titan_uranus

This thread makes me angry. Angry that our supporters wish we hadn't given support to a coach who took us to our first finals appearance in 12 years. That our supporters would prefer we go into a season in which we should be a contender with a giant question mark over our coach's head. So then what happens now, when we're 0-3 and he's uncontracted? We don't sign him at all and keep waiting? Is the logical endpoint that if we have a bad year you would sack him? If not, then we're better off having signed him, indicating to him, the players and the football world that he has the club's support, and keeping the focus where it should be: on our on-field performances. Are you suggesting that with PJ's departure people at the club have felt empowered/able to "revert" back to some sort of pre-PJ culture? You've put an inordinate amount of emphasis on Goodwin's use of the word "try". That's wholly regular language and IMO says absolutely nothing. Brayshaw's comment came after we would have had our initial review of the game with the coaches. I suspect the coaches put the rocket up the entire side for our lack of defensive pressure in the second half. So Brayshaw (a 23-year old who's played 61 games) fronts up for an interview with that on his mind and comments that the entire side isn't doing what the coaches have been trying to re-inforce at least this week, if not previously. It's a comment on what's clearly going wrong with the side but I don't for a second believe it says anything about the club not being "united". So we're left with Lewis' comment about May, which is something we've all known since the first day of pre-season. But where is the suggestion that a pre-signing medical would have revealed some sort of hidden problem?

Let's not let hindsight get the better of us. IIRC you were a fan of bringing Preuss in, and you certainly didn't like our 2018 back-up rucks.

I'm not so sure about this. I think our Q2 dominance came about more because Essendon were down to 2 on the bench for 15 minutes (Devon Smith was going through concussion testing). They stopped running, and all of a sudden we had time, space and more speed through the middle. We could have hit any target, TMac included. Having said that, I suspect TMac's injured his ankle and won't be right for a six-day break going interstate. He didn't look right in the second half. This may well be it, particularly if TMac's injured.

We have no leaders in our back six. We have Frost and OMac who spend a lot of time looking like they don't know what they're doing. At times we've had Hore, KK and J Wagner down there who weren't part of our winning team last year and are either new to the game or new to our system. And we have Hibberd and Jetta who are nowhere near in form. All of that means I think we'd benefit, significantly, from having Lewis in the backline.

I agree. The 6-6-6 thing is being overplayed. Outside of initial centre bounces, teams are setting up the way they want. We lost the CP count twice last year and IIRC we were averaging 10+ more CPs per game than our opponents. But we're 0-3 so far this year. We're a side built on winning CPs and setting up our game from stoppages but we're being beaten at our core strength. And our gameplan is such that if we're not on top at the coalface, we don't have anything to fall back on. Oliver and Brayshaw are playing well but as a collective our midfield isn't reaching the CP/clearance level we hit last year. We approached this year on the basis that our game starts in the middle. Being off in the middle means we're seeing flow on effects everywhere else. Our gameplan has always exposed our back half, we saw it last year repeatedly (e.g. vs Hawthorn, Richmond, St Kilda, Sydney). But we were able to cover during our wins when we had CP/stoppage dominance and forward half pressure. The ball would be camped in our forward half and we would relentlessly pressure our opponents until we got the ball back. The losses of Hannan and vandenBerg are hurting our forward pressure, as is the simultaneous decrease in form of TMac, Petracca and ANB. And as the pressure is dialled up on our back six, the loss of Lewis has robbed us of vital leadership (not to mention having both Lever and May on the sidelines, both of whom are significantly more talented than Frost and OMac). Then when you take that lack of leadership/talent and you add Hibberd and Jetta, two reliable A-graders, being out of form, and it becomes much easier to understand our three losses.

Opposition goal-scoring strike rates in 2019: Essendon - 20 goals from 53 entries, which is a 37.7% strike rate Geelong - 20 goals, 48 entries, 41.7% Port - 12 goals, 59 entries, 20.3% Opposition overall scoring strike rates in 2019: Essendon - 30 shots, 53 entries, 57% Geelong - 26 shots, 48 entries, 54% Port Adelaide - 27 shots, 59 entries, 46% So pretty much we're conceding a score every second time our opponent gets inside our defensive 50 and a goal every third time.

