13 minutes ago, deanox said:

Sitting behind the goals it was really interesting how Hawthorn tried pierce our zone by repeated switching.

In the first it worked really well. And they kept troubling us all day.

Similarly When running out of defence they did a good job of getting out of our zone, often having overlap players on the outside and then switching back over the heads of our guys who were slow to come across. 

I really thought that the loss of ANBs relentless work and Kosi's harrassing was a big part of this. Bedford tried but wasn't as effective. Melksham had his moments but doesn't have the defensive workrate.

I really think those two are critical for our structure and it will be interesting to see if teams try to counter our structure by taking those two out of it in future games.

The last para is an interesting question.

Hawkes had Maginess run with Langdon all game and the kid kept him quiet, by Langdon standards..  They had Connor Nash on Oliver after qtr time and he kept him quiet for a while.  They switched him onto Petracca in the last until he went off but didn't keep him quiet.

The problem with these tactics is they still lose. 

Edited April 30, 20223 yr by Lucifers Hero

2 minutes ago, deanox said:

I really thought that the loss of ANBs relentless work and Kosi's harrassing was a big part of this. Bedford tried but wasn't as effective. Melksham had his moments but doesn't have the defensive workrate.

I really think those two are critical for our structure and it will be interesting to see if teams try to counter our structure by taking those two out of it in future games

Nail on Head

Bedford and Melksham were great IMO btw, but a little behind on the pressure

The relentless coverage and pressure that comes from Langdon Brayshaw ANB Pickett Spargo Sparrow and then the mids is critical to our game

Losing ANB and Pickett was a concern due to last few weeks supreme efforts, coverage, pressure, I50s, connection 

1 minute ago, Deedubs said:

What did you see? I saw us play 1 bad quarter, 1 average quarter, 1 good quarter and 1 terrible quarter. 
 

1st quarter was ok

2nd quarter was ok

3rd quarter was really good

4th quarter was ok.

The thing is that I've watched most of Hawthorns games this year. I knew they would come out on the offensive early. They have pushed a number of good teams so far this year.

We had 5 forced changes, we were missing our coach and had 2 coming back from COVID who were no doubt underdone.

Your expectations are off.

Wasnt as big a win as i had tipped, but 4 points is 4 points. 

The Hawks had smacked us around for the best part of 20 years so any win against them is nice to have.

Lets not get too fussy. 5 forced changes is a lot in anyones book. 

I choose to be happy with the end result, even if the game itself was a bit "meh".

Go Dees !!

Just now, BAMF said:

1st quarter was ok

2nd quarter was ok

3rd quarter was really good

4th quarter was ok.

The thing is that I've watched most of Hawthorns games this year. I knew they would come out on the offensive early. They have pushed a number of good teams so far this year.

We had 5 forced changes, we were missing our coach and had 2 coming back from COVID who were no doubt underdone.

Your expectations are off.

respectfully the disagree. Have about 5 full timers spending all week knowing that Hawks got off to a hot start against Sydney and that we needed to be on. What happens? They kick 3 goals in the first 3 mins. There's no excuse for that. Gunston missed about 3 easy shots too. 

The last quarter was horrendous. Consistently lacing out hawks defenders and getting torched on the rebound.  The missed shots don't even bother me as much as the direct turnovers. 

A shout out to Viney who lives in the shadows of Clarrie and Trac but is no less important 

2 minutes ago, ding said:

The Hawks had smacked us around for the best part of 20 years so any win against them is nice to have.

Yes BUT Hawks have destroyed us for many years by 10goals , 12 goals, 15 goals in games. We had a chance to win by 10goals tonight but we played the last qtr like we were holding on. Good to win but HARDLY RUTHLESS.  Hawks fans leaving tonight didn’t feel like we did for 10 years of smashing. Dees need to BURY teams !! 

29 minutes ago, praha said:

Disgusting crowd number again

 

Not so. The number on afl.com is wrong. The scoreboard posted 39K which is 6-8K more than typical for us and Hawks. The 39K figure looked right too

3 minutes ago, Deedubs said:

respectfully the disagree. Have about 5 full timers spending all week knowing that Hawks got off to a hot start against Sydney and that we needed to be on. What happens? They kick 3 goals in the first 3 mins. There's no excuse for that. Gunston missed about 3 easy shots too. 

