Something seriously wrong with the club (Part 3, August 2022)

Football Discussion Dustin Fletcher Hangar
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The club has definitely improved from last year, but we still have a long long way to go before I have confidence in them.

We are heavily reliant on the contested ball to cover up other areas like defensive transition. Looking at the WC game, we looked to have it in the bag at half time heading for a comfortable win, then Caldwell got subbed off and suddenly our midfield dominance went away and we very nearly gave up the game. We continue to let teams back in because some players just aren’t switched on for 100% of the time. Against the Crows Draper does a Draper, Last week Hind tries to turn on the side of his boots and slips over and this week Kelly does his best impression of Stewart by not diving to make certain of the touch on the goal line.

These are all experienced AFL players. We need to make less stupid mistakes and not give away silly 50’s.

Despite all that, we are winning, so that’s a positive sign. Like the Pies 2 years ago, winning builds confidence, no matter who you are playing. I think the only difference is that the Pies kept coming back from behind and winning the close ones which increased their confidence, whereas we seem to be holding on to win more, despite dominating large parts of the game.

Things are better, but stopping transition and red time goals is still something we need to put a lot of work into.

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I still don’t think we make the finals. There’s a chance we make it, but also a chance we don’t. Even if we do make the finals, there’s a good chance we lose that game.

But it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the wins along the way. It doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy watching a player develop. It doesn’t mean I can’t watch respectfully as an old codger finishes up his career.
It also doesn’t mean I go on a journey from thread to thread with negative post after negative post after every loss.

There’s an impression that some posters think by being negative they are providing ‘balance’. Those same people are more likely to only post ‘positive’ things when we have turned a corner. For some that corner is the way we defend from week to week, how aggressive we are from week to week, how well we finish of the year, to winning a final and to others it’s winning a premiership.

It’s clear that being negative gets you further on the internet because whatever is being argued becomes a pile on. The positive stuff doesn’t have as much pull as the negative stuff. So we’re pretty much wired to be negative more often than not.
It’s also clear that some prefer to be negative because it gets the attention and having other negative people back them up makes them feel good. So be it.

Maybe I’m just built different. My favourite years were the years where expectation was pretty low. Most people love watching games from our 2000 season, but for me I got more enjoyment out of the 1998 and 1999 seasons (excluding the prelim) because it grew as the years went on. Same with 1993. How that went from a ‘development’ year to a premiership was amazing. 1989 and 1990 were also a favourite year to watch games because again we were building towards something great (even though it didn’t quite eventuate). I was too young to experience the 1982 and 1983 seasons leading up to our back to back premierships so I have no connection with those years.

I’ve pointed to the Richmond 2017 year as the model of how fans will react and ride the wave of our next premiership. It wasn’t smooth sailing. They had finals failures leading up to it. The year before they ended the season with a 100+ loss and fans wanted the board wiped out, throw everything out and start again (sound familiar?). Even in 2017 it wasn’t smooth sailing. In round 6, they got smashed by 10+ goals. Round 7 to 9 they had their Ninthmond moments by losing close games and having the ‘2 minutes of the worst football ever’ as coined by Paul Roos against GWS. The negativity around the club was pretty high at that point. And they went on to win multiple premierships from there.

There was some questioning whether ‘Essington’ was vanquished this past week. Or that a win would end ‘Essington’. History shows it won’t. We will have Essington results right up to our next premiership year (whenever that is). I fully expect it to occur. But it doesn’t mean I live in perpetual negativity and depression because ‘my team is farked’. That is sports. You are more likely to fail at sports than succeed if you are of that ‘all or nothing’ mindset. And in all honesty, sports probably isn’t for you if all you see is premiership wins and losses.

I don’t expect this post to change any habits. I fully expect as soon as we lose our next game that the usual threads will start being popular and the knives will be out for Hep, Kelly, Laverde, Jones as well as the ‘why is Martin played on the wing’ posts, as well as ‘play Tsatas, Hayes, Roberts, Caddy’, etc. You know, the usually throwing everything out of the cot because we think it’ll turn out just like every other year (even though the chances are it will occur again).

It’s the same things every fan base goes through. Melbourne had it. Even Geelong wanted to get rid of their coach and rebuild after a decade of failure. And even the Carlton and North losses recently where there are posts from Bigfooty about how their fans react, they are pretty similar to what occurs here after a loss.

I’d be interested to know what the traffic is like on this website in the 3 or 4 days after a loss is versus after a win. I’d say there’s more after a loss, but that’s maybe my bias. Sports is perfectly built for social media.

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Personally I tend to stay away after a loss, it’s just not a fun place, and people moaning about a loss and directing anger at players just makes the loss even worse.
I think we will make the 8, we are playing better than we have in previous years when we made the 8, and we should continue to improve.

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Lost to 1st and 7th
Beat 16th, 15th, 14th, 12th, 11th
Drew 9th

Enjoy winning absolutely, but the tests are still coming, GWS this week a really good one.

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6362

If we beat the Giants we’ll make the finals

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I think we’ll make the finals.

But it’s whether we fall to peices in the second half of the season, as we often do…… that’s the question.

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I think it depends on how we do vs GWS, FARK CARLTON, and GC before the bye.

After from Rd 15 we have games against WCE (Marvel), Adelaide (Marvel), St.Kilda, Gold Coast (Marvel). If we can avoid the bottom falling out of the boat (and we may not), that should be four bankable wins. Assuming we take care of NM and Richmond, that’s 11.5. 13.5 probably gets us in the eight.

If we can pinch one of the pre bye games, and one of the non listed post bye games (all in Vic except Rd 24), that’ll be finals.

