We have a few double negatives, Jones-Moloney, Rivers-MacDonald, Bate-Dunn, players that perform similar roles that probably shouldn't be in the same team together. Days where all six of these guys play in the one team will not be happy ones.

  On 06/03/2011 at 00:28, Barry Dawson said:

Morton didn't play... which makes it hard to impact the game. Jackass.

This site is going to the dogs.

  On 06/03/2011 at 01:03, Sylvia Saint said:

Thanks to everyone for the reports.

One question - how did Scully go with his kicking? While unlike some I've never considered him a poor kick... it was one part of his game where I felt he could improve over summer.

Disappointing to lose to the rabble that call themselves the Lions but we had 7 of our very best players resting up and you just can't replace that kind of talent. From what I can gather only Jamar, Sylvia and Scully were out there of our genuine top echelon of talent. Thus the result should be taken with a grain of salt. Still would much have preferred a big win!!!

You can, i f your a Fully mature bigbodied team like Geelong were 4years ago. They'd struggle, but they'd get by.

Ours, is a team of boys,,, trying to become men....

We can't cover that loss,,, YET...

  On 06/03/2011 at 04:30, dee-luded said:

You can, i f your a Fully mature bigbodied team like Geelong were 4years ago. They'd struggle, but they'd get by.

Ours, is a team of boys,,, trying to become men....

We can't cover that loss,,, YET...

If you had taken Scarlett, Ablett, Bartel, Corey, Selwood, Varcoe and Ottens (let's say that's their best 7) out of their side, they would have struggled big time.

Not saying the players we were missing are in that league, but given we're aiming to be a 7th-8th best side this year, you take out 7 top quality players and we're not going to beat many teams. Brisbane included.

  On 06/03/2011 at 05:13, Sylvia Saint said:

If you had taken Scarlett, Ablett, Bartel, Corey, Selwood, Varcoe and Ottens (let's say that's their best 7) out of their side, they would have struggled big time.

Not saying the players we were missing are in that league, but given we're aiming to be a 7th-8th best side this year, you take out 7 top quality players and we're not going to beat many teams. Brisbane included.

Absolutely.

We basically missed our spine. No Fullback, CHB, Full Forward, our captain, vice captain and our most creative player, our 21y.o vice captain QB and our best young midfielder this preseason and IMO on our list. Throw in Jordie Mckenzie, Morton and prob a few i missed.

We are a mid range team and we need all hands on deck to be competitive. Disappointed about a few players who i want to see more from but not the result.

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/maxwell-bleeding-from-kidneys-20110306-1bjbe.html

this is why we havent been going 10000 million miles an hour.

  On 06/03/2011 at 06:59, Benno said:

http://www.theage.co...0306-1bjbe.html

this is why we havent been going 10000 million miles an hour.

Amen.

F*&k practice games. Bring me a healthy team for Round 1. It's bad enough our best defender (arguably best player) injured himself at training, as has Morton.

Losing these games hurts a hell of a lot less than losing your best players to injuries before the season has even started, and will hurt us a lot less in the long term.

I too went to the game, and not only was I disappointed with individual players, but I was more annoyed with what seemedto be a lack of a game plan or at least the players were not sticking to it.

Last year we played well when we played on and moved the ball fast. Yesterday we were slow, had poor skills and put up little or no pressure.

In terms of players:

POSITIVES:

Jetta - Tried hard, laid great tackles, got clearances and clearly BOG.

Maric - Kicked 3 goals but he probably only had 5 touches. Not sure how positive that is, needs more of the ball.

McDonald - Took some good grabs and showed a lot of fight for a young bloke.

Tapscott - Showed a fair bit. Big, long kick and reads the ball well, just needs to get his fitness up, which will take a while.

Gysberts - simply seeing him out there was a highlight. Watched him closely in the warm up and his skills look really good.

Scully - Hardly got a touch early, but got into it in the latter stages of the game. Was getting tagged by Raines (a complete Spud) and it was a good lesson for him to learn.

Biggest positive is all the players not playing will imrpove the team, but that cant be the excuse for some of the play displayed.

NEGATIVES:

Our slow movement of the ball, from kick ins and normally field play.

Our lack of passing to a leading target, anywhere on the field.

Our lack of aggression at the opposition, we were smashed by the lions in endeavour.

Our reliance on long bombs forward and not hitting targets.