ANB, Oscar and Jones were our worst three players. Your comment was he was far from our worst, and I think that's incorrect. If he wasn't our worst player he was very close to it. He's having no impact on the wing. As the captain of a side which knew during the week that our disposal going inside 50 was a focus point, he took our opening clearance and mindlessly bombed it 50m to an Essendon player. He doesn't get involved in scoring chains, he guards no-man's land without taking a player, opposition players are running around him, he's fumbling the ball, he's turning it over. I don't think I'm "blindly supporting the lynch mob". Indeed, I think you've got your Jones-coloured glasses on. As I said before, I've loved Jones and everything he's given to this club, but right now he's a bottom 4 player for us and he's holding us back.

Max was fine tonight but Bellchambers is a spud and Clarke is even worse. Clarke was laughably bad, like seriously provided me with comic relief any time he went near it. Point is, they're not Lycett/Ryder. We can afford to take Gawn alone into some games, and this was one of them.

Unfortunately that's just not correct.

I would normally agree with you, and indeed I'd probably prefer not to have a thread designed to just take pot shots at players. But unfortunately Oscar and ANB are holding us back. They're not just adding nothing, they're detracting from the side. Tom Bugg used to get games because he was a renowned runner. But he had no skill, couldn't kick goals, and made momentum-killing errors. ANB is now in the same boat. The side needs him to be dropped. We need him out of the side, we need him to take his tank and go run around the VFL collecting disposals and getting back into the groove of finding the ball, getting it, and using it. Oscar's gone backwards, or at the very best hasn't improved at all. He's weak, he approaches contests half-heartedly, his positioning is terrible, and he appears afraid to be involved in offensive chains. The sooner we can drop him for May/Lever/Petty/anyone, the better. And on your final sentence - if they weren't our worst, the only competition for a worse player tonight was Jones.

Brayshaw's comments in an interview post-game are interesting. Talking about how we don't have enough "buy in" on defence. We have individual problems in the back six (Oscar, Frost and an out of form Hibberd mean we're really in trouble back there) but the reality is our opponents are able to transition from their backline through to their forward line too easily.

6 - Brayshaw 5 - Oliver 4 - Harmes 3 - Hunt 2 - Gawn 1 - Petracca Brayshaw, Oliver, Harmes and Gawn have lifted since Round 1. But the other 18 are struggling to match them.

The three who need to go are ANB, Oscar and Jones. Unfortunately, Jones being captain makes it nearly impossible for us to get him out of the 22, whilst I fear that Goodwin's stubbornness and favouritism means the other two won't be dropped.

Let me start by getting this off my chest: the umpiring was disgraceful tonight. There were a dozen times, at least, where either a free was paid to them or an obvious one to us was missed which had direct impact on the game. Possibly the most important was Hurley's blatant interference with Melksham late in the second when we had all the momentum, robbing us of a goal and sending the ball down the other end. OK, with that out of the way. I feel like I just watched the St Kilda loss from last year again. A low-skilled side just brings pace and endeavour and finds that they can carve us up and score heavily. They're not good enough to be able to hold us from scoring heavily, but we can't defend them and they get a confidence-boosting win. We're getting beaten the same way we were in 2018 and we're not fixing the problems. The second quarter largely happened because for a long period of it Essendon had one on the bench. They stopped running and we managed to run through them through the middle, opening up our forward line. If ANB doesn't get dropped after this game then he never will. He adds nothing to the side and his dropped mark was a momentum-killer. Oscar was embarrassingly bad. He runs under the ball, he runs over the ball, he looks afraid to pick it up, he doesn't know what to do with it when he has it, but worst of all he can't defend. There was an early goal to Essendon where he simply lost his man. And Jones. I love him, I always have and always will, but he's a liability at the moment. Our opening play summed it up perfectly - after all that focus on stupidly bombing it inside 50, we get the first clearance, he's got time and space, but he bombs it 50m, turns it over, and Essendon slingshot for a goal. He's a liability and it's hurting us. What is wrong with Hibberd? He can't hit a target to save himself. So what it all means is that we've got too many liabilities (ANB, Oscar, Jones), too many new/underdone players (KK, Wagner x 2, Lockhart) and too many important players out of form (Hibberd, Weideman, TMac, Viney, Jetta). It's too much being left to too few and it's not working.

