titan_uranus

The appalling umpiring feels as bad as it does because of the way some decisions either sapped momentum or handed them a score. But we continue to let ourselves down in the same ways. 21 inside 50s to 9 in the second quarter but we lost it by 8 points. Fritsch playing on from 15m out. Gawn’s turnover in the middle of the ground. Oliver out on the full in the last 2 minutes when a point could have snared us a draw (almost as good as a win given our percentage). Losing a close one (our record in close games over the last few years is really poor). We are such a low-skilled side by foot, even when we bring elite pressure, stoppage and defensive gameplay to keep the runaway flag favourites on the back foot most of the day, we still can’t do enough on the scoreboard.

Wonder if anyone was dicey to get up for the game and Sharp was nearly called up to replace them.

Who from the 23 was missing @waynewussell ? Clarry? Lever?

I haven’t read the article but I suspect Ralph is saying something similar to Daniels - we are going to offer him enough money to convince him to stay, or something like that.

That’s a good point @Harvey Wallbanger - keeping some players fresh to deal with the next month of travel could well be a factor. Bear in mind we’ve also travelled in 3 of our last 5 games (Perth, Brisbane, Alice Springs).

Yeah it’s odd. Carlton and Essendon play 20 hours before us but named squads 3 days before us, and finalised teams 48 hours before us.

Maybe Howes too (although I’d have thought TMac might deserve that spot more).

Gee this place would be up and about if we hadn’t [censored] the bed last week. Had we won, we’d currently be 10th, knowing that a win on Monday (however unlikely) would take us past the Dogs, and just percentage off GWS in 7th. As it stands, we’re now just percentage out of the bottom 4 again, and a 10 goal loss would send us back there. Yay.

Billings will go down in history as one of those classic “too good for VFL but not good enough for AFL” players. Laurie probably the same.

Why have so many players been withdrawn but only Laurie has been dropped? Some injuries to be announced? Or just cover with emergencies?

If you want a great example of a good side doing exactly what we did last week, watch that last quarter of Adelaide v Brisbane again. Adelaide nailed some good shots (5 goals from about 8 inside 50s), but they also had a pressure rating of 248(!). Brisbane, all of a sudden under extreme pressure, spent 15 minutes repeatedly bombing it inside 50, repeatedly taking low percentage shots (snaps in the wet from 40m out), and repeatedly botching their shots on goal (Bailey at least twice, Robertson twice, Lohmanm twice, even Neale).

Again, @WheeloRatings shows this. St Kilda’s shot map shows they kicked 8 goals from directly in front, 7 of which were within about 25m from goal. We barely had a shot from the same area. St Kilda got too many easy looks inside 50, hence their accuracy. We had too many difficult shots, hence our inaccuracy.

There’s fairly enough plenty of focus on the players taking the actual shots, but there’s no doubt that on the weekend and historically we take low percentage shots. @WheeloRatings ’ shot map shows how many shots we took on the angle and outside 30m. Our expected score was 83.8. We had 28 scoring shots. So that would still have looked like 11.17.83. So with the shots we had we were still expected to kick inaccurately. The shots were too often too hard. We’ve done better this year at generating better shots on goal. Last week was a regression IMO.

Photos from training today show them in blues and whites, with the blues looking like the senior team. TMac, Laurie and Jefferson all seen in blue. Culley, Campbell and Howes all seen in white. Perhaps some insight into selection?

Yeah like those unserious Hawks who won 4 flags whilst selling 4 games a season to Tasmania.

The right suspension. Worse than Mills’ hit last week. Absolutely deserves two weeks. Lucky he didn’t seriously hurt NWM. Quite frankly, it was idiotic and he has to learn to be better than this.

I personally also think he won’t make it but it’s poor list management and leadership from the FD to never give him the chance to prove us wrong.

@WheeloRatings can you please contextualise those numbers? How does our 162 rank this year and under Goodwin? And what about the fourth quarter 132?

@poita ? Hyperbole? No, never.

AJ suspended. That’s two suspensions in, what, 5 games? I get that aggression is his thing, but if he can’t control it then it’s useless to us, and therefore so is he. JVR replaces him. I don’t care that Jefferson kicked more goals in the VFL, JVR’s the better prospect and can take AJ’s ruck minutes. Sharp to be dropped for Viney if fit. If Viney not fit, find someone else to take Sharp’s spot. Give Laurie at least one full game before we drop him (likely for the final time, tbh). Lever needs to find form pretty soon. We can’t keep TMac in the VFL in the form he was in if Lever isn’t playing just as well.

Completely agree. I’m probably going to do him a disservice here by tagging him and potentially misquoting him (apologies in advance) but IIRC @binman ’s theory for why we were a strong chance to lose today (he was proven right) included that we would be loading and training to be “cherry ripe” for next week, potentially to this week’s disadvantage. If that’s indeed what we’re doing, it’s madness. At 5-6, with the draw we have, we should be doing everything to win the games we have left against the weaker sides, today being one of those wins. Prioritising fitness for KB or some other period in July or August is useless when you start 0-5. Who knows if this is what actually happened of course. But record low pressure levels and a stack of players barely touching it compared to their usual output (Langdon had just 13 touches! Clarry 16, Rivers 14, Salem 14, Langford 10) maybe suggests something was up. Maybe.

Were we loading? I hope the club is as embarrassed as we are angry. We’ve not only just [censored] 4 points down the drain, we somehow managed to again lose by 30 points, taking yet another percentage hit. We conceded 6 goals in the first quarter to St Kilda. They’d barely kicked 6 goals to three quarter time in the last two months.

Garry Lyon admitted on radio earlier this year that he hadn’t appreciated how good Tom Barrass was until he saw him live, as he’d only seen him on TV when he played in Perth. Studio-based commentary is sub-standard. Foxtel know that but don’t care.

My current thinking around the "run home" (which at this point is better described as the second half of the season). We have 12 games remaining. 6 of them are against sides currently below us on the ladder (St Kilda x 2, Carlton, Port Adelaide, North Melbourne, West Coast). The other 6 are, obviously, against sides currently above us (Collingwood x 2, Gold Coast, Adelaide, Hawthorn, Bulldogs). If we win the 6 games against the sides below us, that gets us 11 wins. We'd then need at least 2, maybe 3, of the other 6 to get into the top 8. For every game we drop against the lower ranked sides we have to win another one against the higher ranked sides. It won't be easy, but it's doable. Going into the byes last year Hawthorn was 4-7 with a percentage of 82.8%, but got their percentage up to 118.5% by winning 10 of their last 12 games - however, 6 of their last 7 wins were by 60+ points, including a 124 point win vs North in the final round. If we fall short, we're going to seriously rue the loss to GWS most of all, and then the terrible fourth quarter drop offs vs North, Geelong, Essendon and Hawthorn. The percentage damage we took when those margins blew out late could easily ruin us, if we do get on a roll from here.

That wasn’t to the head. It was to the side. Seemed totally fair to me.