Our lack of a forward line. I am not meaning who plays there, just the fact that there was often nobody there or only one player.

Martin - Should never get a game. I am not sure what people are watching if they think he has any chance of playing. Howe showed more as another tall forward in the first 10 minutes he was on than Martin has shown in 3 years.

Strauss - Does he ever get a possession other than kick ins.

Bennell - I like him, but he needs to get more of the ball.

Skils in the backline - there was not much shown yesterday, too many errors or poor decisions.

I am hoping that it is the fact we had many players out that caused us to look like we were back in 2008. If it was not the reason, well we have a long way to go.

I am ready to wait, as I know we are a young team, but I want to see the structure coming through and the improvement, no matter who is on the field, and I did not see that yesterday.

  On 06/03/2011 at 02:33, big_red_fire_engine said:

Lets be clear that no-one can question Jones hardness. However he does not win clean clearances. He is defensively poor at clearances which means the opposition get a lot of cleat takeaways. He won majority of his disposals playing as a link man. He used most of those disposals by kicking it to the opposition, kicking a 50/50 ball or looping a handball and putting someone under pressure.

I do not need to understand his role to understand that if him and Moloney are in the same starting 21 by years end I seriously doubt we will be playing finals.

You DO need to understand his role. We struggle to win clearances because we get out bodied with the likes of Scully, Trengove, McKenie, Davey all having slight frames. So i would bet my balls that Bailey's role for Jones and Moloney is for them to be the attacking ones trying to use their size and strength to win hard contested ball and dish it out by hand or foot. There is two other on ballers who can play a defensive role. Then it comes down to the ability of the ruckman to win the tap and the onballers to shark it.

You cannot possibly blame opposition clearances solely on Jones. Ludicrous.

You are also grossly exaggerating his turnovers. He missed the target a few times but he actually did win about half his touches in contested situations where quick (and sometimes messy) disposal is all that can be achieved. The looping handball i know you are referring too was actually the fault of that big dud Spencer. Spencer took the ball and whilst his intentions to give it off were good, his poor handball put Jones under the pump and short of giving the ball back to Spencer his only other option was to loop the ball over the top of the head of the bloke about to tackle him. Not his fault at all.

This harked back to my earlier post that it was the poor skill execution of the lesser players that often sold our better players into trouble.

Once again i will say that if you think our clearances are bad at the moment, without Jones and Moloney in the team, we would get murdered and might as well play 8 men in the backline.

In the future he may not be in our best 22, but i can tell you right now he is a required player.

I like your points re JOnes and Moloney, and agree. Until we get some other bigger bodied players, they must play.

However, in regards to Spancer's handball to Jones, you could also say that Jones should never have asked for the ball, seeing that he was running forward and could see what was oncoming. It was probably both their faults in that case.

Either way, I like Jones in the team but he still needs to be more careful with his disposal when he is clear, I can forgive him for some errors when getting clearances, but work on the skills in the open.

Speaking of clearances, why do we never get any clean clearances? We need to get more clearances when we get a handball out to someone in the open for a good disposal, rather than a rushed kick forward to a situation where we are 1 on 2 or in a huge pack.

  On 06/03/2011 at 05:13, Sylvia Saint said:

If you had taken Scarlett, Ablett, Bartel, Corey, Selwood, Varcoe and Ottens (let's say that's their best 7) out of their side, they would have struggled big time.

Not saying the players we were missing are in that league, but given we're aiming to be a 7th-8th best side this year, you take out 7 top quality players and we're not going to beat many teams. Brisbane included.

Exactly, what I said. Take 3 of our best players out & we'll struggle with such a lack of experience. Only natural.

What we have to do is give these boys a wide variety of games & experiences this & next year. The Key 10 or 12 need to be plumped full of games, then the next rung need an even spread of games to keep them on a level playing field so any real talent can be spotted.

Yesterday was a chance to rest some players limit game time of certain players, allow some young blood some experience and some fringe players stake there claim for round one. I got what I expected and I'm rapt for Jetta, most have sterotyped him as a small forward, but he wasn't drafted for a small forward he is a midfielder. I think with McKenzie out we will see an opportunity for Jetta in the midfield and in the three games of preseason he is a certain starter for round 1. Whilst most around him couldn't hit a target his kicking yesterday was great, his tackles are hard and stick.

Next week will field our best available 26 and it will be a very tuff game in Tassie.