IMO Speed of ball delivery was really evident against hawks where low spearing or passing kicks went bteween hawks while we sent high floating balls wether short or long. Our kicks went to contests many times dees outnumbered whilke many hawks went to uncontested players with space and room for somene to run past or onto next kick.

Perhaps confidence for winning can come from Scorpion duty?

I too hope coaches are aware of whats happening with their structures and the opposition structures.

It does seem a little like a return to Balme days when there was no change to structure until tooo late and then reactive defensively rather than pro active moves

An excellent post "CARN THE". Your concern with the confidence of the players is something that I too worry about and I hope and pray that the coaching staff are equally aware of it cancerous nature. It's often said that the best form of defence is attack and whilst I know that this is a rather simplistic concept in the case of our midfield it appears to have some validity.

You're right in my observation.

Not sure why a refocus on defense has to equal a complete absence of attacking flair.

Confidence is shot - it looks to me like no-one ( with the obvious exception of Mitch Clark) wants to put themselves in the frame when we pass centre.

I can't understand why they won't / can't take it on. At the moment, our goals are coming more by accident than design.

Really hard to stomach.

We ran all over them with our light frames in the last quarter and they just moved aside .WTF is Dave Misson doing? We need weights and food and repeat .

I'm with ya Biff. But I'm willing to give him one more pre-season. I reckon many of the boys have come off such a low base. And some may not wanna go or just aren't capable of going where Neeld/Misson are asking from them on the strength/power side. Pure speculation but i'm sure there'll be some fall out at the end of season. This is a huge sorting year for Neeld and Co. before moving on with a core group of real goers from next season on, with trades/purchases to fill the gaping holes thereafter.

I'm sticking with my view that we'll start being very competitive with ladder positions 6 and below (ie., beating them about 50% of the time or more depending on ladder position) from about half way through next season.

However, this view is subject to the Misson factor kicking in from early next season, a solid trade/draft outcome as well as a massive improvement in skill/disposal/intelligence (read footy smarts) levels across the board from the 'AFL's worst practice' that we're witnessing from too many atm. On the latter (skill levels etc), i'll have to see it before i'll believe it as it's just so poor atm.