Mostly agree with this. The main issue for the defence for three quarters was delivery in, plus one or two players. Hawkins is going to take players apart when the ball is coming in strong, and Hurley is still rusty. I’d have liked to have seen Ambrose on him, but I don’t see that as a long term issue. Kelly and Bags also stuffed up quite a bit. Kelly I suspect that was just an off-day (he was fine JLT1/late last year), but Bags is more of a worry. He wasn’t at his pre-2016 standard last year, and appears to have taken another step back. Hopefully it is just a slow start, but he was appalling on Sunday. But other than that, given how clean the ball in was, the defence didn’t do too badly.
The midfield is where we have real concerns. We weren’t missing anyone on Sunday other than Leuy (which will be a problem for a while) and got beaten. We did alright in H1, but I think they still had more I50’s. In H2 we got trounced.
But the real issue isn’t how many we lose. Its when we lose the clearances the other team is often so clean about it. All three JLT matches had periods where we not only got dominated in the clearances, but they were clean takeaways. We have to figure out how to stop this. And an extra man in defence isn’t the solution.
It is really hard to fathom how much people will read into pre-season results and the minutiae within these half baked match practice. We all know, if we were to win against Hawks R1 - NOBODY will give a flying one about this modified practice rubbish. This current pre-season ‘competition’ can hardly be compared to previous iterations which clearly held more meaning - and hence drawing on previous form correlations to in-season performance is, IMO not to be taken too seriously.
There is clearly a post-saga cynicism\anxiety that has pervaded the psyche of many supporters and one can only hope that toxic undercurrent doesn’t extend to the football department and playing group - only have to look into the Andrew McGrath thread which beggars belief in the pessimistic critiquing of such a promising young EFC footballer.
I thought the Geelong match was the perfect hit-out (Leuenberger aside), heaps of positive signs with the ball movement and a cutting edge to our forward setup - this is going to be an enjoyable season - that much is clear.
One final thing, there is every chance that Geelong will be a damn good team this year - and let’s just remember how far we are coming back from as a football club. I don’t know how wild the expectations on here are for some - but falling 22 points of Geelong IMO would not be a catastrophe in the season proper anyway.
In the desperate hurry we are to move on from the past few years with our reunited soldiers and champions - let’s not let our anticipation turn into a crash of the panic-dollar stock-market before the season even begins.
I must of been watching a different game to other people. In the first half when we were doing well with our defensive pressure, Hawkins didn’t get a touch and the commentators were yammering on about what he had to do to get himself into the game.
2nd half comes along, all semblance of pressure disappears from our midfield and lo and behold the ball is being being pumped into the Geelong forward line and suddenly Hawkins and Co are smashing us. Not exactly rocket science.
Our midfield fell away so badly in the 3rd quarter that I wandered if Woosha had made changes to personnel to see if certain tactics worked or how certain players would perform in given positions.
It seems to me that the returning players still have a way to go in terms of fitness and touch. Woosha looked VERY unconcerned at the after game presser. I just wonder if the club concedes that there will be some pain in the early rounds with scope for improvement and the season progresses.
The big positive for me during the JLT series is the form of the young players that stood up last season. They seem to be continuing their form.
Like I think @westozziebomber said, fitness and running out games has nothing to do with conceeding 5+ goals in the first 10 minutes and 3 in the first 5. The players have clearly come out napping.
Oh and that girl umpire…please never umpire again. Some clear drops and holding the balls, for both sides, were missed.
On the AFL website, they have posted every players’ fantasy ratings over the JLT series. Below are the names who improved from game to game in that series:
Hopefully this translates to an upward trend towards the season proper, but it’s good to see that (according to these rankings), our guys are getting better week by week - or at least a good core of the best 22.
The others either went up or down or went down. Dea is obviously one who can’t improve on just playing 1 game, same with Connor, Bird, Jerrett, Long and Redman (all fringe players), Leuy’s injury hampered his ratings and same goes for Myers.
Yep, I agree. Both the length of the games and the bench size went down across the series, so every player would be expected to improve (on average). Without adjusting for TOG and length of match, the numbers don’t mean as much.
Haven’t bothered to look at everyone’s, but looking Jobe’s figures normalised to 100% TOG, he’s seen an increase from game to game all be it marginal from the 2nd to 3rd games. Averaging 33disp per game (100% TOG) ain’t a ■■■■ start to the season…