I’m still not convinced we don’t have a patch of just awful football this season at some point, though. That’s where the challenge for Essendon lies. But we avoid that and I reckon we play finals.

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Getting 4 interstate trips out of the way is not insignificant and needs to be considered.

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I always look at further context here

  • 1 in round 1 were we always seem to struggle to switch on
  • 1 vs a finals side from last season
  • 1 vs a bogey side we’ve had for a while
  • 2 interstate
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We have a tough run coming up in June - July, not getting too confident yet

Wouldnt fancy us to beat the gold ■■■■■ away. FC , Collingwood and Melbourne is tough plus Geelong which will likely be a defeat

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100% we travel twice in the 2nd half of the season and one is the last round where everything COULD be wrapped up.

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I want to see how the Giants perform when confronted by a side that really focusses on closing down the space they operate in, pressing up. They run in waves and move the ball with great chains of ball movement. How do they go without time and space? To me that’s a question. They cooed well and nearly made a GF last year so it held up for them. Still, it’s something I want to see them handle. Hopefully we bring heat, pressure and tackling.

If they play Draper, Goldy, Jones and Wright that won’t help us. Team balance, not too tall for us is importabtvthis week.

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It’s 3 really, but I know what you mean. We only have two left I think.

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12.5 wins should get us in. If we can’t win 7 more games for the rest of the season we don’t deserve to make it.

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Coming off a return trip to WA might slow us down a bit though. Most Vic sides struggle the following week.

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If we do reduce the terrible results, we should make finals. Either 6th, 7th or 8th.
But we will have a month of poor football. Every club has a flat patch during their season. It can last 4 weeks to 6 weeks. In the past, we’ve been heavily invested in attacking footy which means when our flat patch arrives, our scoring dries up and we rely heavily on our defence. Under Rutten, we tried defensive first footy (with a list that had no semblance of ‘blue collar’ footy), but essentially we couldn’t play for long enough and our best efforts were when our attacking flair was prioritised (off both the backline and in the forward line). Under Worsfold, it was much the same. There was a patch of 8 games in one year (it included a win over the Crows in SA) where there was more of a defensive element to our game style, but after the next pre-season it was pretty much gone.
I think we have been very different in that aspect last year and this year. I point to the Brisbane loss last year as a sign that our backline can keep us in games. We were totally outmatched that game and were close for a half until they ran away with it. The Port game at the MCG last year is another one. Our backline was tight and held us in as we ground our way back into the game after the first quarter onslaught. But there are some times when the backline just can’t withstand the opponents forward pressure and midfield dominance. Geelong, Bulldogs, GWS and Collingwood games are a perfect example of that. But that also occurred when our depth was played and our key back (Ridley) was out. We’ve remedied our list somewhat. We’ve had one terrible result already this year against Port. I think we’ll have another one or two. The big difference between this year and last year is that the midfield dominance gap has been closed in which has helped us more often than not. I’m not convinced we can carry that against Geelong or Melbourne. We are a better chance of doing it against GWS in our comfort zone in Melbourne than in NSW. Teams that are well drilled that have a small injury list throughout the season are more likely to overrun us later in the season when things settle a bit than now when ladder positioning is still being sorted out.

I think we’re playing some fantastic footy. It’s not flashy but there is a defensive backbone to it. And it’ll grow over the next few years as it becomes more of a repititive habit than a one of period of play. But along the way there will be setbacks where the Essington will flourish. In the past Essington shows up and we’re screwed for a month to try and work our way out of it. I think we’re different now. But it doesn’t mean it’s gone and it doesn’t mean that we won’t need a month to work our way through it. It’s part of our development. Of both the older players and the newer players.

The last thing we need is to get ahead of ourselves and make drastic changes. Like what could have occurred with Richmond in 2017. Hopefully our CEO and board have enough courage to ignore the noise and get on with it when it occurs. Otherwise, we’ll just be going through another cycle of coaches, CEOs and board members trying to restart everything again.

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I appreciate the effort of your post and understand where you’re coming from.

This place is a mess after a bad loss, which is why I assume the negative/cautious posts after a win can get tiring for those that just want to enjoy the win with other supporters. I get it.

When we are losing, I find I am usually disagreeing with a lot of the raging going on in the review and ESPECIALLY player threads. I’m usually looking at how quickly things have changed for previously successful clubs and focusing on the young players who are showing something. This combined with my downplaying of some of our wins could be construed as contrarianism but I insist that it’s not. My peaks and troughs as a fan are simply a lot flatter than others, probably influenced by the flat trajectory of the club since I have been supporting them.

I suppose I am simply frustrated by providing what I believe wholeheartedly is a balanced/alternative view of how the team is tracking, and it tends to get lumped in with all the true gloomers who think this club can’t achieve anything, yadda yadda. It’s more enjoyable to me to keep expectations in check and appreciate the gradual growth in the team than ride the wave of wins and losses. Trying to identify whether we are making that next step is what fascinates me when it comes to dissecting matches.

Hopefully most can agree there is room for both those riding the wave and those who are only observing it.

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Our key senior players and young rising stars are signing on. We’re playing better football than previous seasons. We’re showing more heart, resilience, grunt and camaraderie. We’re not gifting games to players as much. We’ve got our first coach in a while that not only has some semblance of an executable plan but is a good ambassador for the Club whenever he speaks in the media. Our President and CEO aren’t self-servingly bombarding us with patronising communications.

I think we’re in the best shape we could reasonably expect to be in right now. Could we do things better? Of course. Always. But if the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, then we’re far from the box of frogs we’ve been since we mistakenly self-reported on Feb 5, 2013.

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Really going out on a limb there Blummers…

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Time will tell

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