VFL Practice Match Colac 11th March 2018

The problem is langers showed some class playing the mifield during '16 when teams treated us like a joke and rested their players and didn’t try to expose our weaknesses heavily as it wasn’t required.

Playing as a mid against full strength teams in game mode is another matter. I’d argue he has shown more as a fwd in those situations and has spent more game time there.

Problem is we’re now blessed with an overabundance of fwds and fwd/mids and this’ll be the toughest position to crack a spot in the best 22 this year…

Club have abandoned the VFL?

No tweets today, very little publicity about the game after the seniors game.

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14 hours after I left home… a little report on a very satisfying VFL performance. The wind was strong all day to the northern end of the grounds, but it wasn’t till the third quarter of the AFL game that the attacking team used it well. Our seniors also adapted to the conditions to win their game in the last, and then the reserves pretty much won all four quarters despite the challenges it posed half the time.

The game was pretty clearly won by our midfield, which included a broad rotation of smalls and 3 rucks. The last quarter was an excellent showing for our defenders. My bests were Langford, Hind (maybe more for quality than quantity), Smack/Draper/Strachan never letting up the pressure, Clarke, Hartley, and encouragement award for Mynott.

1 HepA — played down back. I can’t say I noticed him much till the last quarter

3 Nick Dixon — um, he was there? Like most of the newbies, I doubtless failed to recognise him a few times and hence he gets no credit/takes no blame

4 The Langford — 100% midfield time bar one rest down forward early? Watching stoppages he absolutely plays a defensive role with body contact, but he still got a stack of clearances. Not that he was alone, Draper made it very easy for midfielders a lot of times.

6 Matthew “Big Red” Darby — played defense. Not great.

10 Hocking — very good forward early. Also spent time in the midfield, but faded from view.

11 Hind — very important player for a team without many speedsters. His ability to cleanly take the ball at pace and voom be gone is very damaging.

12 Bags — didn’t notice him much till the last quarter, when he and many of his fellow defenders murdered their opponents despite the huge wind bringing what should have been dangerous attacks.

14 Ridley — didn’t notice much

19 Lazzaro — didn’t notice till late. But he has a distinct look so I’m sure that won’t be a problem in future!

20 Merrett — forward pocket. Usual refrain of what he did was good but he didn’t do enough of it.

22 Strachan — the kid is good. So much stronger than he looks (and he doesn’t look to have got much bigger over the summer).

24 Houlahan — mostly deep forward, meh.

26 Edin Sibbald — potential here. We have a stack of legit mobile big men who can clunk… and we also have Leuenberger.

27 Redman — half-back, didn’t really notice till the last.

29 Joe Harrison — didn’t play, I think. We had 7 on the bench in the last quarter.

30 Younan — kicked an amazing goal in the third, the type where you say “HTF did he do that?”. Surrounded by opponents forty out, he did about four fakes on a postage stamp to earn the smallest of gaps and get the kick off. I’m generally under-impressed by him, but this was all class and he is in the leadership group.

33 Wil “The Traveller” Berry — yeah, played?

34 Jake “the hero” Long — forward early, wing the rest. Not remarkable, but hey, winning one game for the day is normally enough.

35 Guelfi — didn’t notice much, but the stuff he does is generally very composed

36 Hartley — lesser opposition, sure. But this is what you want. He got ten fists in to kill marks, and as the game went on he just decided to start marking it himself. Proactive, not reactive.

37 Clarke — not sure I saw him have more than one kick (it was OK, with the wind) but was really good inside. His handballs out of packs were influential.

38 Draper — you know I rate him. A lot of lovely taps to advantage, some brutal tackles and second efforts, and a few bonus clunks.

39 Mynott — reasonably impressed with him during his stints on ball. Went in hard and got it out.

40 Ottavi — did both forward and back

44 McKernan — can’t knock his pre-season form. Was in beast mode.

49 Dea — a few dumb moments, but mostly very composed

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Again, also credit to the Geelong Football Club for distributing flyers listing both teams…

I could now tell you the player weights and heights as well as the jumper numbers, but I don’t want to step on the essendonfc.com.au exclusive…

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Very lid on player assessments for a team that won by 10 goals!

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Cheers DJR.

Was the classic “team effort”. Plus my position at ground level next to the bench in the first half was awful for identifying players, many new.

Key VFL-listed players not playing today were Ferry, Boyse, and maybe Peters (if Merrett and Younan don’t hold onto the forward pockets).

Club website has gone backwards. Now they outsource a lot of material from the AFL.

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Love your work mate, cheers!

It’s very very very poor. Does the club click on the EFC website to check that it’s actually ok, up to date, links are working and doing what it’s meant to be doing? I emailed the website address [email protected] to inform them of the bits that are out of date and not working. Never heard back from them. Over two weeks ago.

The VFL fixture link still shows the 2017 fixture. Another look to the fixture gives you the AFL OUT OF BOUNDS page.

And we still have the player profiles with silhouettes for most of the new recruits. Saad got his photo up but no one else. To say it’s Telstra’s fault is not good enough and passing the buck. Two weeks out from the season starting and we have this!! Someone at the club who is responsible for this needs to get it fixed. And it would be good for the club to tell Telstra if they cannot do it, then then give us admin access to do it.

@Catherine_Lio - not that it’s your responsibility, but just that you are someone who one can contact directly.

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Might be on there by mid year.

I agree…it’s time to take responsibility…I’m sick of seeing an incomplete player list.

Not sure if its related but there have been some changes in the club staff around the digital media area.
I believe several long term staff have left and at the same time there has been a step change in the quality of the site…

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I’ve missed you.

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Thanks to DJR for staying around to give us great coverage of the match. Probably avoided the traffic delays at the chicanes on the road back !

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I would hazard a guess that the webmaster url goes to a black hole in Telstra.

Contact the club via twitter if you can. I’ll also ask the question. Find Marc Bertieri. He’s your man.

I sent this tweet this morning.

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Ha!

I shouldn’t laugh. Not good enough.

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I’ll take the laugh :slight_smile:

Can I suggest this is something to raise at the board meeting (the Telstra / website issue, not my tweet …) as to whether the club is getting the necessary service.

and thanks for responding Katie, and following up.

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