The last quarter was horrendous. Consistently lacing out hawks defenders and getting torched on the rebound.  The missed shots don't even bother me as much as the direct turnovers. 

And even though we are playing nowhere near our best at the moment and have lots of room to improve, we are still winning… 

Would you like to be in form now? Or heading into final?

I really liked that we won. I thought we looked very tired in the last quarter, which makes sense given the week.

I sat with a lot of Melbourne supporters in an area I don’t normally sit in and I thought that on the whole they acted like a bunch of belligerent teenagers. If I have to hear one more person yell ‘man up’ at the best defensive zone in the history of the game I’m going to throw up. Sometimes at the footy I feel like people need to be reminded it’s not 1994, and we don’t win by ‘going in harder’. Would it kill people to learn the modern game?

9 minutes ago, Deedubs said:

respectfully the disagree. Have about 5 full timers spending all week knowing that Hawks got off to a hot start against Sydney and that we needed to be on. What happens? They kick 3 goals in the first 3 mins. There's no excuse for that. Gunston missed about 3 easy shots too. 

The last quarter was horrendous. Consistently lacing out hawks defenders and getting torched on the rebound.  The missed shots don't even bother me as much as the direct turnovers. 

Just because you know something is going to happen means you can 100% negate it.

We finished the quarter a few points down. They had thrown everything at as. I knew we would win at quarter time.

Edited April 30, 20223 yr by BAMF

Who was the plonker that said they preferred Dunstan over Sparrow? [censored] lol..

Sparrow was sorely missed today and it showed. 

A gritty win without 5 premiership players all in the one go. It was an ugly performance, but jesus christ you just take those wins while you can.

It was good to see Bedford with a win and play well. Needs to work on his kicking but he's quick and I do love his front and centre work.

Whilst Gawns disposal count looked good his ruckwork to advantage wasn't. Lost count how many times he hit it straight to a Hawks player.  Jackson was another who was sorely missed.

All in all a good fought out win. 7 in a row baby!

15 minutes ago, Deedubs said:

respectfully the disagree. Have about 5 full timers spending all week knowing that Hawks got off to a hot start against Sydney and that we needed to be on. What happens? They kick 3 goals in the first 3 mins. There's no excuse for that. Gunston missed about 3 easy shots too. 

The last quarter was horrendous. Consistently lacing out hawks defenders and getting torched on the rebound.  The missed shots don't even bother me as much as the direct turnovers. 

What on earth are you talking about?

They kicked ONE goal in the first 3 minutes - at 2.07.

They kicked their next goal at 3.39.

WE kicked the next goal at 12.02.

And they didn't get their third until nearly the 20 minute mark.

Sheesh.

 

Edited April 30, 20223 yr by binman

2 minutes ago, BoBo said:

And even though we are playing nowhere near our best at the moment and have lots of room to improve, we are still winning… 

Would you like to be in form now? Or heading into final?

True. I just think we should recognise that we aren't in form. We're playing like trash. We won't get close to Stkilda if we play like this.  People love talking about gears. When will we get into gear? If not round 7, round 10? round 18? round 23? finals? Who knows. 

13 minutes ago, Deedubs said:

What did you see? I saw us play 1 bad quarter, 1 average quarter, 1 good quarter and 1 terrible quarter.
 

I saw 23 players play their guts out, 20% of whom lacked recent AFL conditioning.  We were under constant pressure and the game was played at high tempo.  We prevailed.

As Goodwin has said many times, we don't try and play a 'perfect game' we play to wear the opposition down and when opportunities arise to score we take them.

You have identified many errors but imv we played to Goodwin's plan of 'imperfection' just as he wants us to.

2 minutes ago, The heart beats true said:

I really liked that we won. I thought we looked very tired in the last quarter, which makes sense given the week.

