Just now, A F said:

On the contray, I wasn't in the game day thread because I was watching the game, but the post game discussion seems quite reasonable to me. No one has acted like a five year old.

Six year old then.

Just now, jnrmac said:

Absolute rubbish. We have the best midfield in the comp. Should be to our advantage.

We lost it because we played like a 2nd rate side and allowed them nearly 100 more uncontested possessions. Aside from Salem no-one else showed up. We were pathetic.

As for our lame defence. Its just as well May comes back in next week.

It's more than just the midfield.  There were certain nuances and set ups that we can't do anymore, such as the two off the back of the square, that were extremely important to the way we played our brand of footy.  Taking a few of those things away will take time to adjust to.  Hopefully that's not too long.

6 minutes ago, jnrmac said:

Absolute rubbish. We have the best midfield in the comp. Should be to our advantage.

We lost it because we played like a 2nd rate side and allowed them nearly 100 more uncontested possessions. Aside from Salem no-one else showed up. We were pathetic.

As for our lame defence. Its just as well May comes back in next week.

Unfortunately, I reckon May will take a little bit of time to settle and gel with his team mates back there. As with Lever last year, he'll be learning a new system too.

Edited March 23, 20196 yr by A F

1 minute ago, Lord Travis said:

Not a bad comment, though Trac plays far less midfield time than Beamer did. Hopefully Trac fires up and wins a BnF like Beamer did at some point. It’s so frustrating to see a player of his talent be uninvolved for 95% of the match.

Perhaps it's me getting older and grumpier, but he's had enough time in the system to be able to grab the game by the scruff of it's neck.

2 minutes ago, praha said:

Well I mean, it is only round 1. 

We're missing two key backmen. Viney is badly underdone. We lacked experience in the defensive 50. We were younger overall vs them.

Eagles were average round 1 last year. We all know how that turned out. Pies were making similarly mindboggling mistakes last night. Richmond hardly blew people away on Thursday.

You gotta take the bad with the good. We were very average but reality is we have 21 games to make amends. 

It was a poor performance. Oliver Viney Gawn Brayshaw Mcdonald had little to no impact. We only lost by 23 points. Would have been closer if Jones wasn't such a spud.

Let's get real hear. Two of the aforementioned have decent games and it's game on, we potentially win. And that's with three defensive generals missing.

you just can't kill yourself over a round 1 loss. Would you rather this loss now, or leading into finals?

Spot on across the board, praha.

1 minute ago, Wiseblood said:

Six year old then.

It's more than just the midfield.  There were certain nuances and set ups that we can't do anymore, such as the two off the back of the square, that were extremely important to the way we played our brand of footy.  Taking a few of those things away will take time to adjust to.  Hopefully that's not too long.

I thought we won the centre clearances? Unlike last year we weren't kicking to an outnumbered fwd line.

 

16 minutes ago, Wrecker45 said:

Just switch the [censored] footy.for some reason we kick down the line every time.

We have Brayshaw, Oliver and Viney who are more likely to win posseession and  get it more often than whoever they oppose.

But when we switch we create options.

keep them guessing.

 Brayshaw started lIke a house on fire, but died in the preverbial today.  Oliver was hardly seen. 

My take so far is that we are under done.  That effect/excuse can only last a few rounds, but until then I'm prepared to give our guys some grace.

That said Geelong are comming off a very similar base to us next week ad expecting that step it up and 'show them who's boss'.

2 minutes ago, Satyriconhome said:

No excuses, just completely outplayed, didn't deserve to win

We may have been outplayed, but more to the point, we were thoroughly outworked by a side playing a bunch of kids. Although admittedly, their leaders in Boak, Ryder and Rockliff really stood up. The work rate was there from one side and not from the other, hence the vast discrepancy in UPs.

What a terrible game our Captains had. Jones was horrible and Viney couldn’t get near it. I thought Sparrow and Wagner showed a bit which was encouraging. Frost is not AFL level...he is awful! 

