Good post.
I’ve seen Essendon play worse football than yesterday (even as recent as last year Carlton, Bulldogs), but I have never seen a more thoroughly inept and contagious event of mishandling the footy before. It was truly remarkable in a morbid\train wreck kind of way.
yes. Their numbers were woeful too, 2nd worst for the round.
Where are you getting these numbers? Weren’t Adelaide the worst?
What I can’t understand is - why the hell did they have to change the game plan? They won 10 of the last 14 games last season, and have topped up the list with what I thought were pretty good trades. It’s a repeat of the start of last season all over again (except they won the first round last year). It’s just like Sisyphus repeating the same pattern every year.
Deleted the Turk resigns article, posted a while ago:
Do they train when it’s wet outside or keep them indoors?
Based on inability to handle the conditions at all with a greasy ball have to suggest the latter.
Was this early in the game? May explain Merretts game… And did we get a free kick for it?
Who are all these randoms who crop up now after round 1?
Sick of people saying GWS were not that good. I thought they were very good in the first quarter. Their pressure and tackling was first class. They wanted our blood and pressured us into some errors. I thought we did OK in that first 20 minutes or so, but it was after that time that we completely dropped our bundle, and they barely needed to try. But for the period of time the game was a contest (20 mins) they were great.
Also sick of this Merrett isn’t fit stuff. I didn’t see any signs he wasn’t fit. I saw a bunch of signs that he too dropped his bundle after copping the hard tag from de Boer.
Lastly, people making excuses for Brown and McKernan aren’t being realistic. It’s the most Essington thing ever for us to take these two AFL rejects and make them into career Essendon players. Of course they show signs from time to time and have the odd good game, but seriously, a forward line of Brown and Smack would struggle in A grade ammos let alone the AFL.
If I was making the changes it would be:
Out: McKernan, Brown, Myers, Zaharakis
In: Draper (Bell to FF), Zerk, Gleeson (if ready), Parish
I can’t believe I have just got through this thread.
Very numb after yesterday.
I am one of those type of supporters who thought it might be worth a wager on an undefeated season this year, although JLT cooled my jets on that.
The timing of the Turk departure is interesting.
I wonder if we went in overcooked before the start of the season and had that magnified by and unhappy overcooked group, and humid conditions who couldn’t nail a pass. There was definitely something wrong with the whole group, and overloading the players before the match could be one reason.
Grasping at straws I know, but I imagine there will be a very light load this week trying to get us up for the Saints.
Hopefully we find our mojo on Saturday.
But I won’t believe we could be back on track after only a win or two. Unless we make a strong recovery and are in the 8 and beat Carlton going into the round 12 bye, I won’t start daring to dream again.
In fact most of you are probably wondering how I could talk about daring to dream.
I do believe in our list, not sure about some of the coaches - but they seemed to get their act together last year, so I’m not totally writing them off.
Growing up in the 70’s taught me some resilience to some serious losses. You never knew when we would produce a barnstorming burst of run on play that could turn around a match, or at least threaten to.
I learned to live in hope, but I hate to watch the boys playing without spirit.
Agree. GWS were really good. Merrett looked slow so i don’t know what’s happening with him. McKernan seems bullet proof on this forum. I don’t understand why. He had 5 disposals at 20% and zero impact but if you criticize him somebody always jumps down your throat.
BJ on AFL Tonight - questioning Essendon’s preparation mentally.
Said fans (as much as they hate it) can accept fumbles and misses. But said the apparent lack of effort is the concern.
And I could almost accept that if it was a one off. But we did the same thing in JLT. So it’s been a solid month
Reckon you and me must have watched a different game to everybody else.
All part of the same thing. The odd fumble, maybe. Misses from 15 m out - I’ve had a gutfull off. Blazing away into the fwd line with no idea who we plan to target, other than Walla/Davies, on guys twice their size.
I reckon if we’d kicked 2 goals of those 4 first quarter points the game would have been completely different. Come out firing, play well for 15 minutes, kick 3-6 points - TM Essendon. Not to say we would have won, but we would have remained competitive - instead we just drop our bundle like children when it doesn’t get handed to us.
Unfortunately the whole game was so predictable. We’ve seen it happen so many times, for so many years. I saw it first hand in theJLT against Geelong and hoped and prayed it was just a preseason thing. Surely we can’t go back to square one after the effort and work we managed in the second half of last season! And here we are.
Such a talented list, yet the mentally weakest team (club?) in the league.
As unlikely as it seems, I’ll be more ■■■■■■ off if we come out next week and suddenly smash St Kilda.
Shows a complete lack of respect for the jumper to turn it around so quickly.
they were scrappy, nowhere near good enough to win by 80
Yet kick straight in front of goal and they could have won by 100+
The “hasn’t posted for a while” feature was pretty hard-worked in the Game Day Thread.