Pardon the obscure title, but it's the best way to sum this year up.

Our last game revealed yet again our forward line problems and other issues and why it was in fact our last game.

I can still remember the joy from winning both games in S.A and the incredible accuracy on goal against port at their home ground.

We came back four from five and didn't we celebrate. Despite two years of final loss straight  sets, we were back. 

Then it's hard to say what really happened.

Maybe we believed our own hype plus the media declaration that the lions were finished.

We certainly turned up like they were.

Since that game we have been all over the place. But mostly in the wrong spot and not only losing games but being demolished at times.

We have ironically been.... consistently inconsistent.

Our fwd line again was the big problem. It seemed incapable of kicking anything near 100 points well too often. ( This was achieved all of four times).l 

The finger pointing at Petty and Goody has not been wrong. Week after week and month after month Petty was backed despite returning one goal every fortnight 

But something else happened to our fwd line. 

At around the midway point of the season,Jvr and Fritta were off the boil.

Jvr averaged the same amount of goals this year as per last but most of them were kicked in the front end and at any rate he didn't improve goal tally this season.

Kozzie was the same. He averaged the same number of sausage rolls in 24 as 23. And again like Jvr fell off mid season bar a cameo against the lions .

Fritta as mentioned was well down in goal power this year compared to his previous seasons. 

Turner apart from last night gets an honorary mention but it's hard to know where he fits in.

Chandler too. For me he doesn't hit the scoreboard enough. 

So once again our fwd line has been a debacle. 

I guess Kozzie gets excused somewhat for having to spend more time in the middle. Maybe Jvr a little having to spend his time often rucking in the middle 

So a struggling fwd line that lacked depth struggled even more because our ruck  stocks lacked depth.

Which brings us to the midfield letting us down this year.

Despite finishing in a flurry , Jack Viney was  well and truly down on his wonderful form of 2023. A long way.

Oliver has been fantastic and.......well.....um.. horrible. But he was last year when we made it to a prelim.

And now  apparently injured

Tracca injured obviously a huge loss and our best mid until he went down.

But there is the problem. Our midfield depth includes players like Sparrow and Billings . Hmmmm. Well not even depth. They olare our regular players.

In 21 it seemed really hard for players to break into a solid, successful and tight knit outfit.

2024 seemed the exact opposite. We seemed to be scraping blokes together to field a team. Blokes that too often didn't perform but then didn't get dropped. I'm not saying that players didn't perform their best because they were not relegated to the twos but many players didn't have to look over their collective shoulders most of the season.

This is not a thread to provide an analysis of want went wrong. That would take pages. As well as qualifications others on this site have in spades over me.

It's a opportunity to vent and raise concerns.

I've vented. Thanks. It helps.

But my concerns are...well.... concerning .

Anb has moved on. A massive lost.

Gawn and May are showing their age.... injury wise. We don't have a second ruck or emergency for that matter. 

We are not entirely sure  how long Tracca will remain a demon.

Will premier cup and champagne players like  Lever and Salo return close to their heights?

The upside...there are a great deal of positives with some great young talent constantly proving their worth.

But for me there is mostly a lot of doubt heading into 2025.

It's been our worst season in the last four.

We talk about premiership windows. Well if they are real then it would be a fair call to say ours closed this year.

Or is it the case of it just being dropped temporarily until all the stars align again and we win another flag.

That would require a great deal of luck but we would have to make a great deal of it ourselves through some savvy recruiting. No more club hand me downs if you will.

I don't want to make this thread about should Goody ...he has the credits in the bank but if he pulled a Biden, I'm not entirely against such a move .

It could help for us creating a fresh start.

Probably wise to handball at this point.

What can we do that won't see us stuck in the bottom eight for the next four years?

Can we prise open the window enough to win the ultimate prize in the next two years or is that unrealistic?

I mean even despite finishing where we did if we had won our four close games the reality is, we would have finished top four.

