Wiseblood

While I get the angst about it, I believe the cut off date for the finals tickets was tomorrow (Tuesday), meaning had we got in supporters may have only had a few days to prepare and know how to buy them. Giving them some warning allowed it to reach more members. Imagine if we get in and people start going off about not knowing how to get their tickets? Either way, I get the angst, but I don't think the club jumped the gun. They were just giving the fans some information to give them time if we made it.

The stat I found said he went at 91% efficiency with just the 1 clanger. You might need your eyes checked.

Good on him for getting on the front foot and addressing it. No doubt they all woke up very, very flat this morning and the last thing you want to do is talk to the media about it - but he did it, and now it's done. Onwards and upwards.

I want them to make a statement on the field in 7 months time. Words mean little right now.

I can't add much more than the others. He gets a ton of the ball but a the same time his decision making, disposal and want to try and do too much hold him back. The other thing is that he doesn't have an extra string to his bow. He is a pure mid without the real ability to play a half forward or half back. I'd like to see the market tested on what he is worth, but at the same time I still think there might be some scope for improvement. The problem is that he has gone backwards for 3 years. It's not really a good sign.

Spot on. To go with your point about the gameplan, I think so bigger decisions need to be made about our best 25 going forward. I'm using him purely as an example, but is Dom Tyson the way forward for us? I've been a fan but he seems to have gone backwards this year, especially with his disposal and decision making. Delisting the players outside our best 30 isn't really going to push us forward. We'll do it, but there are bigger decisions on more important players that need to be made.

This is until next year when he dominates in the first few games and you declare him the greatest player to ever wear the #11. Have a stiff drink, take a deep breath and calm down big fella. It will do you some good.

As if it doesn't hurt them. We're questioning it based on absolutely nothing. We're making stuff up, now. Absolutely it will hurt them, and so it should.

Let's be honest, here - we only have ourselves to blame. If we had done the right thing on Saturday we would not have had to worry about anything else. Adelaide have nothing to do with it.

I hope it's the latter too, yet I think it's somewhere in the middle. We probably ended up where we were always going to end up. I think Goodwin, being a first year coach, gets a pass mark... just. I think it's the players who deserve some heat. How do they fix it? I'm not sure. I don't think someone like Jones will be traded, but do we make the decision to put someone like Watts up for trade? I'm not sure if we need to go back to the draft, either. I think we need more experience in the side, so if we can flip a few for some established players then I think we do it. Either way, it's going to be a long off season.

I think it's just inexperience and a little stubbornness. The game plan worked superbly in the first half of the year and contributed in a big way to wins over the Saints, Adelaide, Doggies etc. They probably didn't want to let that go and just stuck with what they thought worked, regardless of the outcome. On Saturday it would have been, in hindsight, better to go man on man and make sure we had more numbers around the ball. We didn't do it, the Pies planned for our two off the back of the square and the rest was history. We can only hope Goodwin is already looking at ways to improve it, and he'll hopefully learn to make sure he has a few more tricks up his sleeve in the future.

We are a few tweaks, a few smart list management decisions and a strong summer on the track away from continuing our improvement and staying ahead of that pack. Not to mention a decent run on the injury front. And I agree - there will be hell to pay if we don't make the eight next year. Heads will roll.

We certainly made it very hard for ourselves. Is it totally down to leadership? Did Goodwin not have a Plan B outside of moving players around, so when the conditions/momentum changed we didn't have something else to fall back on? Are we not preparing in the right manner? So many questions, and hopefully we can find a few answers over the summer. We do need to be ruthless without going over the top in the trade period, and Goodwin needs to sit down and reassess the game plan, as clubs had it covered in the second half of the year.

Couldn't agree more, Dappa. I think more will come to realise this in the coming few months when the anger fades a little. The fact we were in a position to play finals, when you consider we had Hogan and Gawn out for long periods, had Jones and Viney also miss extensive time, had to throw around players in different positions to fill the gaps and also deal with (very silly) suspensions from others, means we had done very, very well to be in the positions we were in. Doesn't excuse the fact that we should have made it from where we were, but the future still bodes very well. You'll get smashed for your post, but it doesn't make it any less relevant.

It's a tough one. I'm totally gutted right now. This is a different feeling - much different to the feeling I had from the smashings given out by Geelong and Essendon all those years ago. I dislike this feeling right now, much more than those other ones. No finals is a big, black mark on our season and right now we'll all be justifiably angry and upset about how our season has finished. We [censored] the bed with our destiny in our hands and it's now up to the playing group to draw a line in the sand and ensure that this simply doesn't happen again. Our list is young enough to learn and improve from it. On the flip side, we won more games than last year and saw some genuine improvement in our players. We showed an improved resiliency in the middle of the season when everything was against us, and funnily enough that was when we played our best footy. Most thought we would improve further once we got our stars back, yet we stagnated terribly.

No? Could have fooled me. I'll trot our where I think the club is at and what we need to do to improve to ensure we continue to climb the ladder and eliminate these types of games and seasons. You'll spend the summer wallowing in misery without offering up anything resembling a coherent thought about our way forward. It will just be your usual chest thumping, hollow rhetoric that it always is. You don't look forward, you always look back.

Cesspool it is for the summer, then. Shame. I really do hope this burns the players as deeply as they have ever been burned before. We had it, and we lost it. I hope they go away and take a good, long look at themselves over this summer and put in a pre-season like they've never put in before. We must learn from it and ensure that it doesn't happen again.

So, so cutting. Going the man now, WYL? Nice one.

So does the margin they need to win by creep up as the score goes higher? Let's say the Eagles score 100 points - what is the minimum score the Crows need to keep us in the 8?

Er...

What keeps me going for this game is that, even without Tex, the Crows have so many different avenues to goal. They'll get on a roll at some stage. Eagles will hang around but the Crows will probably score at least 80 points, meaning the Eagles need to put up 100 to make it.

RING THE DAMN SIREN! CALL THE GAME OFF!! I LOVE THE CAMRY CROWS!!

Here's the thing: If Adelaide win, this place is bearable over the summer. If the Eagles do it becomes a cesspool. C'mon Adelaide, do us all a favour and win!

It's probably me looking for anything positive, but I can't see the Crows being happy with going into the finals on the back of two losses. They'll want to roll the Eagles, cost them a finals spot and head into the finals with at least a little bit of momentum. That's what I'm hoping for, anyway.

His stance is bemusing, and borderline funny because he is sticking with it even in the face of irrefutable facts.