Wiseblood

Yep. The Sun were saying today that they should now be shooting for more than just the Top 8. A fortnight ago they were struggling, had nothing up forward and were on a hiding to nothing. The media are far more fickle than anyone else and should be ignored because of it.

Positives? At least we aren't Carlton. Or St. Kilda. Or Brisbane. Or the Gold Coast. Our improvement will continue to come from the plethora of players we have in the 30-60 game bracket, which is much of the current senior side. I'm interested to see the response, not just from the players, but from the coaches box as well. Will we line up with one off the back of the square, or will Goodwin look for us to go man on man? The result was a shocker, and the performance was highly disappointing, but it's not the end of the world.

The back line at the moment is a shambles, I think we can all agree on that. But I also think the back line is being left exposed too often by the game plan. By pushing most of our players up the ground in the hope that we can lock it in our forward line and score goals, we then leave our back line open to the counter attack and we look ridiculous when it happens. Lever was supposed to be the sort of player who would help in this regard, but teams are manning him up and making him more accountable which limits his ability to be the player we want him to be. Not only that, but our midfield takes some of the blame with this also. When we aren't pressuring and we aren't harrassing the ball carrier we allow the opposition very easy entries into our defensive 50. We don't have enough time to push back and support, and thus we allow them to kick goals with ease while we struggle to get one for 10 minutes. Goodwin has at least tried to develop his own game style, rather than copy someone else's, which is commendable, but he also needs to sit down this morning and realise that their are severe deficiencies within this style that need to be fixed as soon as possible. To me, this will be either the making of him as a coach, or will see his tenure at the club end sooner than we all want it too. If he can suck it up and make the changes he needs to, rather than being stubborn and just sticking with things the way they are, then I can see us moving forward positively as a club. If not, then we'll see us win a few, lose a few and probably miss finals again. That will be an unacceptable outcome for all involved. And as others have mentioned, we need to get a proper second ruckman into the side. I don't care if it's Pedersen, Weideman or even Mitch King for that matter. We need someone who can be a positive part of the contest for us rather than a bloke who isn't even 190cms tall.

Yep, I mentioned this in one of my earlier posts in this thread as well. We crowd the forward line to ensure we keep it in there, or we are ready to pick off the quick kick and get it back in there, but as we've seen it leaves us wide open to the slingshot off half back that we are generally powerless to stop. It needs to be fixed, quickly.

My wife would argue I'm not calm at all. I can go from jubilation to downright anger in a matter of seconds when the game is on. I just feel as though going over the top, making outlandish statements etc. is a waste of time. The game is done and dusted so I'll look ahead. It puts my mind at ease at any rate. And yes, the Tigers game will go someway to defining where our season is headed. We'll be serious underdogs but we generally match up against Richmond quite well. Our response will be very intriguing.

I have no idea why this needs to be a thread on it's own, and I don't ever think I'll find out why. pWiseblood.

Plenty of players in the gun after that one. Two players should come in - one being Tyson, the other being (hopefully) Weideman to play as the second tall and to give Max a proper chop out in the ruck. Who goes out? Take your pick of Harmes, Wagner, Bugg, Fritsch and probably Melksham. I can't see Goody making huge changes, but it also wouldn't surprise to see 3 or 4 changes. I'd expect Hunt, Stretch and Hannan to possibly get a look in as well.

This is the big one for me. I won't go over the top with it like your last line, but the above needs to be addressed by the club. Goodwin said in his press conference this evening that we need to get back to playing to our 'strengths' and that today we didn't play our sort of football. That's all well and good, but what you mentioned above has happened in pretty much every game we've played in this season. We have 6-7 repeat entries for maybe 1 goal, then they'll run it off half back and score. It's hard to watch and must be deflating for the players. Something needs to be done about this as we won't get anywhere near finals if this continues.

I'm with you, red. It's a very, very disappointing loss that we have to swallow today, but I'm very interested in what Goodwin and the players do from here. While much lies at the feet of Goodwin, some of the players have to take responsibility for their performances as well. A big 8 days lie ahead.

It was. I'm not worried as such, I think frustration was the overriding emotion for most of the day. But to watch us put the cue in the rack the way we did was the thing that got me worried. Lever has made us worse because we don't know how to use him properly. I say we, but it's really on Goodwin. Teams know how Lever plays and they're doing everything they can to drag him away from the play. We can fix it, but it's clearly going to take a little time. What I want to see is a response. Alright, we've been done by 10 goals today in an embarrassing performance. What are we going to do about it? Will we do the same things again next week and let Richmond put us to the sword, or will we make some changes to both personnel and the game plan, and look to fix up some of our issues? It's going to be a long 8 days ahead...

