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POSTGAME: Rd 15 vs Geelong


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8 minutes ago, Trac-man said:

Gawn is getting around like a big sook…Goodwin is playing his favourites and nothing will change..And he’ll say in the presser we will go back and have a look and we will learn from this..F$$& pathetic..

 

Goodwin is turning into Daniher 2.0 the way he plays favourites. We're 15-13 since round 10 last season, which is equivalent to a 12-10 season. We're quite literally an 8th-12th placed team over the past 12 months. That is a large enough data set to try something new. He is playing favourites with players who are consistent liabilities. Langdon, Spargo, Pickett, ANB are turning into the Yze, Bruce and Davey of the current squad, legacy players from a good era that are just not that good anymore.

We are hanging onto the 2021 flag run for dear life. It's not happening again with this squad. 

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What a horrible night, there’s so many negative things to say but really just to disappointed to focus on that at the moment. 
 

I want to pump Trent Rivers up though, yes he can turn it over and not always make the right decision but his attack on the footy and willingness to take the game on is fun to watch. 

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Would be up there with the worst teams in the AFL in wet weather or slippery conditions.

The over use of short dinky handballs to players a foot or two away under pressure instead of the quick kick forward in the wet was astonishingly poor football at this level from Goodwin down, with a few player exceptions.  Viney being the main one.

Yes i place a large part of the blame here on the coach as he apparently doesn't appear capable of getting this group to change up the way we usually play vs what is needed in wet or slippery conditions.

Any team watching us vs the Lions & tonight will figure themselves in with a serious chance of an easy kill if playing us in these conditions bar maybe the bottom two or three.

And the bulk of teams would have cleaned the Cats up tonight.  We were woeful.

Im not a big fan of the dual rucks in inclement weather.  I would play one as the sub and just change out if needed at some stage when / if tickets are spent.

It robs us of an extra running player on the outside with some skills that can finish our extraction work coming inside 50 and in general play.

Max played behind the ball a fair amount with much success last week.  Yet this week he plays very small minutes there aside from the last quarter when the game was pretty much gone.  Weird stuff from the coaching group.

Our forward craft and mid / forward connection lack of cohesion is still bog ordinary

After 1.5 seasons of trying to improve, it continues to be a dog's breakfast (at best).

Example... Hunter kicking it to Pickett in a two v one as the FF towards the end there.  Hilarious.

No class or idea as to the last kick  coming inside 50.  It's just constant bombing and/or kicking it to the goal line.

Very few players lowering their vision before they dispose inside 50.  Just tumble tumble or bomb 90% of the time in the hope that getting enough ball inside will overwhelm.

Rarely anyone playing a higher true CHF role for the many dump kicks we put there.

Would love to see the percentage of times our kicks inside 50 drop at true CHF and yet no one is there to contest.

Often the oppo does though and they're off to the races on the slingshot and occasionaly turning this into a 12 point turn around.

Instead we often see one of Kozzy, Chandler or ANB sitting there.  Laughable stuff from the coaching group to think this is a good strategy!

Who's teaching them this rubbish and where's the system / structure up forward?

Now that BBB & Macca appear to be gone we are in serious need of a genuinly dangerous KTF.

Such a frustrating team to watch in the wet.  And an under performing one (paper vs performance/outcome) imv.

The whole coaching crew and the playing group needs to look in the mirror in terms of....

> how poorly we play in wet/slippery conditions

> generaly poor forward structure, particularly at CHF as mentioned above.

> Still unable to hit targets coming inside very often

> All talls playing deep and sitting back when a surge is on, no one leading at the ball carrier.

> The last part (very few leads to higher places) then results in a very crowded forward line from the goal line to 30 odd meters out making it almost imposssible for the medium & small crumbers to work in.

> Giving licence to certain players who arent very accurate kicks to attempt short / medium passes into the corridor resulting in easy turnovers and goals smacks of very poor coaching / disipline imho.

There's no papering over this one.  Too many horribilis downs amongst some decent wins this season.

The difference between our best and our worst, particularly in the wet, means there's a fair gap between us and the top 3 from where i sit.

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Smith - might have a role but it's not as CHF - tall flanker is his role

Tomlinson in the back line was working well. Petty forward might or might be a longer term answer forward. But tommo back and petty forward is better than petty back and smith fwd. 

This was lost at selection table. Lost again when we sub Jordan instead of a tall on a wet night. 

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1 minute ago, The heart beats true said:

Is there a way I can find that footage of our centre square free kick in the last where they refused to give the ball back and then when they did they threw it passed Viney?

That was laughably bad umpiring.

https://twitter.com/outbreezywc/status/1671847925360758784?s=46&t=sBHYAKFMVfpqnpLJkfBbjg

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2 minutes ago, wizardinoz said:

Goodwin won't bring back Tomlinson now because that would make to much sense. 

There wasn't a decent match up for Tomlinson. Would have been murdered down here. 

And ironically, after Cameron went down, there wasn't a match up for Petty either.

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5 minutes ago, adonski said:

I've never understood your wing obsession...but agree with the rest 

If Langdon and Hunter could string together consistent weeks I wouldn’t focus on them. But at the moment they are purely outside accumulators with no damage - fed the ball by a very strong ball winning mids and half backs. If you want to nullify games and take the pace out of attack and take away scoring they’re fine. If you want to win games against good sides they’re so meh.

Hunter was good tonight and is in decent form but he flat out refuses to take any risk with his kicking and ends up going super slow and butchering it. And whilst he’s started driving though some contests it’s hard to see him improving his speed or making kicks that he just isn’t taking.

If Langdon can’t hold up in the contest and his ball use is a liability then what’s he bringing? He’s purely a structural player now in a team that needs more than that given our ball movement issues.

