Fair show of faith in young Sparrow.  He seems like the type to take the expectations in his stride and not be intimidated.

Good luck to him.

GO DEMONS!!!

Been good so far. Done his bit. Good attack on the ball. 

Sparrow looks good. Could retain his place.  A few others experienced players are struggling.  

A decent debut overshadow by the crappy team.

Had a dip, used it better than I expected and worked hard.

Goes for the ball and then actively looks where to use it. Against teams with more pressure than Port he might get caught a bit but he has the right approach.

Might seem strange, but i'd give him Spargo's spot for the forseeable future. Goes in hard, puts his head over it, doesn't take his eye off it and provided more pressure today than Spargo could ever dream of applying.

He would definitely be out of position playing there, but god we need some physicality in the forward line. Charlie is only effective when he is given it on a silver platter. Sparrow has just as much pace as Spargo, but seems way more explosive too.

Spargo back to the Magoos until he learns that he is in the side to play a crumber's role, and becomes sufficient at it.

Not a bad debut from an 18 year old, showed no fear and certainly looked like he belonged at AFL level. He could be a great find for the club. A small bright spot in a lousy day!

Solid debut, was still having a massive crack well into the last quarter. The two times we looked like scoring in the last was when the ball was in his hands. Shame his kick didn’t carry another metre for a goal after the Jones dropped mark. 

  On 22/03/2019 at 09:50, Biffen said:

Lewis is as good as his last game.

Which was worse than terrible.

 

Which is Harsh as he had a lot of mates and his first 2 finals were very good!

Agree Sparrow for Spargo 

NO BRAINER!

Edited March 23, 20196 yr by picket fence

  On 23/03/2019 at 07:32, Demon Disciple said:

Might seem strange, but i'd give him Spargo's spot for the forseeable future. Goes in hard, puts his head over it, doesn't take his eye off it and provided more pressure today than Spargo could ever dream of applying.

He would definitely be out of position playing there, but god we need some physicality in the forward line. Charlie is only effective when he is given it on a silver platter. Sparrow has just as much pace as Spargo, but seems way more explosive too.

Spargo back to the Magoos until he learns that he is in the side to play a crumber's role, and becomes sufficient at it.

Spargo has some limitations but along with Melk he's probably our best forward at creating space by getting to the right spots. Went for a bit too much with some kicks and had a bad dropped mark, plus the obvious size issues but there's still only a small number of players in our team who go to the right spots. Be silly to drop him.

We have to see if Chandler, Lockhart or Bedford do anything at Casey - my guess is the first 2 do a fair bit - but in the mean time we aren't dropping any of the smalls. If we are then it would be one of Wagner or ANB. They are the guys who don't have any much physicality or footy smarts. Wagner wasn't bad today, but he's very limited unless he starts to take the ball cleanly and read the play better.

Midfield pressure and defenders incapable of winning easy contests were probably more of an issue than the forward pressure.

It's very hard to generate forward pressure when there's free running midfielders and half forwards open for easy passes. Plus we weren't even getting it deep forward to begin with.

Sorry DS but whilst there were many who played poorly today, we are crying out for a small forward who can apply pressure when the ball hits the deck.

This is the role Spargo is in the team to play, yet he continually refuses to do it.

Tubby needs to get his ar$e into gear pretty quickly too, otherwise i'll be barking for him to be sent back to the magoos until he learns how to play his role. All the talent in the world..................not much point if you don't get it enough and then don't do enough with it when you do.

Was at the game and have to completely disagree re Spargo. 

Im sure he tried and from time to time did a few things .But..

Their half backs killed us. Young kid was very good for them. Far too big , far too strong and very good runners. ( l thought this line for us  was massively undersize and immature at times with Spargo, ANB, Sparrow operating together)

In fairness to them however it occurs to me that with the 6x6x6 you simply cannot long bomb at any time into the forward line , made even worse with a ‘midget’ set up. (Opposition either simply  outmark or outbody these smallish players and ball is furiously rebounded to  catch us out of position and score).

So not your what our coaching ‘braintrust’ has been directing but long bombs under any cicumstance simply wont work IMO.

As in most ball sports you must maintain control of the ball.

Also seems to me that outside run and pace is an even more required feature under the new rules and we ( our coaching staff) have done SFA to show any respect to this. Our midfield is horrendously slow ex Brayshaw and Oliver who aren’t very quick either.

So in essesence we were small, slow and with shocking execution.

 

 

 

 

I also disagree about Spargo.  At the ground he made second and third efforts vs multiple players and he was severely outnumbered.  Don't know where his teammates were.  He also flicked some nice passes for goals.  So I felt he did his job today.  Having said that his size was a major handicap for him today and could see Sparrow taking his place (or better still perhaps take ANB's place).

Not to make it a Spargo thread but agree with the last 2 posters - at the game and Spargo showed a lot. Some great kicking, chasing and carelling. Was in the top 11 on the ground for us. 

Sparrow had a really solid debut. He’ll be back next week and hopefully will have a run of games. Got better as the game went on. 

Sparrow showed a bit on Saturday and was at least having a crack in the second half when most of his teammates had thrown in the towel.

He is clearly better value at present than any of Spargo, Neal-Bullen and Petracca based on Saturday's efforts.

Sparrow looked good. He’s got decent pace and mongrel, and used the ball better than expected for w debutant. Definitely something to work with as he transitions into a permanent midfield role. 

Spargo was horrendous on the weekend. He didn’t lay a single tackle. His primary role is to apply defensive pressure, and he failed to do this on a monumental level. He’s lucky there’s no crumbers in the VFL to replace him, as his form does not warrant an AFL game at present.

good debut but it needs to be said. his ball drop is awful. he lets it go with 2 hands. 

  On 22/03/2019 at 08:23, Lucifer's Hero said:

If the reason is something like 'hamstring soreness' it might just be the toll of the heat and humidity and his lack of speed will be exacerbated in those conditions?  Just guessing.

I just hope Sparrow has a reasonable game then gets a good go at it.  I still have nightmares of the Petty selection last year.

Keilty has some flexibility and the leap to at least punch the ball in the backline - hopefully to a teammate to run onto for a clearance. Saturday, there we few mids against Port moving to space or anticipating a 'receive'; we have a slow and static team at present with limited co-ordination in moving the ball forward - hence the 'bomb' and the poor returns on 50m entries. Match fitness will come but surely a more focussed training regime with attention to mobile pathways and player support/teamwork is overdue. 

  On 22/03/2019 at 12:54, WERRIDEE said:

They are playing 2 ruckman I think that would be enough for team balance.

Great call Werridee.  We certainly [censored] that one up