We have a problem. If you took away the scores from today's game, you would think it was much closer than the scorelines suggests. Disposals pretty close, we have more inside 50s, more contested possessions... although we got beaten generally in clearances and their tackling work showed greater desire, while ours was a disgrace when you factor in that they had more of the ball, yet had almost 40 more tackles. That just shouldn't happen. Having said that, you wouldn't have thought with well over 50 inside 50's that we went two quarters without a goal if you didn't know the score. But there in lies the problem. At the moment our efficiency going forward is terrible for large parts of the game. There are times when we pour it on and look a million bucks, but these seem to happen for only a quarter at a time. From then on when score in little spurts but the opposition pick up quickly that our general tactic is to bomb it long into our forward line, and if we don't mark it (which we usually don't) then our intent is to keep it in there for as long as possible to try and manufacture a goal, either from a stoppage or for us to mark a quick kick out of defence and set up again. However, it's not working. It's not even close to working. You could argue that missing McDonald really hurts our structure, and that we didn't handle the conditions well at all, but this has been going on for a month. Goodwin and the FD must be sitting up there in the box and seeing this happen. How could they not? We have all the talent in the world but it's going to waste with a gameplan that just isn't playing to our strengths. Then we have the 'press' that leaves us susceptible to goals out the back, which we gave up ad nauseum today. When we get the ball in our forward half we push numbers forward to do everything we can to keep it there. When we don't, the opposition is just a couple of handballs away from getting out the back and it's goodnight from there. We look second rate when we do this. The team haven't worked out how to use Lever effectively yet and it's hurting us big time. What I'm trying to get at is that we've seen the same things happen over and over and over again... and nothing has been done. We can't expect massive changes during a season, but we need to see some tweaks to the game plan to fix up these mistakes. Forget blasting individual players as right now it's not the issue. The issue is the game plan and how the opposition works it out quickly and we don't react to it at all. I'm not going to go banana's after this loss - it's a long season with plenty of footy to be played. But make no mistake - Goody is under the pump a little here. He was smashed after quarter time by the best in the business and he didn't know what to do. He needs to show that he's not stubborn and willing to make the changes necessary to harness the talent in our side. If he doesn't then, well, he's in a quite a bit of trouble. Lastly - the only thing I will really have a big dig at here is his decision to play Harmes in the ruck. Really, Goody? Why do this when we have Weideman and Pedersen, both tall enough to play there, running around at Casey? It makes zeros sense. Heck, even throw Frosty in there for a run. At least he's tall. Supporters are right to be annoyed at him doing this as there are far better options for us.

Yes, and coaching against the best in the business. This will be a good test for him in the second half.

Frustrated, not worried. We have done plenty right, we just haven't taken our chances as yet. When we do, like we did in the first term, then we'll be back on top and in control of the match.

Absolutely. Worry and frustration are two different things - I'm frustrated that we didn't take our chances, but not worried about the rest of the game ahead. We are in the game. We need to correct how we're playing - fix up the fumbles, take our chances and we win.

They kicked 4 goals for the term, we kicked 4 points. They just took their chances, we didn't. Plenty of time to fix things up.

Not worried. It's 8 points. Well and truly in the game.

That is such a disappointing piece of play. We had far too many at that contest, yet they still won it, and goal from it. If we don't get better at that then we aren't winning this game of footy as the Hawks will keep making us pay.

One thing that keeps popping up each week - we've had 26 inside 50's to 14, yet we are just 2 points up. They have had a scoring shot on 10 of those occasions, while we have had just 12. We really need to work in fixing up this issues, although I think missing McDonald makes things a little more difficult.

Another [censored] [censored] goal from the Hawks. How many are we going to give up today?

Thanks Captain Obvious.

God I hate Luke Breust. Such a sheep dog. Great first term although a few fumbles cost us. Our hardness at the contest, pressure up forward and willingness to outnumber them in key areas was excellent to watch. Plenty of players had ripper first terms, headlined by Dean Kent with 3 goals. Big term for us coming up. The Hawks will no doubt settle a little and Clarko will tweak a few things. How we respond to that is crucial.

How good was that transition? Fantastic footy finishes with a goal to Salem!

He has been terrific so far. Just before he effected a smother that kept the ball in our forward half and it's resulted in this Gawn shot on goal.

Costly because of where it was, but there will be plenty of fumbles today in the conditions.

We just gave up a classic Melbourne goal. Absolute classic.