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2023 Nailbiters aka close finishes

spirit of norm smith
in Melbourne Demons

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From the AFL website 

And only one team lost more close games than North Melbourne (2-5), with Melbourne (4-6) putting its supporters through several thrillers, including losing its two finals by a combined nine points. 

Round 8: Beat Gold Coast by five points
Round 10: Lost to Port Adelaide by four points
Round 11: Lost to Fremantle by seven points
Round 13: Beat Collingwood by four points
Round 16: Lost to Greater Western Sydney by two points
Round 18: Beat Brisbane by one point
Round 19: Beat Adelaide by four points
Round 22: Lost to Carlton by four points
Qualifying Final: Lost to Collingwood by seven points
Semi Final: Lost to Carlton by two points

Record: 4-6

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    indicitive of how close the overall season was,

    or 

    how close we got and how much we stuffed it up.

     

    same to my mind the 1990 result  effit!!

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    3 hours ago, spirit of norm smith said:

    From the AFL website 

    And only one team lost more close games than North Melbourne (2-5), with Melbourne (4-6) putting its supporters through several thrillers, including losing its two finals by a combined nine points. 

    Round 8: Beat Gold Coast by five points
    Round 10: Lost to Port Adelaide by four points
    Round 11: Lost to Fremantle by seven points
    Round 13: Beat Collingwood by four points
    Round 16: Lost to Greater Western Sydney by two points
    Round 18: Beat Brisbane by one point
    Round 19: Beat Adelaide by four points
    Round 22: Lost to Carlton by four points
    Qualifying Final: Lost to Collingwood by seven points
    Semi Final: Lost to Carlton by two points

    Record: 4-6

    Both those Pies results don't reflect the real game. 

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    16 minutes ago, leave it to deever said:

    Both those Pies results don't reflect the real game. 

     

    2 hours ago, 640MD said:

    indicitive of how close the overall season was,

    or 

    how close we got and how much we stuffed it up.

     

    same to my mind the 1990 result  effit!!

    We stuffed it up.

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    I’m with you BDA You can only rake over the coals so many times, my anxiety and frustration has diminished substantially, now just hanging out for the draft then I will switch off until 2024 as well.!!

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    32 minutes ago, Jontee said:

    We lacked class and polish

    Also footy smarts and experience when it mattered. So many of those close Collingwood wins were driven by Pendles and Sidebottom. That fateful minute against Carlton that lead to the Acres goal was a succession of poor/unnecessary decisions that cooler and smarter heads wouldn't have made.

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    1 hour ago, DeeZone said:

    I’m with you BDA You can only rake over the coals so many times, my anxiety and frustration has diminished substantially, now just hanging out for the draft then I will switch off until 2024 as well.!!

    Will be watching our AFLW team closely through the finals and hoping our girls can win back to back Flags.!!

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    10 hours ago, bing181 said:

    Also footy smarts and experience when it mattered. So many of those close Collingwood wins were driven by Pendles and Sidebottom. That fateful minute against Carlton that lead to the Acres goal was a succession of poor/unnecessary decisions that cooler and smarter heads wouldn't have made.

    Unfortunately that's true. I will never understand why Lever didn't kick sideways to Rivers who was on his own and burn up another 10-20 seconds with a bit of waxing it.

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    The Pies have been training the [censored] out of these situations and it's really showed, it's not just pure luck that they keep winning close games, they've build an incredibly strong defense to keep them in games even when it's not all on their terms and have this trump card to win these really close games. it's very very clever 

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    6 hours ago, Dwight Schrute said:

    The Pies have been training the [censored] out of these situations and it's really showed, it's not just pure luck that they keep winning close games, they've build an incredibly strong defense to keep them in games even when it's not all on their terms and have this trump card to win these really close games. it's very very clever 

    Some teams will study this though and break it down with ability and tactics. It’s still got a lot of luck involved ie our bad kicking in both games affected the result margin and the result. 

    And in the Semi vs Blues it was clear that we hadn’t trained ( or not much or not capable of) carrying out a plan when behind and trying to win in a short period. 

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    1000% credit for Collingwood on excelling in close games. That's the sole reason why they won the flag this year.

    It's no secret that they have been doing scenario based training ever since McRae took over. They copped their harsh lessons in last year's finals, but it paid dividends this year. 

    Their leaders and big name players such as Sidebottom, Crisp and De Goey stepped up in the big moments when their team needed it. Our leaders and big names such as Gawn, Trac, Kozzie and Viney let us down in the critical dying minutes of the Pies and Carlton finals. Other than than, our 2023 finals series was much improved from 2022.

     

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    23 hours ago, spirit of norm smith said:

    From the AFL website 

    And only one team lost more close games than North Melbourne (2-5), with Melbourne (4-6) putting its supporters through several thrillers, including losing its two finals by a combined nine points. 

    Round 8: Beat Gold Coast by five points
    Round 10: Lost to Port Adelaide by four points
    Round 11: Lost to Fremantle by seven points
    Round 13: Beat Collingwood by four points
    Round 16: Lost to Greater Western Sydney by two points
    Round 18: Beat Brisbane by one point
    Round 19: Beat Adelaide by four points
    Round 22: Lost to Carlton by four points
    Qualifying Final: Lost to Collingwood by seven points
    Semi Final: Lost to Carlton by two points

    Record: 4-6

    We lost the Freo game fair and square. We were playing catch up footy the entire second half and they kept responding to our challenges in the last quarter.

    The Collingwood final I'll cop as a loss. They came out harder and more ferocious than us (aside from the Maynard garbage) and kicked their goals in bursts as they did the entire season. They looked more prepared for a final that we were. We left our run too late.

    Edited by Bring-Back-Powell

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    Yeh we stuffed up a bit.... but that Brisbane win was one of the greatest wins ive seen in person.

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    Win nailbiters, win flags. 

    The Grand Final was a margin under a goal and so forth..

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    On 08/11/2023 at 14:09, Bring-Back-Powell said:

    We lost the Freo game fair and square. We were playing catch up footy the entire second half and they kept responding to our challenges in the last quarter.

    The Collingwood final I'll cop as a loss. They came out harder and more ferocious than us (aside from the Maynard garbage) and kicked their goals in bursts as they did the entire season. They looked more prepared for a final that we were. We left our run too late.

    Don't take this the wrong way as I think Trac is one of our best players but towards the end of the season he had trouble impacting games in the first halves. Would storm home in the second but often we were playing catch up too often.

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    On 07/11/2023 at 18:30, BDA said:

    I've moved on from 23. its all about 2024 now.

    We fared very well given our plethora of injuries. It was an unlucky year losing quality players every three weeks. I wish we had recruited another big fwd but I still feel confident about next year.

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