Garbo

We deliberately lost the game I just can’t for the life of me work out why

Looked like a preseason zero pressure game most of the night least from our side, to many players look like they ready to head to Bali in a month. Most disappointing is blues didn’t look to much more interested, if dees had of given 2 [censored] the game was ours to win. Where would we be without Kozzie, basically every attacking play was either finished or started with him if only a few more player had his level of endeavour. lot of senior players lowered there colours tonight if the club persists with this group we only have ourself to blame when we get more of the same next year.

Only positive is we are further behind

I seem to recall us copping it for getting 23k vs gws in round 1 in the pouring rain on a late Sunday afternoon while the f1 gp was on. Never want to hear another word from anyone in the media about our crowds being bad again unless they apply it equally

Funny looking back at trac you can see everything he is today both the good and bad really shows how little the core of who they are changes

It’s a bit glass half full or half empty, if we can start being more consistent vs teams outside the 8 and still perform vs the teams in the 8 as we already have then we would be in the 8, I guess that’s all I’m suggesting. If you want to take it the other way that our true level is that of a side round 14th and we got lucky in a few games vs top sides then I could also see your point

Found this graphic representing teams vs top 8 and bottom 10 sides this year and noticed we are currently the 9th rank side and best performing side outside the top 8 vs top 8 sides, the 8 sides above are the current top 8. Conversely we are the 14th best side against bottom 10 teams. We should be even higher vs top 8 sides if we just closed out the games vs gws and pies too. All this goes to show maybe we aren’t as bad as people think and not as far off as it looks

Think the issue is most high picks even if they are raw you can see something special even if it’s just a single action in a game, kolt hasn’t shown that yet leading many to question his high selection, much in the same way they have with Jefferson the only difference there is because he is a tall there isn’t the expectation quite so soon. Personally I agree he needs more time but I do struggle to see why he was taken so high not that it’s his fault more a question for the club

Yep that was a long time in the making those umpires are just as culpable in what happened

Seems a very poor kick and still lacks intensity I’m not sure more size will help at fixing that

We look stuffed at the end of that qtr, get the feeling north are going to roll over the top of us

looks like a game of 2 equals

Yep as weird as it seems a rookie coach is the way to go, you would think experience would be helpful but it seems to work against coaches the longer they are in the system

Even if player ratings were a valid metric they would only be valid in comparing players playing the same role, obviously a player who is on ball all game is going to have a higher rating than someone who in some other role like a small fwd it doesn’t mean that player is empirically better or contributing more to the teams success. To show the absurdity of using player ratings Ed Richard’s is ranked number 1 in the afl while Nick Daicos ist even in the top 20 in fact Daicos isn’t even the pies number one player by these rankings, but I doubt anyone would dispute he’s not there best player if not the best player in the afl and certainly ahead of Ed Richard’s and despite both also playing as midfielders. Let’s see end of year where he sits in the b and f as I’ll be surprised if he’s inside the top 10 let alone top 5

2021 is 5 years ago start of next year, we are in a different phase now, lever is also not the player he was then and hasn’t been for serval years, same with fritsch. We can’t continue to hang onto players who were the hero’s of yesteryear it’s time we moved on or we are just going to end up like wc in a few years and be in a long term rebuild with no end in sight, time to take some pain now and maybe we can go again like pies the last few years. They moved all Australian players in Grundy trelour and Adam’s and have only been the better for it

Wouldn’t have anyone off the table this trade period outside Gawn, Pickett and the rookies in Windsor, Langford and Xavier. I’d be considering any serious offers on the rest, if for example gc offered us pick 8 for lever we would be silly not to take it

Oliver is not even close to our top 5 these days not even top 10, pies were ruthless a few years ago in getting Grundy, Trelour and Adam’s out plus changing the coach and they have got 1 flag and maybe a 2nd to show for it, we need to be doing something similar but alas we will just go round and not contend again because of people thinking like you that Oliver is still an asset rather than a liability to the team if we want out of this hole we need to make some big changes

Hasn’t shown much which is disappointing but nether has anyone taken immediately after him that we might have been considering taking in his place, so hard to say if we stuffed up or just a weak draft. Must be tough seeing the players we took in next draft go past you but he isn’t exactly unique I’m sure, Jefferson, Laurie and Jed Adam’s to name a few must feel even more frustrated. I’d probably try getting him in a position to get more time on the ball as he isn’t a natural fwd but that would mean going back to the vfl

Where to from here, while the effort seems to be there most weeks (if we forget about the first month) the skills aren’t up to par and haven’t been for serval years now. It’s my experience that is rare for players to improve there skills to any significant degree over their career double so when they are already senior players. Given that is a big clean out at the end of the year required before we can start the climb back up the ladder, potentially making the next few years a complete right off or do we keep these players round unless we have players that can push them out immediately. I’m talking players like Oliver, May, Landon, Sparrow, Fritsch and even Trac and not just the fringe players that come and go every off season. The idea being if they weren’t round it would let us fast track the next generation and get more suitable players in exchange as well.

Just look at Curnow over at blues to see the same thing, this is the time of year when it shows the most

Same old same old sort of result, some hard calls need to be made on some of our older players as we clearly aren’t in a contending phase anymore. Do we move on players like May, Salem, Oliver and Langdon so we can bring in some younger players who can be there for the next push at the risk of even more pain in the short term. We can probably get some picks back for some of them and cap space would let us bring in some other players if there was some interest

Even more disappointing when you look at a player like Archer May who is a mid season pickup for Essendon and already looks twice the player, why do you persist when there is obviously better players not even in the system

It’s always the difference between best and worst that determine who is playing finals and who doesn’t

Now do the crows for comparison

Could be better but also could be worse, guess the positive is at least we are ahead