titan_uranus

The "same, tired old plan" that had us enter the round top of the ladder, a game clear of everyone else, with the competition's best percentage, and 16 games removed from a flag? We were bad last night but your hyperbolic negativity will never cease to amaze me.

We're not dropping Fritsch. No matter how angry you are at his game, we're not dropping him. Onus is on him and the coaches to rid him of his selfishness. Not sure Hunt for Bedford is right. Hunt's played defence for two years, so I'm not sure he gets swung forward.

Whilst I'm not suggesting we shouldn't be looking at changes to the small forwards, we didn't make their lives easy by losing at stoppages (so we couldn't hold the ball forward) and not having a tall other than Brown forward of centre to take marks or make a sufficient aerial contest to bring the smalls into the game. Would be hard to be a small forward when we play like that further up the ground. In saying that, I'm really not convinced by Bedford whilst Spargo's game was infuriating.

Our comparatively harder game last week might have been a factor but doesn't explain being belted in clearances in the first half.

Tonight's game was lost in the middle. Can't win when you're beaten soundly in clearances like we were. But IMO we're too short forward of centre so we were too often unable to find someone to hold a bail out grab. Probably didn't help when Gawn and Jackson didn't appear fit.

We either need to play Gawn/Jackson forward more when they're not rucking, or we need to pick Weideman until TMac's back. We can't be that small forward of the ball. Bowey and Salem both struggled tonight. With Rivers and Hunt out of the side, there is competition for their spots. I'm not convinced by Bedford. His Brisbane game was good but he is too fumbly under pressure and with our run home, we're copping pressure each week.

Can't compete against the best when you are beaten in clearances 54-36. They turned that into forward half dominance, with 66 inside 50s to our 46. It's no wonder they had 31 scoring shots to our 18. They did to us what we did to Brisbane. For all our failures, we worked so hard to get it back to a goal difference at the start of the last, but Pickett's miss, Fritsch's miss, then Bedford fumbling when he had the entire forward half empty in front of him killed our momentum and they got their tails up. Gawn and Jackson didn't look match fit, Bowey played his first genuinely poor game of his career, Harmes didn't learn his lessons and kept getting caught trying to break tackles, and we were too short up forward and therefore couldn't take enough get out of jail marks when we needed them. We can't play one tall forward without having one of Gawn and Jackson playing forward as well, so either we do that or we bring Weideman back and drop one of the underperforming small forwards (Bedford was great against Brisbane but really no good since). We don't have much wriggle room with our fixture, so it hurts to drop this one to one of our major competitors, but the swing between the Brisbane game and this game shows that we have to be on for most of our run home or we're going to drop too many games and cede ladder position.

OK, sole tall forward not including the resting ruck. Last year our preferred line up was two tall forwards (Brown and TMac) alongside the two rucks (Gawn and Jackson). Agree with @Lucifers Hero, it's not Bowey. It's Brayshaw, isn't it? Salem went down, we sent Brayshaw back to cover his spot, it turned out Brayshaw was excellent across half-back whilst Jordon has been great on a wing, and Rivers' form wasn't stellar, so when Salem returned Brayshaw held him out.

IMO our forward half work can be better. When we click in the forward half we’re unstoppable - see, eg, the Brisbane game, or the finals last year. But too often we are out-marked, take the wrong option going inside, or miss a shot on goal we should kick. When those happen, we leave the door open for opponents. The stats look good this year compared to last year but we’ve had a comparatively easier fixture, with fewer games against good sides to this point than last year. We’re a much stronger side than some of the lazy pundits in the media suggest, but we can do better IMO.

Happy with those changes. Bedford is up against a continual challenge to hold his spot. I’m happy he’s getting another game but he needs to be much more like the Brisbane game than the Adelaide one to stay in the seniors. Brown is doing more for the side than @Lord Nev suggests but also has a lot more room for improvement than most other posters suggest. He’s getting the chance but if we persist with one tall forward, TMac looms large down the track. Would love to see him hold the marks he’s been dropping of late. That, as much as the relatively modest goal count, is as good a marker IMO of where he is struggling.

IIRC during the commentary they said Adelaide's second (I think?) quarter had season-high pressure for them? (Or did I imagine that...?)

The truth lies somewhere in between, doesn't it? Yes, he's got a role to play that isn't just him kicking bags, yes, as part of our gameplan we need him bringing the ball to ground and he's doing that and yes, he is regularly competing with multiple defenders hanging off him. Agree with all that. Also agree with his work-rate. At the gorund you can see how But also, he is dropping non-pack marks under less pressure, and he's being outworked in one-on-one contests too often. And he's missing set shots that he used to never miss. And he's burning team-mates by snapping shots when he could be passing. He's not "cooked" as some have suggested, but he's also not going as well as your post suggests IMO.

I didn't see anything from the game to suggest to me that M Brown is a better ruck option than Weideman. If both Gawn and Jackson are right to come in, M Brown is the first out. Then the question is whether we go back to having the additional tall, which is what we had prior to the bye (Bedford presumably misses, which is harsh, but would be done for structural reasons), or we continue to play with one fewer tall, in which case it's likely Weideman who makes way. I'll be interested to see which way we lean with Geelong - do we want height in our forward line to avoid them intercept marking against us too much, or do we want pace to see if we can pressure them and out-run them when it hits the deck.

