Watched on TV.
Not much to say about that performance.
My notes…
- Midfield could not put pressure on the Bulldogs midfield. Not at the centre bounce and not at the stoppage. I think the effort was there to put pressure on the opposition early, but the effort was gone by halfway through the second quarter. Between Caldwell, Durham, Merrett and Setterfield, they were severely overwhelmed.
- Obviously, if the midfield isn’t putting pressure on the kick into 50, we are farked. And totally farked. We just get smashed on volume of entries. No backline can withstand that.
- Bulldogs contest work is their feature. If you can’t stop it, you’re stuffed. We couldn’t stop it. To make things worse, they were able to dominate field position, it looked like they set up their forward press and just kicked it in the forward line and won the contest on the ground there. We do not have the players to combat them when they play to their style.
- The Bulldogs forward press. Because they were getting it, it pretty much neutralised our loose man (Reid). He did what he could, but nothing was easy. A loose man in the backline is going to be susceptible to a forward press. A loose man in group 31 players loses it effectiveness as opposed to in a group of 13 (or less).
- Our forwards and high half forwards. The reason why the Bulldogs press was working was because these guys couldn’t get on their bike and offer an option whenever we had the ball on the back flank. I couldn’t tell on the TV, but they either pushed too far into the backline and didn’t provide leads on the outlet, or stayed back but were sucked into the contest leaving a loose man back. It was mentioned on the broadcast that we didn’t want to kick forward because it was all white shirts at the next contest and we had the numbers behind the ball.
- We were already beaten at quarter time. You could see it on the players faces as they went to the huddle. They didn’t know how to get themselves out of it and couldn’t stop the Bulldogs.
- Our tackling was sloppy. By all. Too many one armed tackle attempts rather than trying to putting your shoulder into the oppositions chest. I get why players end up doing that, they are out of position to begin with and trying to make up space. Still, it was frustrating.
- The Bulldogs pressure when needed was fantastic in the first half. They were able to stop the loose man, make sure we had very little connection with our handballs through the middle and we couldn’t even get our kick mark game going to slow the game down. We just could not get anything going at all.
- The second half was useless. Our effort wasn’t there and the Bulldogs were kind not to replicate the 2019 smashing on us. There just wasn’t any resistance to what was happening. We should have been able to stay within 10 goals of them, not just let them push it out to 15 goals.
As far as individuals…
No one can hold their head up. Not even Merrett. The high majority of players didn’t offer any resistance.
- I feel sorry for Day-Wicks. I’m sure he’ll be okay with time, but he’s not up to it at the moment. It’s not a failure to develop in the VFL. The only positive with him was he worked into it in the second half, but the first half was a perfect Jye Menzie disappearing role.
- I feel sorry for Kako. In that forward line tonight, he was always going to be on a hiding. He just wasn’t getting much opportunity. I think we still persevere with him, but he’ll need a break sometime soon. His effort is there more often than not.
- Laverde. It didn’t work. There were other factors, but playing him on a small Bulldogs forward didn’t work. I don’t know if it was opponent handover but he seemed to be on a mismatch more often than not.
- Archie Roberts at least kept running and trying. He got a lot wrong. But hopefully it doesn’t become a habit and he learns from it. It’s tough for him because he plays wing and drops back to help the backline with rebound.
- I would have preferred to play Saad all the game and take of Day-Wicks. It was tough to tell amongst everything else, but I think he struggled with the physicality of the game. It wasn’t exactly a free flowing running the lines game for us.
- Shiel was terrible. He’s not a sub. Either on the field or in the VFL.
Still not expecting us to win too many more games. We just don’t have as many weapons with ball in hand. We’re not consistent enough with our defensive habits and just not there yet. There’s two wins against Richmond and that’s it. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a loss in one of those. Especially if we don’t put pressure on their midfield.
If we’re lucky, there’ll probably be another win when the opposition are a tad off and we’re a tad up and we surprise them. Otherwise, we should settle in for 5 to 8 goal losses.
