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They didn’t get anywhere near us at the time we played them

Go and watch Collingwood and Adelaide stream through the middle on the turnover with lethargic Melbourne not able to cover it. So identical it’s amazing how short sighted the media are. If you disagree, how do you think teams beat us last year?

The “teams have worked us out, this is the blue print” media narrative is utter crap. Teams beat us the same way last year. It happened because we were off and couldn’t cover as well. When teams try that against us when we are on it blows up in their face.

Burgo had the luxury of a largely uninterrupted injury run. Makes all the difference. The injuries we are getting aren’t the fitness guys fault. They are joints and knocks etc. They are the law of averages coming back around. I was hoping the great law of averages man in the sky would give us a few extra years before coming for us.

It’s not the max injury in isolation but the trend of injuries coming through consistently and it’s effect on our ability to play out games on top of coming into loading. Max is the icing on the cake hopefully. Hard to get everything lined up for a strong run home from here I think. All good. We have a five year window with this squad and lots can and will happen.

Oh well. It was good being reigning premiers. A good pre season and I go the next and we will be every chance again

That may be spot on.

Probably not. We had a shorter pre season so we’d be somewhat behind. We would plan to be where we need to be come finals though.

So then who comes in and how much more do we lose by?

Yes, that’s it. Only the negative truly care. Perspective is for snobs.

You seem to be having a bad night…

Loading is still a factor. Our midfield broke tackles with ease early in the season. Now they get done every time. We also can’t hold a tackle to save ourselves. That’s fatigue and fatigue alone. the bigger concern for me is injuries. We need a chance to get some team continuity to build form. We have injured players playing, we have injured players in and out. We have idiots suspending themselves. The comp is too close to overcome that if it continues. Long time to go though. aside from fitness and injury our predictability when we are off is a liability and makes us look really stupid. I don’t think changing it is the answer. We looked so dumb today. the Sydney and pies games were eerily similar at the contest. The ball landed in their laps time and time again. Some of that is game plan. Some of it luck. It’s hard to watch though. the ease with which they walked through the middle was also really hard to watch. Made us look like a bottom side. what’s also really hard to listen to is the Collingwood supporters thinking they were hard done by with the umpires. God they are insufferable. Perhaps we will run over the league at the end of the year with a super loading mid season. I know we aren’t as bad as we look. The positive is we were in winning positions every loss despite looking genuinely awful.

Injuries mainly

Our predictability while an asset when we are up and running just makes us easy to play against when we are a bit off. We just make it look so easy for them.

No one

This games not over and we may win it but I can’t help but think injuries are going to take our shot at back to back. If we get a clear run at it at some point maybe not but we have had no luck. The football gods want it to go elsewhere perhaps this year. We will never look like the team we were last year without continuity. The great unspoken truth of the industry is fitness wins flags and we just can’t get it going. I’ve been team loading for the last two weeks but it becomes irrelevant if you can’t stay on the park.

We’re the dumbest team in the land

This five minutes is important

Finish the quarter boys. We are still not ourselves. Guarding space. Second to the ball. It’s hard watching us struggle when they up their pressure. Still looks like some have heavy legs. Petracca. He couldn’t be tackled six weeks ago. Now it’s easy. Despite looking ordinary we are up and in the game.

Our set up at contest seems to be a losing one again this week. Spilling out to pies players like it did swans last week. we look a bit lost ball in hand. Taking the wrong option often. Need to learn when not to roost but to weave through. Partly fitness issue

She’s in the kane Cornes league of journalism but presents as if she has integrity.

There’s those that see the game as coaches and those who see it as journalists. the afl media are the most reactive short sighted bunch going around. They refuse to dig into detail and make bold predictions without consequence. They refuse to see trends, history etc as relevant in their analysis. Plainly because it doesn’t sell. Some pretend to look at detail when making a claim, but really don’t. Like David king. Most just make short sighted claims that will get clicks. coaches have to see the long term. They play the season as a long game with many small ones within. They try things out. They manage situations, form etc. we were 10-0. Surely from there you manage things to make sure you are cherry ripe when it matters. History tells you from 10-0 you are a huge chance at a prelim at worst. I don’t think it matters who we lose to. We have to lose and it’s better to lose now, while we are without question, loading, injured and sick. the season is long. The game is too hard aerobically and the competition too tight to have an essendon 2000 season these days. to those who are in the sky is falling down camp. We almost beat Sydney while playing like [censored] and everything that could go wrong did go wrong against freo. Both games we were in dominant positions at one point aswell, showing that while we have legs we look fine. I’m not claiming we are a lock for the grand final but I dont think much is wrong with where we are currently at.

Didn’t melksham have an issue with hogan a few years back too?

Our forward issues stem from over all work rate. Particularly through the middle. our defensive issues stem from work rate. Particularly through the middle. our lack of execution of skills stems from fitness. It was clear at the ground the past fortnight we were playing with heavy legs. We are not only going through some turbulence on the injury front we are probably going through a spike in training load. Banged up and tired. It only takes a few percent drop off in energy to look sluggish. These problems will start to resolve as we start to come back into fitness. We rely on everyone running on top of the ground to maintain structures and create the imposing defensive setup we have. The season is long. Last year I thought we were done after the gws game. We look exactly the same right now.

Hard game to pick apart. sydney looked about a 6 goal better side most of the night. Our midfield showed up for a quarter and then went to bed. I think they got the better of the umpiring over the night but that might be my in game bias. Those last two goals were as soft as you’ll find. the way they and freo have been first to the ball all game once it hits the ground says to me we are either playing with heavy legs or we are being lazy or at times it looks like we are looking at our positioning within our structure instead of getting our hands on it. we have lost our aerial superiority. Freo are big and strong but I don’t see why Sydney beat us so comprehensively in the air. we looked terrible tonight and almost won it. It’s hard to piece it all together to tell a story yet. there are similarities to last year and I lean toward us starting to load our players on the track combined with losing some key players and some in game losses having huge impact. We started out and did what we need to and now we enter the real grind of the season. A lot of top four sides will lose games they should win in the next two months. Our offensive issues seem to stem from where we win the ball back. The closer to their goal we get it back the harder it is to employ our forward system. When we win it back at half back and the wing our forwards know what to do. When we win it back at full back the opposition can set up and our talls can’t lead and get out numbered at contest. Fritta loves those leads sideways across the 50 that work when you win it back high enough but they don’t work in a flooded backline. i didn’t notice where Sydney employed their spare but it looked like we were comprehensively out worked across the ground. I still think we are at worst a prelim team, provided we come out of this slump.