titan_uranus

I'm not that shocked you went here as your first reaction, but it's still rather striking. Presumably, as you almost always do, you think that our loss today is down in part to our inexperience, and/or our younger players fading? That certainly seems implicit in this post, noting the struggles of two younger players whilst bemoaning the absence of two older/experienced players. Yet the reality is, St Kilda today was on average younger and less experienced than us. So whilst we didn't have Lever or May, we did have in our backline TMac (245 games) and Salem (195 games), whilst in our midfield (where almost all of our losses stem from) we had Gawn (243), Viney (233), Trac (208), Oliver (201) and Langdon (198). Also remember that other than TMac, who was dropped but has nevertheless been fit and available all season, the rest of those 7 players I've just mentioned have missed a combined 6 games all year (Viney's missed 5 and Oliver 1). Turning straight to our two missing defenders to attempt to explain what happened today is really not it.

I want Goodwin and our players to be embarrassed by this. I just don’t have any confidence they will be.

The enormity of what we “achieved” today must not be minimised. Of course we yet again [censored] up a close finish. The final 2 minutes are a checklist of how to embarrass yourself in losing a close game from in front. But to be in that situation at all, or even anything close to it, took such a unique and rarely seen level of disgrace that it has to be properly acknowledged. When it comes as the 27th loss out of our last 44 games, with membership spiralling, with formerly elite players floundering, with no leadership on the field, it cannot be tolerated.

Somehow, despite everything in this club’s history, this is the lowest point. The stench around the club that we tried to mask with the scent of “love” in the pre-season is stronger than ever. I’m [censored] sick of being embarrassed. I’m [censored] sick of being angry. Sticking fat with the same coach, and same players, doing the same things week after week, has ground this club into the irrelevant dirt. We are a laughable embarrassment, and I’m so [censored] sick of it.

Grundy's in great form now, but was pretty poor pre-bye. Only half a season of good football. Gawn's had the better season, IMO by far.

Trac's got a game high 8 inside 50s and 7 score involvements, and 2nd most metres gained (only NWM has more).

I see you haven't met @bluey yet. For the record, he/she is both.

Yeah their list is IMO incomparable with our 2012-13 list. We had guys like Terlich and Matt Jones at the top of our B&F. They have an AA full forward, an AA-quality ruckman, a future AA player in Sheezel, and good enough talent in Curtis, Zurhaar, LDU, Simpkin, O'Sullivan, McKercher and Powell. They've had an odd season. Started 1-5 with some horrible losses. Then had an 8-game stretch where they won three games, drew with Brisbane, pushed Collingwood for 3 quarters and lost to Port, Essendon and Fremantle by under 10 points. Then have lost their last 5 games by no fewer than 31 points, including losses by 85 and 101.

Just wanted to find somewhere to post this. In our 41 games since Opening Round last year, we are a combined 13-28 in first quarters. We are behind at quarter time in more than two-thirds of our games. Surely there's a link between constantly having to play catch-up footy and our poor forward half connection - harder to be composed, or calm, or confident, when we're always giving opponents a scoreboard head start. We've only had two matches this year where we've kicked more than 3 goals in the first quarter - Round 3 v North (4.5) and Round 7 v Fremantle (6.1) By contrast, we've had 7 matches this year where we've kicked 2 or fewer goals in the first quarter. The only one of them we've won was v West Coast (2.2 to their 0.5) We only had 6 matches in 2024 where we kicked more than 3 goals in the first quarter. We won all bar one of them (GWS, where we kicked 5.5 to their 1.2) We had 13 matches in 2024 where we kicked 2 or fewer goals in the first quarter. We only won two of them (Adelaide in Round 5 and Richmond in Round 8 - both bottom 4 sides last year)

"Likely in heavy training blocks". Crows "ran all over us and we could not stop them". FFS the revisionism on here is so tiresome. Can't we just acknowledge that at times this year we've actually played good footy? Do we have to try to downplay anything that went well this year just to suit a broader anti-Goodwin or pro-major change narrative? There's nothing at all wrong with saying "yep, we played great in those games, but the inconsistency which has seen us also lose to St Kilda, North, Essendon and Carlton more than outweighs those good games, and means it's dangerous to assume we're close to being good again"? FWIW, Adelaide has one loss at home all year, which was to Geelong in Round 5. The closest anyone else has come is Brisbane (5 point loss). We're second closest, with a 13 point loss. Their score of 90 against us was their only score in the last month which is less than 100 (which includes games vs the Dogs at Marvel and Gold Coast, who themselves are in form). And they only outscored us in the second half by 3 scoring shots and 3 goals (8.4 to our 5.4).

Our loss to North was bad, but it was also four months ago now. We beat them two months ago. The relevance of tonight's game is zero.

Dropping Jefferson for Petty is just classic.

In: Sparrow, Spargo, Howes, Petty Out: May, Tholstrup, Sharp, Jefferson

The broken system wins again. The game loses, though. This is as [censored] a decision as there has ever been.

I’m strongly against this for all the reasons already suggested in this thread. Jeremy [censored] Cameron wouldn’t kick goals in our forward line. Joe Daniher, after a year out of the system, isn’t going to solve our problems. We will go nowhere until the FD start looking in the middle.

I agree - he said “there is a young defender who will probably play this week”. Around 6.24 in the clip:

Nope, but as the GOAT @WheeloRatings tells us, we are far and away the league’s worst side at losing games despite winning on expected score: We’re -2.8 wins compared to what expected score ought to have delivered. Only Carlton and WC (both -1.6) and Sydney (-1.0) are at -1 win or worse. Indeed, us and those three clubs aside, everyone sits between -1 to +1 except GWS who is a ridiculous +3.7. @WheeloRatings do you have the basic W-L based on xScore (ie just a ladder giving each win to the higher xScore)?

This backs up one of my earlier posts. We are actually OK against the top 9 but awful against the bottom 9: 10th best record against the top 9 (plus two close losses that tbh could/should have been wins). Bottom 4 record against the bottom 9, and one of only 4 sides to have a percentage of less than 100%. Being this bad against the other bad sides is inexcusable.

Brisbane plays Collingwood in two weeks. Could be for the minor premiership. If Adelaide beats Hawthorn that same week, Coll v Adel in Round 23 could be a duel for a top 2 spot. Imagine if Collingwood misses top 2 after starting 14-2!

Hey @Clintosaurus did you see Collingwood concede another free in the last few minutes, leading to the go ahead score, and then conceding a 50m penalty in the last 10 seconds to lose the game? Another week off for the conspiracy?

Apparently not:

Gawn is the greatest ruck of all time and likely the AA ruck this year. You are running one of the all time worst arguments we’ve ever seen on Demonland.

So tiresome. There is no conspiracy. Just ineptitude. Having said that, whilst I disagree with it, the umpire presumably will have said Durdin had no prior.

That might be so, but we won by 100. That doesn’t just happen because the opponent sucks - see, eg, us losing to Carlton or GWS “only” beating Essendon by 48. Faced with a rubbish opponent, and with spots in the seniors surely (…surely…) up for grabs, today’s performance is precisely what we needed to see.

That may be the reasoning but we’ve barely tried it except for a quarter against a rampant Rowell, Anderson, Miller and Witts midfield, and got so scared we’ve given up. Unfortunately the appears to be a short term commitment to Oliver and Viney which is preventing us from trialling new blood at centre bounces. Going into 2026 with the same core four as our centre bounce mids is not going to help us.