We need at least one winger who actually has some ability to break in to space and take the game on with line breaking and kicking. Or some overhead ability.

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4 minutes ago, Brownie said:

After the game a magic raven landed on my window sill and said

"boy, what does it feel like to be a Bulldogs supporter?"

I said I'm not, I support the Demons

He said "same thing, you're just 5 years behind them. Enjoy the slow slide into mediocrity "

Yep. 

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1 minute ago, A F said:

There wasn't a decent match up for Tomlinson. Would have been murdered down here. 

And ironically, after Cameron went down, there wasn't a match up for Petty either.

I reckon he couldn't have done any worse than May's job on the fat boy who was standing by himself all night.

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1 minute ago, DeeSpencer said:

If Langdon and Hunter could string together consistent weeks I wouldn’t focus on them. But at the moment they are purely outside accumulators with no damage - fed the ball by a very strong ball winning mids and half backs. If you want to nullify games and take the pace out of attack and take away scoring they’re fine. If you want to win games against good sides they’re so meh.

Hunter was good tonight and is in decent form but he flat out refuses to take any risk with his kicking and ends up going super slow and butchering it. And whilst he’s started driving though some contests it’s hard to see him improving his speed or making kicks that he just isn’t taking.

If Langdon can’t hold up in the contest and his ball use is a liability then what’s he bringing? He’s purely a structural player now in a team that needs more than that given our ball movement issues.

We need at least one winger who actually has some ability to break in to space and take the game on with line breaking and kicking. Or some overhead ability.

Enter, L. Whitfield via salary dump 

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Like everyone here I thought the last quarter was awful. Outreached again, how simple is it on a wet night to kick the ball off the ground to space and run onto the ball or move the ball forward and gain territory. We deliver the ball into the forward line the same slow way every week. Our key marking target is a 19 yo kid in his first season. So many goals came from breaking through our high press and they get us out the back. Not to mention turning it over or kicking to the intercept marking machine Tom Stewart.

Sadly this team isn't good enough and has been beaten 3 times in the wet. The forward line is a mess and lacks some serious class when it comes to x-factor and kicking goals. As our coach puts it, the learnings are that we have too many average players, particularly up forward. The resting ruckman up forward isn't working.

I hate naming players but the last 2 weeks Gus keeps turning it over, Nibbler Fumbles and doesn't kick goals, Chandler is off the boil and does not get enough of the pill for a small forward and Spargo is slow and gave us nothing.

The evidence is plain to see that forward structure will not win any final. That was a horrible loss laying bare all our flaws

 

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I’m starting to think that not only ourselves, but the general football community thinks that the Demons will eventually come good and get into the finals and bring it all home without too much fuss.
 

Surely after tonight that narrative changes to one less positive. 

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19 minutes ago, Maldonboy38 said:

Where do I start?

Getting the ball is not our problem.  It continues steady and stable. We have a good list, and a game plan that stacks up. But from here I can cut and paste the same three errors from across this season:

Horrible field kicking, including dumb, blind kicking into F50 that favours the opposition, allows intercept marking, and makes our forwards look inept

Over handballing in close leading to blind kicks forward, leading to ... see above.

Fumbling. 

Tonight though, we gave it up in the last quarter in a way I have not often seen during Goodwin's tenure. 

And now for my rant. ANB is a momentum killing player, whose fumbling at critical times is team destroying. I am sick to the death of it and him. But he won't get dropped because there are 5 ahead of him on tonight's performance.

And although we have a great list, we actually don't have good small players who can read the ball off a pack, or who can be first to a ground ball. Guthrie, De Koning and Blicsavs were better at ground level tonight than Chandler, Pickett, ANB and Fritsch.

Query the 'great list' we are supposed to have. It's a myth. Clear strengths...including a stack of half back flankers. But we lack skilled athletic types, and goalkickers. Several good citizens who occasionally get found out. We know who they are. 

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Scott kept their forward line open so our intercept game had no effect.

They pressed hard and ran forward in quick burst through the middle once they got turnovers and kicked easy goals.

Outcoached.

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How many of our forwards actually know how to play forward? ie forward craft, leading to the ball, double leads etc etc...

Amazing how many times our fowards were caught behind their defenders taking marks... but this is a weekly thing, so.

Reality is, we're trying to win a flag with one of the worst front 6 in the comp going around.

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7 minutes ago, Fromgotowoewodin said:

That and the kick along the ground from 40 out that wasn’t given because Toohey was within 20 meters of the ball.

Not blaming the umpires for the loss but [censored] me, obvious free kicks getting let go.

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6 minutes ago, ANG13 said:

I want to pump Trent Rivers up though, yes he can turn it over and not always make the right decision but his attack on the footy and willingness to take the game on is fun to watch. 

He’s having a great year and should be top 5 in our BnF. He’s one of our only players who’s improved this season. Most others have gone backwards. Would love to see him in at more centre bounced but that would require Goodwin to try something different and he won’t.

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We just don’t look dangerous going into our forward line and there is no structure that the forwards seem to fall back on. Teams can then easily bottle us up and the slingshot at the end was magnified by the players having little faith in the forward craft of the players to get it done. Overcommitted, crowding  in, and bang - out the back and we’re done.

Our saving grace is the evenness of this season. 

But yeah, there is no hiding our issues atm. Don’t talk to me about ‘kicking straight at goal’ - we are getting terrible entries and shallow looks and that leads to more points than goals.

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17 minutes ago, Docs Demons said:

I would have thought quite a few. Stewart for one had plenty. Our forwards looking for the easy stuff out the back and did not ONCE put their bodies on the line.

Stewart had a day out, not sure if Smith had the role.  But if he didn't why not, should have been next to him all game

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