Norf
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While not to much about that game â â â â â â me off im â â â â â â â ropeable that games like Freo away, Footscray, Melbourne and especially â â â â carlton ruined our season.
But as per normal nothing will change and in 12 months well say the same
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How many GFâs has this spud played in?
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Another waste of a year.
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Positives:
Thatâs a game we wouldâve rolled over in after half time in the past. Kept fighting it out right until the end.
Merrett handled the Shiels tag much better than in the past. Worked through it nicely.
Hooker, terrific all day. A rock in defence and almost a game changer going forward.
Stringer constantly looked dangerous. Was good when pinch hitting ruck with his ground ball efforts and a constant threat up forward. Is just scratching the surface of what heâs capable of. Look out in 2019 & beyond.
McKenna, quelled Puopolo and got dangerous on the counter.
Negatives:
Stubborn coaching group who refuse to change. Stratton a spare man all day long, only looked jittery when we sent hooker forward when 20+ points down in the last. Tom Mitchell ran around picking up a lazy 30 touches to half time but we simply refused to put any work into him. Let him set up attack after attack. Clarko adjusted to Merrett, Worsfold just let Mitchell run free.
Our turnovers. No doubt cost the game. The amount of errors made under little to no pressure is truly baffling. We have them at least five goals through our own stupidity. Experienced players coughing it up too, Heppell, Zaharakis, Goddard & Hurley among them.
Goddard kick in over the line. Really? A 300+ game player canât judge where the line is? Understand thereâs many actions & mistakes made throughout a game but that was super costly at a critical time and totally preventable.
Our clearance work. Ranked no.1 since round 8 but we were smacked when it mattered most today. Bellchambers soundly beaten as were the majority of our midfield group. Smith, Heppell and co. tried hard but weâre outmatched and werenât assisted by our dumb coaching panel who refused to work on Mitchell. With two âleadersâ in there most of the time, why does one not take the responsibility and go to him, even to nullify him for 5-10 minutes? Myers and Heppell werenât impacting, they probably needed to sacrifice and go to him for the good of the team.
With all that said , we live to fight another day. Iâd much rather we put games into Ridley than McNeice for one. Happy to keep playing Francis despite his relatively poor performance today. Important to build some momentum in the remaining games for not only confidence this year but to give the pre season some impetus to know that weâre good enough to match it with the best of the competition if we play our way.
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It seriously gives me a good laugh that the same people who whinge that all we ever do is finish 8th and why bother, are now chucking the toys out of the cot that weâre not gunna finish 8th. Shrugs.
We played OK.
We got beaten by an OK - very well coached - but only OK - side.
Keep in mind this side beat us by 40 last time.
Hurley had a huge crash back to earth. Francis had a shocker 2nd up. 2 late changes. Pulled the wrong rein on a few matchups early and didnât fix them quickly enough.
Not good. All the more painful that we couldâve won it. We showed weâre in the frame to match with another of the top 8 sides (thatâs now all of them, bar Richmond, that weâve either beaten or been in winning positions late).
I hope this loss hurts.
Hurts enough to not ever let the side have a down month like we had earlier this year. And be up, playing at this intensity, all year. Because then weâll win finals, and maybe a flag.
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Is there a bigger bunch of self righteous supporters than hawthorn ones?
Absolute figjams.
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Yep, with you there. Theyâve fixed a lot of things this year, but this is still an issue.
The loss hurts, hate losing to Hawks and twice now.
They will need a 200 point win against the saints to get % back on track âŚlol
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If we had won it would have been great and we would start thinking about next week. But there is never any confidence that we can win any given game.
And that means we are simply not good enough. We are not a team that can put teams away, our percentage is an indication of that.
It seems as though its a raffle as to whether we play well or not.
Our coaching seems to be pedestrian.
Players havent really improved.
Teams such as Hawthorn, Geelong, and Collingwood are constantly thereabouts even after rebuilds.
We really are the great pretenders.
And we are contantly kidding ourselves that we are on the improve.
We sometimes improve in the short term from one week to the next.
But season to season we are very mediocre.
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I think weâll be the same old 10 - 12 win SH*T next season.
Same old Essendon.
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Beaten in contested footy and skill errors is where we lost the game today according to Woosh
I have loved what he has bought to the table as a forward this year. Only one of the names mentioned (forgot to add Long). But, is Bags part of our long term future? Is he going to play in our next flag side?
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So where do I start?
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Tom Mitchell, basically no thought put into negating him at all, and when we finally did, we put our best clearance player Heppell on him.
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Stratton (and it is someone each week) we continually give the opposition a free back, I mean Stratton is a â â â â truck, and we made him look like a fucken superstar.
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BJ when a player is coming back with the flight towards you, and you have the run at it, put your â â â â â â â knee thru his ribs and take the mark, cost as numerous times today.
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Foot skills killed us again, twice Heppell cost us goals, if you canât make the kick, put it long to the boundry, no one is going to mind, but the 15 meter kicks that miss by 10 meters kill us.
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Once again Zaka â â â â himself in a high pressure game.
Season has been shot since round 8, everything since is just sprinkles on a â â â â cake. No MCG wins against our big rivals is enough to make you vomit. I doubt the club has the balls to make the hard decisions necessary to be anything more than mid table plodders, they fact we are still not sure if Goddard goes around again is testament to that.
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We had Heppell on him in the first half and he did nothing to negate him. After HT we shut him down.
Finally snapped. â â â â this club. Wheres the truth thread?
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That is such an unusual thing to say.
We have found something in Langford, Guelfi, Smack and Brown. We have been in beast mode in contested possessions, our backline, apart from today, has been the biggest restricting team in the league along with help from the midfield (or second biggest maybe) and we have been one of the form sides.
Not sure how that counts as that under your viewpoint? We needed to develop that part of our game and we have. The issue is about now using that moving forward for the rest of the year and into next year without dropping off. Also increasing our skills and rebuilding our forward line (and getting a goal kicking coach).
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Yeah. If anything it means inconsistency not only across all four quarters but even within quarters is still there. Weâve closed those swings pretty well the past two months, but we were really topsy turvy today.
Honestly I donât care if Goddard plays next year or not, although I do think he still adds value. But seriously who is better than what we have out there? Sure we have all these âfantastic young kidsâ coming through. Problem is they have been coming through for the past 18 years and its no different now than it was then. Sure we had the saga in the middle. Just as well we did becasue we would have had NO excuse for what has been happening.
We like to think if we didnt have the saga we would have been fantastic and it was a great opportunity missed. But there is every chance that if we didnt have the saga we would still have been mediocre.
There is somethign seriously wrong with the club. And I have no idea what it is.
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Great to see Gunston kick five and tear us a new one like he does every single flaming time we play hawthorn.
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