There's nothing in the HUN article which says Goodwin didn't watch it or review it. It's a conclusion drawn or a statement made by the author based on the actual quotes Goodwin gave. Also agree re: this contention. Our game plan was "exposed" by St Kilda mid-year. We were "found out" all 9 times we lost last year. We're being beaten the same way this year, and that's a concern to me, but it doesn't mean something drastic occurred in the prelim which needed to be specifically addressed more than any other of our losses last year.

This thread is a classic from classic Demonlanders. If Goodwin has said something about our bad pre-season, the same posters (ADC, beelzebub, SWYL) would be complaining about him making excuses. Yeah, because AFL coaches (and MFC coaches in particular) always make it to the end of their contract.

Turning back to some discussion on football, I saw a clip from Footy Classified last night where Lloyd or Judd pointed out three or four instances of us winning a clearance and Oliver/Brayshaw/Viney/whoever kicking long when a shorter option was available (one in particular had TMac leading up into a gaping hole 40m out directly in front but whoever had the ball went 20m past him to nothing but Cats). Is it as simple as our mids lowering their eyes? I feel we've conditioned the mids to wanting to get the ball and bang it inside 50 because we expect to either mark it or bring it to ground and the resulting congestion in there is what we want. Or is it more that Geelong read us better than other sides might? Or are the forwards doing the wrong thing by pushing too far up the ground when we really want them to stay deeper and ensure we have targets?

The club isn't blaming anyone. We the supporters are going berserk, but other than Goodwin and Viney noting that our midfield output had improved on the previous week (which, statistically, it did), this is just guff from a [censored] of a "commentator". Just to confirm, they were missing three players (Dixon, Hartlett and Wines), one of whom is questionable as to being in the best 22 (Hartlett). It's not like they were decimated with injuries. Not really the point of your post, I know, but it stood out to me.

Couldn't disagree more. If there's been one consistent failing of this club since 2006, it's been our lack of leadership from within the playing group.

You got any evidence of this?

From 2-3 we went to 16-8 before we lost the prelim. That's a period of 14-5 doing the same thing. Of the 5, only one of them was a loss by more than 10 points. Yes, the prelim was bad, but is it that surprising that we've approached 2019 by focusing on the 19-game stretch that got us into the prelim rather than the prelim?

Better example, how about Adelaide 2018? Improved considerably in 2017 to make the GF, were most people's flag favourites going into 2018 but their pre-season from hell and injuries wrecked their year despite them having a list stocked with talent. Our pre-season was not good and it is impacting our form. It's magnified by the new runner rule and no Lewis - we haven't trained together enough and there's not a lot we can do about it mid-match because the runner can't get out there to yell at us and there aren't proper leaders in the back or forward line (meanwhile Gawn is getting physically annihilated and Jones is likely too busy focusing on his form).

IIRC there's a quote from May where he talks about our training standards being much higher than GC's. Edit: this is what I was thinking of, I think. https://wwos.nine.com.au/afl/hamstring-setback-for-new-demon-may/6d95c2aa-3659-4ee1-b1b9-9f8868c26544 He doesn't say it but I think it's implied.

There are 5 undefeated sides in the league and we're the only one to have played two of them. Not sure if chicken or egg, but still.

Given I haven't seen the game I have to defer to those who have, so this post is certainly good to read. I was interested in the final paragraph though. I wanted to go back and take a look at those four games to see if there was a trend Last night Geelong scored 20 goals from 48 entries, which a 41.7% strike rate. Port - 12 goals, 59 entries, 20.3% Brisbane - 15 goals, 52 entries, 28.8% Richmond - 16 goals, 59 entries, 27% So across JLT and Round 1 our opponents were in the 20-28% range for goals from inside 50s. Then last night that jumps up to 41.7%. I suppose that supports your argument about Geelong well exceeding their expected score but I'm not sure whether you're right to say "Port the same, Richmond the same, Brisbane the same".