I imagine the seasons are going to become even closer each year. Especially with the introduction of another team.

So now is the time to be super aggressive. We need to go after every player we can afford to and be ruthless in our pruning.

If there is any window left, then let's throw caution to the wind and go for it 

Edited August 24, 20241 yr by leave it to deever

Clearly our worst season since 2019 and I’d rank 2017 and 2016 over it too. It’s probably on par with 2015. 

Even though we looked good after winning those 2 games in Adelaide, the midfield problems were starting to show.

Do we finish 11 or 14?

It's Ball Use.  The current crop are awful with ball in hand.

The reason fans aren't turning up and the game style looks a mess is because there's barely any decent kicks on show - therefore no flow/lots of cheap turnovers.  Lack of confidence makes it worse.

It's not going to be any better next year.  There are no skillful on-ballers coming through to chop-out the scrappy contested players.  None.  We just have to rely on constested ball and get way more of it.

Chocco can only do so much when the skillset ceiling is LOW.

 

It just goes to show how much the loss of Angus Brayshaw affected us.

This loss cannot be underestimated. In fact, it left a massive hole in our team in a variety of ways. Especially, in regard to team structure, team strategy and team spirit.

Then there's the off field dramas and various distractions. Many of which we cannot discuss.

But definitely Clayton Oliver not having a proper full pre-season didn't help.

Then you've got the problems we have in our midfield and forward line regarding connection.

It goes to show why we were so desperate to try and get Harley Reid in the draft. Although, I have been happy with the development of Caleb Windsor and Koltyn Tholstrup.

Plus the injuries to Petracca, Melksham (coming back from an ACL), Ben Brown, etc.

The warning signs were there in the first loss to Brisbane at the MCG. The loss against Fremantle in the Northern Territory was humiliating. But I think we all knew that deep down the season was over as soon as Petracca got seriously injured against Collingwood.

In the end, we will need to do a serious and thorough review of the entire football department and playing list during the off season. Ideally, I would like an external review, but I think it will just be an internal review. All, I hope is that it is done well and that the issues we have are identified and actions are put in place to resolve them.

46 minutes ago, Kent said:

Do we finish 11 or 14?

 Impossible to finish 11th.

We'll either end up 12th, 13th or 14th depending on how the Saints and Suns fare.

Suns won so now sitting 13th, if Saints win today we drop to 14th and Pick 5.😁

Dees footy since 21

Been good, been bad and now ugly.

and rides off into the sunset.

Adios amigos ;)

It does feel like we have been slowly salami sliced into irrelevance since 2021. Biggest worry is that we haven’t recruited anyone of note since then. Too many vanilla B graders. Windsor looks OK but he won’t fix out midfield problems. JVR is no Luke Jackson. We need a dedicated key forward and not a jack of all trades but master of none. 

Edited August 25, 20241 yr by John Crow Batty

We have deficiencies but so does every other side. What we do need is a well drilled game plan that is competitive.
 

At present we aren’t competitive against sides that run, hog possessions, share the ball around, utilising the whole ground. Freo, Pies, Lions have humiliated us every game this year. Our game plan and players can’t cope with constant ball movement. 
 

And it only works when everyone understands their roll and they practice it over and over. I think this year our game plan kept changing by the month with Goody tweaking things when we werent winning to the point the players aren’t playing freely. 

The draftees have been pretty good since 2021, 2022 looks a bit thin at the moment but hopes are still there for Jeffo but the trades have been disasterous.  

2021 JVR & McVee ✔️

2022 Jefferson ❓

2023 Windsor & Tholstrup ✔️

Pretty sure we haven't had the salary cap space to attract above average to very good players 2021 to 2023. Even Grundy who was high priced came with Collingwood paying a big chunk. 

Prior to 2021 Bernie Vince and Jordan Lewis were good in's for the time, leading to Hibberd and Melksham, then Brown, Lever, May and Langdon = flag!

Edited August 26, 20241 yr by Dee*ceiving