Oh, and can we just have a moment to marvel at the latest AFL MRO/Tribunal disgrace. Tom Stewart runs past the ball and KOs Prestia. That's "careless". Kozzie Pickett poorly executed a tackle. That's "intentional". (FWIW, I have no problem with Pickett being cited for what he did, but it was careless in the truest sense of the word).

Yes, the umpiring was noticeable given we only received 3 free kicks in 3 quarters. But can we talk about how we ground down and overcame some high level pressure, possibly Adelaide's best all year, in hostile territory after conceding the lead late in the second quarter? All without Gawn, Jackson and TMac? It's easy to look at Adelaide's ladder position and think this should have been routine, and the way the first five minutes unfolded that's what I thought it was going to be. But they brought really clear heat and made us work for everything. The more games we get into the current back seven, with Hibberd and Salem still needing to find their feet a bit, the better we are going to get. 30 intercept marks is huge. As for the forward line, 24 scoring shots and nearly 100 points in a game where no forward was really all that dominant. Still too many errant inside 50 kicks and missed shots on goal, so there remains room for improvement.

They kicked 10 against North, who decided to play their best defender at FF for reasons which make no sense to anyone. If I were an Adelaide supporter I'd be very worried if anyone was getting this far ahead of themselves off the back of the easiest possible game a key forward could have played on the weekend.

If we play each game from here like we did on Thursday we're a more than reasonable chance of running the table. We were that good. But it's near-certain we won't reach that level for two consecutive months. We'll have drop offs. And because our fixture is so hard, we're going to drop games as a result. Prognosticating over the make-up of the top 8, top 4 and top 2 is fun, but so hard this year because the outcome will be determined by the sides we drop games to. If we go 6-2 but drop, for example, the Geelong and Brisbane games, that might see either of those sides sit above us on the ladder by the end of the season, but see us above Fremantle and Carlton. And vice versa if we go 6-2 but drop the Fremantle and Carlton games instead. With our fixture, at least we know our destiny is largely in our hands. Beat the sides around us and we go along way, if not the entire way, to finishing above them on the ladder.

I would call the three of you out for your inherent sexism here but I'm sure you'll just respond by telling me you're not sexist and you just don't like Caro. Of course, I'd rate the chances of you using these words to describe a male journalist at 0.5%.

I don’t agree at all with the OP, or his ongoing vendetta against Caro. But even if I did, mods do we need yet another thread on this? Far out.

Yep, and Fritsch did it again in the third when he tried to dribble a goal from the boundary instead of centring it. Fritsch, Brown and (not last night) Trac all have a selfish tendency around goals that they haven't seemed to be able to stamp out.

Excellent crowd last night. 17,000 more than Richmond drew to its Thursday night game vs Port despite having double the members and not having lost three prior games going in. A H&A record for the two clubs. Also was more than: Bulldogs v Geelong on a Friday night in Round 12 at Marvel Sydney v Richmond on a Friday night in Round 11 St Kilda v Essendon, last Friday night

I don't at all see the need to drop Bowey. We performed superbly last night, let's leave them and see if they can generate consistency into next week and then Geelong the week after. The only major consideration is to ensure we're OK for the 5-day break going into the Geelong game. For that reason alone, Gawn shouldn't play this week. Skip the Adelaide game, ensure he's fully fit, then return for Geelong. He was much better last night. Yes, Andrews took a number of intercept marks, but at the game Brown's leading and work-rate looked much better than in the month before the bye. He also got us into the game in the first half when the game was at its hottest. Tomlinson hasn't played forward since he joined us and won't be an improvement on Brown in anyway.

6 - Viney 5 - Lever 4 - Oliver 3 - Jordon 2 - Harmes 1 - Brayshaw

Exceptional football. Clearly the best we've played since the Grand Final. Should have won by 80+ points against the top side. Yes they were missing Bailey and Zorko, but it's not like Gawn and TMac are bit players either. The clear stand out IMO was the intensity. CP dominance, clearance dominance, forward half pressure, tackle pressure everywhere. We haven't played with that level of ferocity much in 2022 but when we bring it, we really [censored] bring it. Led superbly by Viney, who played one of his all time best career games. Forward half worked so much better as a unit tonight. Small things like Weideman blocking for Brown and crumbers in the right spots in front of the marking forwards. Don't know if it's a coincidence, it probably isn't, but Lever's game was phenomenal, against the highest-scoring side in the competition to boot. Petracca also lifted so our A-grade core was largely on song tonight (Langdon still has room to improve). Weidemand deserves credit. He wasn't dominant but he put his body on the line in the ruck and in marking contests and I thought really applied himself well. Let's see if this is a corner turned. Big games coming up on the road but when we play like this, we are scintillating.

Fair enough changes, it's not like M Brown was doing anything to hold his spot and there's no other tall forward we could play in his place, so we're going smaller. Major pressure on B Brown, Weid when forward, Jackson when forward and Fritsch to create genuine marking contests. When Weid's rucking, we'd better have a reasonable plan for what we're going to be doing with our inside 50s because we can't have Andrews and Adams intercept marking our attempts to kick to a double-teamed B Brown. Would like to see Hunt or Tomlinson the sub for some positional versatility. To be fair, both B Brown and Weid need to stand up, and both B Brown and Weid need to play their role. Third: Andrews and Adams are their two key defenders.