titan_uranus

Unforgivable mistake from Melksham.

Shocking from Preuss.

The two positives I see are that we scored 4 times from our 5 inside 50s and we're only 7 points down.

73/27% time in forward half. Losing CPs, closing clearances. This is not how we want to play (Goodwin said before the game we want it to be in our forward half, Mahony just now in an interview said it's not how we want to play).

We should have 3 goals but it still feels like we should be 3 goals down. Their premier players are on top: Hunter 10 touches, Macrae 9, Smith 8, Dunkley 7, Bont 6. Us? Viney 7, Brayshaw 6, Petracca 4, Oliver 3. We're losing clearances despite them rucking midfielders against Preuss for part of the quarter. Their switching means we're struggling to defend the middle of the ground, and their pressure means we're struggling to move the ball forward. Real worry signs right here.

They're switching it a lot, and opening up our zone. We should have 3.1 though, Pickett should have kicked both.

They've moving it too easily, we're struggling to move it. It's got all the hallmarks of a poor performance, unfortunately.

My worry is that the Dogs' pressure is much higher than Adelaide, North or Collingwood and it's ruining our ball movement. We just cannot get it out of our back half.

Right call from Hibberd, poorly executed. We need territory. Just can't get it inside our forward half.

Game's being played in the Dogs' forward half. Not what we want.

Looks like Lever on Bruce.

Feel for Jones, you could see the emotion in that footage. Hope Hannan is ready. A decent like-for-like replacement. The nerves have truly set in. Bontempelli, Macrae, Hunter, Libba, Dunkley and Smith is a deep and strong midfield.

English stays in, Bruce brought back, Johannisen too.

Siren's been on the money the last few weeks. Looks like no change.

Yeah nah I've got no time at all for Hardwick on this. His full forward is developing [censored] tendencies, and so is he. The blatant hypocrisy of telling the football world not to judge Lynch on his two separate indiscretions but then to distract from Schwarz's comments whilst referring to something that happened 20 years ago is as stark as it is dumb. It only gets worse when you analyse it further and realise what he's referring to is a series of Essendon players being flogs.

I see what you're saying but I'm not sure I agree. I think teams do set out to generate their scores in particular ways and in our view, based on what Goodwin has been saying for a long time, our plan is to do so from our forward half. So is Port's. Where we've struggled traditionally is reacting to games where our opponent stops us from doing that, usually by beating us in clearances and CPs. You could call it just improvement, but IMO it's also a situation of having a Plan B sort of option to fall back on, where we identify that we're not going to win by forcing forward half turnovers and bringing May/Lever up to the centre circle, but instead we revert to generating scoring chains out of our defensive 50. Not sure I agree. There have been HT interviews during matches where Goodwin says "we need to get the ball in our forward half". IMO, he's still very much focusing on forward half dominance first, but he's accepting now that we need to be able to adjust in games where we can't dominate clearances and CPs.

Well to counter that, we took the Bulldogs' spot in the 2005 finals by beating them in the second last game of the year off the back of a bit of a dubious free kick to Jeff White. The video of which has just been uploaded by the AFL, and brings back amazing memories (particularly seeing Neale Daniher running down to the ground as the final siren sounded).

I saw this. IIRC, they were discussing the ability of teams to generate scores from their forward halves, as well as from their defensive halves. The analysis suggested that Geelong, West Coast and Richmond were in the top bracket for both, whereas Port and Brisbane were only in the top bracket for one of them (I don't remember for Brisbane, but for Port it was scores from forward half). Essendon would be a side which traditionally under Worsfold generates scores from its defensive half, as a counter-example. Their argument was that successful sides can do both, which is as close to Plan A vs Plan B as you'll get. Obviously with us we know what Goodwin wants: aggressive forward half press, high % time in our forward half, turnovers in our forward half, generating scores (and limiting scores to our opponent). The knock on us, under Goodwin, has been whether (like Port this year) we can generate winning scores when the game isn't played in our forward half. Our win over Collingwood was hugely important on this issue because we didn't dominate time in forward half (at least I don't think so, I haven't seen figures), yet we didn't go to water but instead were able to absorb, rebound and score. If we can now have the confidence that our system is beginning to hold up well enough to ensure we can generate scores from anywhere on the ground, that is IMO the missing step to taking us beyond what we were capable of achieving in 2018.

That may well be correct, but the two aren't mutually exclusive. You don't escape being a conspiracy theorist simply because it's an unoriginal term. Nothing is "going on" other than you, and people like you, making everyone's lives unnecessarily more difficult than they otherwise already are.

I may well be in the minority, but I just don't understand why people think Smith might be selected because of "flexibility" (he's as much a jack of all trades, master of none, as Tomlinson is) or "pace" (which exists, but is countered by his unpredictability). If we want more pace, would we not look at Hannan or Hunt, who can both play a defined role (and could slot in to replace Jones, Sparrow or vandenBerg, rather than Smith, who has no real role in this side?

In the NFL if there are two penalties on the play they often cancel themselves out, so if we went down the same sort of road here then the result should be a ball up. However, in situations like vandenBerg's against Adelaide, you have a football-related free kick (the holding the ball call in our favour) followed by a non-football-related free kick (vandenBerg's push). I have no real issue with reversing the free because one team did something non-football-related, and it just so happened to be second in time.

If Preuss is injured we're in trouble. Presumably will have to ruck TMac and bring Brown in as the second tall forward?

Lynch is fast becoming one of the game's biggest [censored]. Should have been suspended for his pathetic shove of Harris Andrews the other week, and if the AFL was serious about gut punches should absolutely have been suspended for his punch this week. I can't wait to see Richmond v Gold Coast next year and Sam Collins' response.

This sort of conspiracy theory drivel is a solid contributor to the malaise this state is currently in. We'd all be in a better place if there were drastically fewer people like you.

They do play Carlton, though, and as far as I'm concerned Carlton is a genuine competitor for a finals spot.