Harsh on Frost. He was good.

  On 21/04/2019 at 06:07, RalphiusMaximus said:

Harsh on Frost. He was good.

I wouldn't say he was good. He had a number of slipped tackles and as usual, was caught underneath the ball multiple times. That said, he was better than most of his defensive mates. Jetta was a shadow of his former self and has been all season. Hibberd was terrible. Hore took some good marks, but was still outmarked too easily at times and turned it over by foot once or twice. 

I know when there's not much else out there to get excited by, the [censored] looks okay. I think that was the case with Frost. He didn't have any obvious brainfarts, but his usual errors were there and I'd actually say his tackling (one of his better traits) was off.

the umpiring was an improvement from the essendon game. I'm just glad we didnt lose by a couple of goals. we need to lose by a lot so that change occurs 

  On 21/04/2019 at 05:34, Good Lord George said:

So, fun fact. Carlton are about to be above us on the ladder... 

Don’t stress my fellow demonlanders we are on the same wins as Carlton and they are improving so all is not bad!!!!

BTW when we play Carlton they will beat us. 

To be honest I am just tired of our team and how they continue to disappoint. 

When will it stop??????

its like the never ending story except it’s a bloody never ending nightmare. 

Then the club asks fans to be patient and judge us on our performances and continue to dish this up. 

It has to change but bloody hell it would be nice to see a premiership before  I’m dead. 

Edited April 21, 20195 yr by DemonOX

  On 21/04/2019 at 05:00, DemonOX said:

Great summary RN. 

To me this season seems shot. 

Maybe Goodwin needs and experienced senior coach as his assistant apart from Macca  

Richardson now has Ratten and look at the saints. 

It could be part of the solution anyway. 

Off seasons in such a tough League are going to happen Ox.  Our problem is we just have too many of them.

To drop back to bog ordinary again, where we were before Roos came on board, is unforgivable.

A highly experienced assistant coach might offer some hope if there's one out there but need to wait till mid season before heading down that route IMO.

  On 21/04/2019 at 06:37, Rusty Nails said:

Off seasons in such a tough League are going to happen Ox.  Our problem is we just have too many of them.

To drop back to bog ordinary again, where we were before Roos came on board, is unforgivable.

A highly experienced assistant coach might offer some hope if there's one out there but need to wait till mid season before heading down that route IMO.

IMO no need to wait but I understand what u r saying. 

No need to worry though RN we won’t do anything until the season is officially over. 

Edited April 21, 20195 yr by DemonOX

Paul Roos must be shaking his head privately. Goodwin has effectively hijacked his team, ousted genuine talent in Hogan and Watts. Threw out the defensive structures that Roos instilled and has us back to where we were 4 years ago. It’s simply not good enough. Goodwin is so robotic in his press conferences and seems too stubborn to adapt his game style. Why we signed him for 4 years Ian beyond me. Had one good year. 

  On 20/04/2019 at 11:09, olisik said:

The stab wasn’t on Petracca, it was on our list management. Who probably would trade out Trac for another defender who can’t get on the park. 30 year old with dodgy knees Rance could be a good target.

I've just re-read this thread and that wasn't at all what he was saying. He said he was a spud that should be traded at year's end and you agreed with him.

Nice try backing out of that one. Mostly because posters can't be bothered pulling you up anymore. 

  On 21/04/2019 at 06:58, A F said:

I've just re-read this thread and that wasn't at all what he was saying. He said he was a spud that should be traded at year's end and you agreed with him.

Nice try backing out of that one. Mostly because posters can't be bothered pulling you up anymore. 

How was I backing out? I didn’t make the original post about Petracca. It was more a cheeky stab at our list management but seems you missed the point.

Edited April 21, 20195 yr by olisik

  On 21/04/2019 at 05:34, Leoncelli_36 said:

On a side note, what the hell is with Razor Ray and his stupid pep talks after paying free kicks to our players.?? Anyone else notice this? The most memorable was when Viney won a free for holding the ball and he was trying to get up and get the footy back off his opponent who wouldn’t release it so he scrapped with him, it should have been a fifty, but no, Ray comes in and stops the game, buys the St Kilda defenders some time, and has a chat with Viney. He is a [censored]. He did the same to Frost. 

Nichols has had it in for the Demons ever since Hawn punched the ball away in 2017 from a crappy Nichols center bounce that went outside the circle.... "what did you do that for!?" Cried Nichols.

Razor and him might be super close? 

It was definitely strange behavior seeing we were the ones receiving the free kicks.

