At the break of Gawn

McGovern is out for the game. Might be in doubt to play us next week.

I’m not questioning their effort, I’m questioning their ball winning ability. If they’re not winning the ball, then the opposition mids are. You can throw all your stats at me, but when we let the opposition prime mids get 34 and 35 disposals each with 2.1 goals between them, and lose contested possession, then it’s a smashing. Do you know when we also got smashed in the middle? The Lions game, Swans in OR and the Port game which we only really got over the line with unbelievable accuracy.

Second this. Can you guys please have a robust discussion regarding our midfield? I don’t want to hear pressure and tackling stats, I want to focus on pure ball in hand stuff because we’ve been poor all year except for one or two games.

This just simply isn’t true. Cripps and Walsh both had 34 and 35 disposals and kicked 2.1 between them. If Cerra had run out the game he also would have had 30+. To blame the defenders on the 5 centre clearances is also extremely short sighted and black and white thinking. Our defenders rely heavily on the pressure up the ground and Carlton had numerous exits at the front of the stoppage which allowed them easy looks. Do you think the Dogs in 2021 blame all of Melbourne’s centre clearance goals on their defence? No they blame it on their mids who allowed clean exit from the centre square. Let’s also analyse your “mids are having a good season comment” by looking at our 3 prime mids. Viney: Averaging 21 disposals a game - very average for a full time mid and clearly down on form. Don’t throw me pressure stats, I’m talking about pure ball in hand stuff. Oliver - Averaging 25 disposals compared to his usual 29 and only 4 clearances compared to his usual 9. Petracca- Matching his usual career average but has struggled with a tag. If he didn’t go forward he probably would have finished sub 20 disposals for the match. As a team we’ve also only won contested possessions 4 times and clearances 5 which used to be our one wood. For a team that supposed to be focused on “contest and defence” our contest work, especially in the middle, has been lacking all year. I can absolutely guarantee you that Goody would not be happy with our midfield to date. I know our forwards were poor on Thursday night, but to give our midfield a pass is just crazy when they’re posting record low numbers. What makes it even more disappointing is that Gawn is having an almighty year but our mids haven’t capitalised at all. None of our mids except for Petracca (mainly on his score involvements) would be in the conversation for AA this year.

I definitely didn’t see it coming either. I thought we’d expose their defence. It was revealed before the game that Voss sat Weitering down for a chat mid week about his role and Carlton’s defensive woes. It certainly paid off for them. Maybe Goody should sit out midfield down and do the same thing…

Although I loved the move of Trac going forward and almost winning the game, I think one thing we’re glossing over is why were we so bad at winning contest in the forward half for the first 2 qtrs? One of main reasons Goody throws Trac forward is when we’re getting smashed at contest in our forward line. Weitering, McGovern, Kemp and Cincotta dominated our forwards. If we’re going to make a tilt at this year’s flag, then Roo, Petty, Turner, Fritsch and Chandler need to be better at contest and one-on-ones.

They got 6 goals from centre clearance. There’s your game. Mini has his work cut out for him because we’ve been garbage all year at clearance.

That last angle actually looked touch

Apart from rounds 1-2 our midfield have been belted all year. wtf is going on in our engine room? Max is having his best season in 5 years and the rest are [censored] the bed.

Is Pickett the worst wet weather small player around? Just never gets near it when it’s wet.

Walsh is running riot against us. Got no answer for him

Lions 2.0 We suck at Thursday nights

Game over for mine. We look way off

I completely understand the gravity of this. Feels like our chances have taken a massive hit

Any budding meteorologists here know what tonight’s weather will be? Seems like a small chance of shower but I wonder if it’ll be dewy again?

They turned things around mainly via their defence. In the last 6 weeks last year their defence was ranked in the top 3 and their ground ball game was off the charts. People bang on about Carlton’s offensive game but it’s actually when they focus on defence it’s where their game goes to the next level.

I’ve just got a feeling (completely illogical) that we’ll get rolled tonight in the second half or last quarter. Is Carlton really that bad to lose 3 in a row or potentially 4? Because I can’t see them beating Sydney at the SCG next week. I hope I’m wrong, but I feel we’ll start well but Carlton will get some momentum and will be hard to stop. Curnow is probably due to kick some on May, while McKay is in ripping form. Their midfield has had a better year so far than our’s and if they get some territory dominance we might struggle to transition out. If we’re going to win, we’ll need to at least break even in clearance and contested possessions, while we’ll need Petty, JVR and Turner to mark well ahead of the ball.

Not necessarily. We made something like 5 changes from OR to round 1. McGovern and Martin are both handy ins, however, I reckon one of Carlton’s biggest oversight is persisting with Pittonet. Since bringing Pitto they’ve gone 1 and 3. They were 4-0 with TDK as sole ruck. Blues supporters have been banging on about getting McGovern back to sure up their defence, but it’s clearly a system issue. Their defence is bottom 6.

Hi @binman In the podcast you mentioned that scores from the back half were less important and that front half scoring from turn-over was becoming more important. According to Daniel Hoyne, 5 of the last 6 premiers were no.1 in scores from the back half. The only one not number 1? Melbourne in 2021. We should be concentrating more on this rather than scores in the front half/territory game which have been a bit of a fallacy for us. Note, Carlton are terrible at scoring from the back half which is why once Collingwood won the territory, Carlton struggled to score.

I’d be really surprised if they bring Martin straight back in considering his history. He’s as good a chance to be subbed off in the first qtr.

I was having a look at the fixture and I find it hard to see how Sydney doesn’t finish on top. They’ve got the easiest fixture from now on by far. As it stands, they don’t have one away game against a top 4 side apart from the Giants, and only two away games against top 8 sides (Port and Essendon).

How bloody good!!! That Fritsch goal was insane. One of the best I’ve seen to seal a match in years!

They’re going through the middle too easily now. Rohan coming on for them has had a big impact

Chin looking like a candidate to be replaced by McAdam if he doesn’t do much more tonight and next Thursday.

Trac being tagged really hurts us because Oliver just isn’t at the same level at the minute. If he was, the opposition would be tagging Oliver instead who handles it far better.