Not sure we could be any worse than we were today. 

27 minutes ago, DemonOX said:

We were slow last season and you would have thought we would have addressed it in the offseason but obviously it wasn’t a priority, maybe it should have been. 

Its easy to beat us if you have players that can run and spread. 

And here is the post I have been waiting to see.

For those on here who think pace is not a problem, you are just so wrong.

The other thing that hurts us is our decision making. We kick to packs and then don't have a loose man at the outside. We kick to player who have two on them. We kick to players who are behind their man.

We still lack disposal skill. Look at Port's kick outs, they find a man, we never did. 

Given we were out of form and possibly not as fit as others, the arrogance of playing Viney and Jones underdone and maybe injured, was simply breathtaking. We played 2 short today.

25 minutes ago, DemonOX said:

We were slow last season and you would have thought we would have addressed it in the offseason but obviously it wasn’t a priority, maybe it should have been. 

Its easy to beat us if you have players that can run and spread. 

Has the club become comfortable?

Has making the finals last year caused us to take the foot off the pedal?( Jobs sort of done know?)

Where we 100% prepared for today?

Are the Leadership group comfortable with their installations.

Is the coach comfortably placed now.

The whole thing today seemed just so casual. Viney and McDonald played career poor games and Max was so so.

Off day that’s for sure

 

Tis early days. But Jack Viney must have a broken leg to play such a no-influence game. Would not have believed it without seeing it.

Edited March 23, 20196 yr by Stand and Deeliver
Typo

1 minute ago, Redleg said:

And here is the post I have been waiting to see.

For those on here who think pace is not a problem, you are just so wrong.

The other thing that hurts us is our decision making. We kick to packs and then don't have a loose man at the outside. We kick to player who have two on them. We kick to players who are behind their man.

We still lack disposal skill. Look at Port's kick outs, they find a man, we never did. 

Given we were out of form and possibly not as fit as others, the arrogance of playing Viney and Jones underdone and maybe injured, was simply breathtaking. We played 2 short today.

I thought playing Jones and particularly Viney underdone was arrogant too.

I'm still not convinced it's a lack of pace. It's a lack of system and work rate IMO.

2 minutes ago, A F said:

I thought playing Jones and particularly Viney underdone was arrogant too.

I'm still not convinced it's a lack of pace. It's a lack of system and work rate IMO.

Get convinced.

How many times did they take off from the backline and run it forward,  without us touching the ball, or getting near the ball carrier? 

Do agree though there was a lack of system and work rate.

This is a laughable response to a game we lost by around 20 points.

Soo predictable, yet so expected.

Demonland, you've done it again!  Lol

17 minutes ago, praha said:

Well I mean, it is only round 1. 

We're missing two key backmen. Viney is badly underdone. We lacked experience in the defensive 50. We were younger overall vs them.

Eagles were average round 1 last year. We all know how that turned out. Pies were making similarly mindboggling mistakes last night. Richmond hardly blew people away on Thursday.

You gotta take the bad with the good. We were very average but reality is we have 21 games to make amends. 

It was a poor performance. Oliver Viney Gawn Brayshaw Mcdonald had little to no impact. We only lost by 23 points. Would have been closer if Jones wasn't such a spud.

Let's get real hear. Two of the aforementioned have decent games and it's game on, we potentially win. And that's with three defensive generals missing.

you just can't kill yourself over a round 1 loss. Would you rather this loss now, or leading into finals?

All excuses and 'what if's'. 

This is another game lost that will cost us at finals time, like StK et al last year.

I'm predicting we will slip this year and could easily find ourselves 0/5 soon.

Edited March 23, 20196 yr by Moonshadow

4 minutes ago, A F said:

I thought playing Jones and particularly Viney underdone was arrogant too.

I'm still not convinced it's a lack of pace. It's a lack of system and work rate IMO.

Certainly work rate, when we play well we win contested ball and tackle counts. Bring the aggression. Wouldn't have stopped there outside run but could have lessened its impact.