  On 21/04/2019 at 02:39, ProDee said:

The reason Gawn dropped that mark was he took his eyes off the ball because there was a St Kilda player coming the other way.  He really is down on confidence at the moment.

Why did Brayshaw and Salem spend the first 7 minutes on the bench to start the third quarter ?

As some would know, I'm a Goody fan, but would a Clarkson coached team ever be so disorganised behind the ball and so easy to play against ?  I think we both know the answer to that one.

Our team defence is terrible.   

And I think we have been hurt more than most by lack of runners this year. We are a young team and we lack leadership. 

To not have runners able to freely communicate moves has really added to our confusion and overall disorganization. 

I sit near the bench and my god the players can’t even organize themselves to rotate properly. I watched Frost run from FB to the bench yesterday only to be told to go back there. 

Also can we talk about why Hibbo was kept on Membery for the entire game when he was tearing him a new one?

No issues dropping OMac but Hibbo is so out of form and was getting dismantled by an average forward. Seems Goodwin won’t drop his bestie from Essendon no matter how badly he is playing. Meantime Stretch can’t get more than one game, because we had to rush an underdone Lewis back to stink it up on the wing. 

Edited April 21, 20195 yr by Jaded

Some Saints supporters nearby yesterday kept calling us "Hollywood".

We were way too cute and play with a lack of respect for our opponents.

There is also a weird sense that the playing group has utter contempt for the coaches. There is zero coherence.

We are worse now than we were at any point during Roos' tenure, aside from the second half of 2014.

At half time yesterday, I was looking at the stats. We were winning the UPs and were close in CPs. We led the rest of the stats. The only stat we weren't leading was the glaring discrepancy between forward 50 efficiency. St Kilda's was healthy, well over 60% and ours was a shocking 37%.

Looking at the stats on my phone post-game now, surprisingly I see that we staggeringly won UPs (by 2), but yet again, lost the CP count. This would back up what it seemed to me at times was us trying to play a bit more tempo between chaos and control. 

The rest of the final stats are relatively even except for efficiency inside 50. St Kilda's dropped from half time to 55%, but not surprisingly, ours dropped even further to 35% (19 shots from 55 inside 50s).

I'm probably not saying anything new here, but there's certainly no need to completely start again list wise. Yes, we have some holes, but our midfield dominance is still apparent.

I'm going to argue that if we fix our forwardline and our delivery to our forwardline, that's where the answer lies to multiple wins this season. 

We are like the doggies who after winning their flag were satisfied enough to close shop the following year.

Except of course we were satisfied  with just a prelim berth.

 

 

  On 21/04/2019 at 07:26, Jaded said:

Also can we talk about why Hibbo was kept on Membery for the entire game when he was tearing him a new one?

No issues dropping OMac but Hibbo is so out of form and was getting dismantled by an average forward. 

I don’t think it was Hibberd alone handling him. Hore had a go at him for a while as well from what I saw. Don’t think we had any other options with Frost taking Bruce.

Membrey is a different match up being quite quick for a tall defender and still marks quite high for a mid defender (Hore/Hibbo).

If he was a hawk, pie or tiger everyone would rave about him imo. He’s a pretty handy player who loves playing us unfortunately 

  On 20/04/2019 at 21:46, Cards13 said:

Imagine if we had a fwd or 2 who could take a contested mark?! Or a couple of fwds who can crumb from a contested marking situation?!

Pa your handle makes me want to vomit! Kudos. 

Yes, @Cam Schwab's Whiteboard, please change your name. I already feel like I'm watching 2012 onfield, I don't need to be reminded about 2012 off field too.

  On 21/04/2019 at 00:20, titan_uranus said:

Not sure I agree with this.

Our losses this year look to be strongly reminiscent of our MCG losses last year - plenty of CPs and inside 50s but an inability to defend the ground on defensive transition.

Meanwhile each of Port, Essendon and St Kilda have played us the same way we were beaten by sides like Port, Hawthorn and St Kilda did last year - conceding time in forward half to us, conceding inside 50s to us, but scoring easily on transition because we don't run back and we leave our opponent's forward half empty for them to work with.

In my view, this isn't 2019's rule changes having a negative effect, this is the same problems as our 2018 game plan which are being exposed repeatedly because we're unfit and out of form.

As to the ladder, there are currently 10 teams on 3 wins (with the possibility that by the end of the round that figure is 12). It's not like there's much separating the three teams you've mentioned from the teams in the 9-12 bracket. Fremantle's win over GWS is a stellar win that deserves to be praised but other than that, those sides have hardly played the stronger sides whereas Geelong, Collingwood and West Coast have all played each other by the end of next week.