I sat with a lot of Melbourne supporters in an area I don’t normally sit in and I thought that on the whole they acted like a bunch of belligerent teenagers. If I have to hear one more person yell ‘man up’ at the best defensive zone in the history of the game I’m going to throw up. Sometimes at the footy I feel like people need to be reminded it’s not 1994, and we don’t win by ‘going in harder’. Would it kill people to learn the modern game?

Mate, we defender horribly today. We showed consistently an inability to defend their ball movement. It was very concerning.   They had 26 shots on goal from 50 inside 50's. So 52% of the time they go inside 50, they score. That's horrible defending. And also due to the lack of defending up the field. 

2 minutes ago, Lucifers Hero said:

I saw 23 players play their guts out, 20% of whom lacked recent AFL conditioning.  We were under constant pressure and the game was played at high tempo.  We prevailed.

As Goodwin has said many times, we don't try and play a 'perfect game' we play to wear the opposition down and when opportunities arise to score we take them.

You have identified many errors but imv we played to Goodwin's plan of 'imperfection' just as he wants us to.

Yeah that's what I keep trying to tell myself. But having the game on the line with 5 mins to go against Gold Coast, Essendon and Hawthorn is not by design. 

6 minutes ago, pitmaster said:

Not so. The number on afl.com is wrong. The scoreboard posted 39K which is 6-8K more than typical for us and Hawks. The 39K figure looked right too

How can we be contempt when most of our 60,000 members go MIA?. We should expect at least 30,000 to rock up every week. Plus the non members and all the opposition supporters.

Today was a good opportunity to have 55 or 60k.

There was at least 20,000 Hawks supporters at the game.

Workmanlike performance again.  Expect that we will need to step up a gear or two next week against the Saints….. and we will!

11 minutes ago, The heart beats true said:

I really liked that we won. I thought we looked very tired in the last quarter, which makes sense given the week.

I sat with a lot of Melbourne supporters in an area I don’t normally sit in and I thought that on the whole they acted like a bunch of belligerent teenagers. If I have to hear one more person yell ‘man up’ at the best defensive zone in the history of the game I’m going to throw up. Sometimes at the footy I feel like people need to be reminded it’s not 1994, and we don’t win by ‘going in harder’. Would it kill people to learn the modern game?

Why should they ‘man up’ when what they really should be doing is ‘kick(ing) it long’? 😎😉

42 minutes ago, Melb-A-Toast said:

40,000 was my expectation 

Agree, for those of us that can go games, it’s about time we step up and go support our players

1 hour ago, ucanchoose said:

The absolute putrid biased commentators were over the top.

 

How about talking up the team with 5 out

Totally agree Dwayne call was incredibly irritating. Awesome win under the circumstances we didn’t even have our coach 

There’s a lot of lack of perspective getting around this thread. Goodwin doesn’t like making many changes for a reason. We looked unorganised early today for a reason. The way we play requires cohesion in the way we move and certain players with certain assets to use those assets over the course of a game. Without all those outs we cover a lot of their switches better. We have petty which frees up lever. To help rebound. We keep the ball in our forward line longer with kozzie anb and sparrow. 
 

we won today because our top 6 is better than theirs. Interestingly our top 6 is much better than st Kilda and freo who are looking like they will be there abouts.

 

st kilda aren’t exactly looking like world beaters right now against port. The season is long. We get to 12 wins asap and then we plan our run home.

after going to most games my entire life I choose to enjoy the grind and admire the freaks we have running around getting the job done when teams of years gone would have gotten nowhere near. 
 

last year we had some ugly wins and losses. There were problems with forward cohesion but we figured it out. And by the end of the year didn’t it look incredible. 

Just now, Deesprate said:

Totally agree Dwayne call was incredibly irritating. Awesome win under the circumstances we didn’t even have our coach 

Bruest has kicked 205 behinds in his career. Dwayne has obviously never seen any of them.

Very good win in the circumstances

Full credit to Hawthorn. They had a red hot go. Would have won if they kicked straight

Loved Bedfords game. Showed real bottle to slot his goals. He's ready to step up, no question

Clarry Gawn May very good. Viney got plenty of it, bowsa is a gem and and BB was as dependable as ever

We'll get our full compliment back next week and beat St Kilda. And there'll still be posters complaining in the post game thread

Go Dees