11 minutes ago, A F said:

On the contray, I wasn't in the game day thread because I was watching the game, but the post game discussion seems quite reasonable to me. No one has acted like a five year old.

The usual suspects did in the game day thread. While the way they carry on is poor, I shared their feelings today.

I've been worried since JLT 1. Our best 22 is great when in form. Our depth players are actually pretty good, but you cant play too many depth players as well as carrying so many out of form best 22 players.

As with the JLT games we didn’t look refreshed nor rejuvenated following the offseason. Hopefully we can get our [censored] together from herein otherwise it’s going to be a long season. 

Edited March 23, 20196 yr by Ethan Tremblay

Underdone. Plain and simple.

For those who wish to say that's a cop-out: it was even mentioned during the broadcast that our lesser preparation had been a pre-game focal point for Port. Seems strange that an AFL coach would think it important.

They knew they could out-run us. And they did.

15 minutes ago, praha said:

Well I mean, it is only round 1. 

We're missing two key backmen. Viney is badly underdone. We lacked experience in the defensive 50. We were younger overall vs them.

Eagles were average round 1 last year. We all know how that turned out. Pies were making similarly mindboggling mistakes last night. Richmond hardly blew people away on Thursday.

You gotta take the bad with the good. We were very average but reality is we have 21 games to make amends. 

It was a poor performance. Oliver Viney Gawn Brayshaw Mcdonald had little to no impact. We only lost by 23 points. Would have been closer if Jones wasn't such a spud.

Let's get real hear. Two of the aforementioned have decent games and it's game on, we potentially win. And that's with three defensive generals missing.

you just can't kill yourself over a round 1 loss. Would you rather this loss now, or leading into finals?

I can't argue your post.

A lot of "What if" though.

 

51 minutes ago, DeeZee said:

I think teams have worked us out already and West Coast showed them the way.

Just get it on the outside as quick as possible as we have no run.

Game over everytime 

6.6.6. imo,  suits Ports typical outside game-style.

... and hurts our recent game style, of pressing and shutting down ball movement.   I'm not surprised we were sucking in the breaths.

3 minutes ago, Redleg said:

Get convinced.

How many times did they take off from the backline and run it forward,  without us touching the ball, or getting near the ball carrier? 

Do agree though there was a lack of system and work rate.

But see, I'd argue that the lack of system in our forward half and therefore the lack of work rate, enabled Port to waltz out of our forward 50. And with 18 man team defence, the midfield really let us down at times too. It only takes one or two weak links in the chain and your system completely falls over. Our problem was we never worked hard enough to see anything that resembled our system today. More pace in the side wouldn't hurt us, particularly in the forward half (FWIW, I don't think Hunt is the answer to that), but our structures and team defence would stop exits at the source if we were switched on. We weren't.

On Hunt though, I'm hoping he gained a little bit of confidence from today's game because his run from half back or a wing is a great plan B. Hibberd did it once today, but I hardly remember Hibberd showing much dash or rebound in 2018 either. It's certainly a deficiency of our game and list, but I think we can beat any side with our current system if we bring the work rate.

We'll agree to disagree, I guess.

The season has started. There are no excuses. 4 points now is worth the same as 4 points in 6 months time. We coughed up a routine bankable home March win against an inferior team today. Unacceptable.

We need pace all over the ground, but mostly up forward. Our defensive pressure there is non-existent. Our crumbing forward is Spargo - nothing against him as he’s young, but he doesn’t crumb and has poor pace for someone so small. We need crumbers like Jeffy who have pace, crumb at contests, consistently kick goals and can actually apply defensive pressure up forward.

1 minute ago, Lord Travis said:

The season has started. There are no excuses. 4 points now is worth the same as 4 points in 6 months time. We coughed up a routine bankable home March win against an inferior team today. Unacceptable.

Must agree

the comments about being underdone due to a shorter pre season are also a little hard to take.

The finals provided match practice of the best kind.

We just took our break at a different time. Hawks et al seem to mange it with no issues