Eventually? outworked.
Dogs were closer than the scoreboard showed but kicked a lot of points. Then lost their nerve.
As much as people criticise Worsfold for not making moves, which is sometimes justified, I have seen quite a few games this year where one team loses their shape/plan to chase quick scores, the other team doesn’t, and it loses them the game.
EDIT:Which is to say, they put a few weeks work into the plan/matchups for a particular match, and often that results in a better plan than one made on the fly.
Dogs eternal weakness: lack of good talls…hence the overspend on Boyd…and in Q2 they couldn’t find a marking tall in a congested forward 50…and throughout the game, the first year defender in Lewis Young finally got exposed.
He’s allowed to protect his space but he clearly kicked out dangerously. It shouldn’t matter if it’s a marking contest or not he knew the player was there it’s going to get him suspended
As said - to preserve speccies. You can’t put a finger on someone’s back though, if they are a forward and you are defending. If you are a forward however, you can pick a defender up and spin them around before taking a mark. Makes perfect sense to me.
That wouldn’t have been a speccie though. He jumped straight up from the ground and put his foot out. He was protecting space and himself. Why is he allowed to do that to take a mark but not to grab a loose ball?