That 2018 game-plan took us to a prelim. It also fell down and was countered on a number of occasions - although, we should note, not against two very experienced teams and wily coaches in our (and almost almost all of the players) first two finals at the MCG. Now we just look outright lost and bereft of confidence - which leads to indecision, more pressure and then poorer skills. 

The game-plan was always a high-risk compromise - its major components being players moving forward from behind the ball and trapping it forward. Two major rule changes this year have touched these exact two components. We can no longer have extras running from behind the ball and the kick-in rule allows teams to progress the initial outlet contest further up the field. 

I believe our tentative, finely balanced game-plan is probably now shot - but likely because of the rule changes. The sad thing is that we spent the last four years recruiting for this plan with contested ball-winners and by getting the best defensive personnel available at a high cost to tip the offensive/defensive balance ever so slightly in our favour. I don't know what the answer is now.

Wow I feel sorry for our key forwards , what chance do they have? The only contests they get to are 50m bombs in where they are flying for massive contested grabs each time. I’m a fan of the Weid but he has no chance of out marking multiple men and even when he brings it down it’s just gone so quickly.

TMac struggling even more is worrying. He did have off season surgery but remained one of the fittest in the club with the time trials. He shouldn’t have lost much touch but looks a shell  of his 2018 self.

Still, my biggest worry remains being this crap footy of bombing it in to big contests has got to stop. It’s u/14 rubbish. You’re an afl footballer, lower your eyes and hit a lead for goodness sake. Back your skill. It’s the same crap we whinged about last year when we were playing poorly.

Unfortunately, even though he has played well, Preuss makes it very hard to retain the ball up forward. His hands aren’t great and he adds zero pressure on the deck.

If he is going to stay in (seems likely) then TMac or Weid must go to bring in another quick to lock it in.

We are missing AVB and Hannan more than we are missing Lever/May at present. It’s embarrassing how quickly the ball hits the turf and rebounds so quickly with minimum pressure.

Edited April 21, 20195 yr by Deeko2

  On 21/04/2019 at 07:28, leave it to deever said:

We are like the doggies who after winning their flag were satisfied enough to close shop the following year.

Except of course we were satisfied  with just a prelim berth.

 

 

The pinnacle of achievement was beating the Hawks in a final. Never mind the prelim, it was all dunking deep in the bathwater since. 

  On 21/04/2019 at 01:14, Dr. Gonzo said:

I don't think it's our defensive structure the problem is our forward structure. We win enough footy, we get it forward enough but we have no space to work in. Our key forwards can't take a mark and we have no crumbers sweeping the loose balls. A couple of times yesterday we were running into an open goal just had to work through the defense and stuffed up both to es allowing the Saibts to rebound it out.

Our forward line is a shambles, I think we desperately miss Hannan and AVB across half forward and TMac is in the worst form of his career. Petracca is played too close to goals needs to play more across half forward and Melksham is also out of form.

Great post, mate.

Melksham and Petracca are really the only two winners in our forward half beside maybe Preuss, who continually brought the ball to ground yesterday against 4 or 5 opponents. However, I'd be playing Melksham and Petracca across half forward. Their delivery is so far superior to just about anyone else. Melksham lead the comp last year for assists. We need him up the ground, because he's the guy that creates so much of our connection between midfield and forwardline.

Further, when we got our game together in the second quarter against Essendon, it was Petracca and Melksham across half forward (and rotating deep forward to be fair) that were involved in so many of our scoring chains.

We need to work out a way of unclogging our forward half and enabling our forwards space to lead into. Changing a game style that is entirely focused on the forward territory battle will be a start.

I'm not looking forward to playing against Carlton. Can you imagine what Peter Jackson must be thinking now.

  On 21/04/2019 at 07:23, Rusty Nails said:

Nichols has had it in for the Demons ever since

It was definitely strange behavior seeing we were the ones receiving the free kicks.

My friends and i were talking about the same thing. 

I would love the club to come out and say what the hell, were you pulling our players up for? But it will be something along the lines. The umpires do a great job, ? Their only human? blah, blah, blah.

 

  On 21/04/2019 at 08:35, deebug said:

My friends and i were talking about the same thing. 

I would love the club to come out and say what the hell, were you pulling our players up for? But it will be something along the lines. The umpires do a great job, ? Their only human? blah, blah, blah.

 

We have been the whipping boy of many over many decades DB.  The club needs to  ask for an explanation from the head of umpiring if it hasn't already