k is a decent crowd, thought we might have nudged over 70k though.

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As much as I hate Hawthorn you have to admire the coaching of Clarkson. We were out coached yesterday and beaten by a well-drilled side. I thought we did really well to get back in the game in the last qtr and fight it out right to the end. That shows how much we have improved - Essendon rounds 2-8 would have rolled over.

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Watched the game on TV and it was truly a strange game.

We we got beaten badly around the ball, turned the ball over stupidly, often under no pressure, got ā€œseeminglyā€ out coached, yet only lost by 4 points, kicking over 100 points ourselves.

Yet, it felt like we lost by 40 points.

Yet, we won 3 of the 4 quarters (Q1, Q3, Q4) i.e. we outplayed them for 75% of the game according to the scoreboard. And, letā€™s face it, it felt like we played crap.

How could we be so poor in so many areas yet actually win 3/4 of the game? Especially as we lost 2 players in good form before the game (although Colyer played just about the best game Iā€™ve seen him play).

Trying to work out this conundrum I get the following conclusions:

  1. We did really well early in the game when, despite, losing clearances, we won the ball in defence and passed it by foot up the line, out wide 15m-20m at a time, always forward, skirting around their midfield zone and rendering it redundant. Either doing this until we hit a target in scoring range or centering and releasing a running player (McKennaā€™s first goal). Then, inexplicably, we decide we wanted to take their zone on with cross ground passes on the defensive side of centre where we either turned the ball over under no pressure or were pressured out of it. We let them get easy goals that kept them in the game, got their confidence up and let them to continue to play their attacking game rather than go into lockdown mode to stem the bleeding.

  2. Heppell on Mitchell was a disaster in the first half and, on TV, looked a disaster half way through the first quarter. Watching some of the stoppages, Heppell made the fatal mistake of watching Mitchell rather than watching the ball. Result? Mitchell got to the ball first and had dished it off by the time Heppell reacted and got to him. Over and over, again. A change should have been made before quarter time. Instead, Worsfold, being his usual, stubborn self, waited until half time to make the change - playing the likes of Tippa and Fantasia head-to-head with Mitchell. They played the ball on its merit and had the leg speed and quick reflexes to either get to the ball first or nullify Mitchell. Result? Mitchell was a non-factor after half-time with only 13 possessions.

  3. Very poor games from our senior players bar Hooker (who still made a few blues but also did much good). Hurley and Goddard losing 1:1 contests to smaller, younger players because they refused to put their bodies on the line - Goddard only had to take a step forward in that marking contest to draw a front on free kick but hung back to try and mark it on his chest. Weak. Hurley just tried to reach for the ball with one hand, backing away at the same time and paid the price. He had to go at the ball, full chested. Weak. Heppell reprised his very worst form from early this year hitting Hawthorn players lace out or kicking the ball to his teammates disadvantage time and time again when under little/no pressure. Bellchambers looked tired like he did last week and I felt was well beaten. Zaharakis looked asleep.

  4. Too many younger players were virtually unsighted - McGrath (who has been unsighted a little too often of late), Langford, Francis, McNiece (after half time but did some good things early).

  5. Look at points 3 & 4. We got no - or actually got negative - contribution from ~ 9 players. Thatā€™s a lot of passengers. A mix of young and old.

We did as well as we did off a stellar game by Zac Merrett - who dealt with a hard tag like a top player should - and good games from the likes of Colyer, Hooker, Stringer, McKenna (thrashed Puopolo and then kicked two superb running goals himself), Fantasia, Tippa, Baguley, Stringer. The likes of Parish, Smith and Saad were ok.

In fact, speaking of Stringer, we actually looked better with him in the ruck than Bellchambers more often than not.

Naturally, Worsfold waited until late in the game to make the obvious change - Hooker deep forward. It was obvious half through Q2 but Worsfold just wonā€™t make a move mid-quarter unless itā€™s Q4 and the game is all but gone. He refuses to deal with the opposition having a tall spare down back until itā€™s too late, over and over again.

Ultimately our turnovers killed us because they happened in parts of the ground where the Hawthorn zone is the strongest - between their half-forward line and midfield. When we took that part of the ground through the middle we got killed. When we were patient with the ball and moved forward down wide until our HF line before hitting up a lead we killed them because they are weak at the back of the zone if you simply hit up leads or release a running player, like a McKenna, through our half-forward who can kick 50m goals.

Thatā€™s why the game had so many momentum shifts. They were off the back of Essendon turnovers driven by a refusal to stick to what worked. It almost felt like each time we got a 2-3 goal lead by playing a certain way we wanted to show off and take their midfield zone on to prove how good we are.

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