Boots and all

It certainly feels that way re cats v pies. I also agree with everything you have said. For us to win we still need to work to allow the strong parts of our gameplan to be effective. Forward line pressure would help our downfield zone a lot, but it's just not there atm.

I would agree with you if we were losing by 5 goals, but that's simply not the case. We are good enough, we just need to fix up a few skill issues, our leaders hit form and take our chances.

It's interesting to compare the run in our legs between the Freo game and the Pies game. We didn't need to work anywhere near as hard defensively due to the Dockers inability to take on our zone defence. Contrast that with Collingwood and Bulldogs who constantly moved the ball, switched, ran hard at our lines and regularly got in behind our zone, which required us to work harder defensively. Putting the loading argument aside, those sides with the ability to execute a plan that counteracts our defence will make us work a lot harder and possibly cause us to run out of legs near the end of games. I see this as a fitness issue which won't be solved this season. This doesn't mean we can't go all the way, but it does mean we need to take our chances. This is also the difficulty of winning back to back flags. Teams are all gunning for us, working hard to identify a game plan that disrupts our strength. We've been worked out now, good teams are using the same approach to defeat us and we somehow need to adapt. Again, we are not far off, our gameplan still has us in the contest deep into games, but we need to take our chances.

I think the point of going into the pocket is to prevent a clean outlet by their defence, forcing the dump kick and being set up behind the ball to create repeat entries. I also think this requires pressure from our small forwards in particular. There were only a couple of periods where this seemed to work as the Pies kept mopping up the loose ball and finding targets outside 50. Not sure if this was due to lack of pressure in the F50, not being properly set up behind the ball or both.

Early in the third we were all over them but didn't impact the scoreboard, they scored and that was it...the game changed from there.

Yeah, why do our forwards end up under the ball so much and the other team mops up out back...[censored], still fuming about this.

Yeah, well what are we Lingers!! Same old play going forward, same old kick into the pocket, predictable, no plan B.

I can safely say the good teams have us worked out provided they can execute. Dogs game all over again...overrun, sloppy when we get tired, overuse the handball and defensive pressure drops. Barely ran out the game for mine.

They kick straight, we don't that is the simple difference.

BB getting onto the end of that was just arsey.

Cleaning up our disposal would help a lot, just been terrible tonight.

We're done. Gonna run out of legs again.

Can't remember Viney's last touch.

These hospital handballs are killing us.

...and another easy goal.

They've got us here. Seriously, some of these kicks are just terrible. I do like Spargs up the ground a bit.

They're pressure through the midfield is much better than ours. These forward line handball decisions are ridiculous.

How many sitters are we gonna miss [censored]. FFS, then they will kick one. Just too easy.

JJ a little slow tonight.

....and then it goes over the back for an easy clearance. It's infuriating. I think the point is to lock it in there but it's not working.

Why is it that the Pies small forwards always have so much space and Kossie has to work his way through a cast of thousands.

Clean these forward entries up and it would be a slaughter.

Yes. 50 every day

Yay, they kicked a point.

Just got totally outbodied by Howe.