I’d bet my last dollar it will happen in the real games too. Can’t recall which game it was last year where we kept passing when within range. One of the times it was Phillips trying to lace out a target. Yep that’s right a ruckman trying to thread the eye of a needle.
outside of 2-3 players, we do not have any smart footballers on our list.
I’m hoping that this can explain how insipid we were yesterday - we are building into it as we know it’s not the real stuff yet.
If someone somehow measures it and said we gave it our all yesterday then I’d be extremely worried.
Saints looked very switched on and wound up. They outnumbered us at the contest, applied very good pressure and were very clean.
i thought i did.
a few of them even ignored the coaches when instructed to run it in or work harder.
Despite all this depressing negativity i am not reaching any conclusions on a small sample yesterday
I wasn’t at the ground but watching the replay i thought defensively he was terrible.
Is it too early to claim we are tanking?
I agree Nino. It was not a good performance by us. Why bother taking part in these games if you’re no.1 mantra is “don’t get injured”? Anyway that’s what it looked like to me. Those players would not have learned a thing from that game. Tripe.
Did Archie Roberts go ok?
He rolled his ankle. I watched it happen in front of me. He winced, and hobbled for a little bit, but ran it off. Apparently Reid rolled an ankle as well. But the coaches said both were minor, and they had planned to take both players off at half time anyway.
A poster further up in the thread commented that after half time, that group of players continued to do their running training in a local park outside the stadium
Feels like deja vu. Either our players are too dumb to understand a game plan, which means we have recruited the wrong people (other clubs seem to be able to stick to a game plan) or our players simply don’t want to work, be accountable and learn it.
Option 2 for me cause we have had so many coaches that just couldn’t implement their plan, one common denominator, the players
So it’s looks like we still stink! How anticlimactic
We were clearly underdone compared to the Saints. Now why that is the case is the question but imo i think we have tried to get through pre season in as healthy a state as possible but that has left us underdone.
The Saints may very well be better than us this year but not to the extent it was yesterday.
Not ideal but far from the doom and gloom of this thread.
This
And worked harder
We wernt underdone players turned up with a farking ■■■■ attidude that’s what happened
Martin as quarterback = yes
Martin as defender = oh dear
It doesn’t do him any favours when the ball is being moved forward under no pressure.
We have a defensive set up where we’ll look good if we can pressure opposition kicks toward 50. It even happened a few times yesterday: there was a play where Hind bust his arse chasing, pressured a kick, and McKay (as is his strength) was able to lose his man and intercept. Rushed kicks will allow Ridley to do the the same, Reid to spoil etc.
So she was your saving Grace for the day.
Tbh I’m pretty rapt to come away with no injuries.
I only caught a couple of quarters but team cohesion and structures looked to be a hot mess, which can happen when you’re a bottom 6-8 side missing a lot of players, or have blokes playing in new positions.
Definitely some red flags but I’m not freaking out just yet - hopefully we see a stronger, more organised team against Geelong.
Wait…… didn’t we have an extra 2 weeks of preseason training compared to St.Kilda?