titan_uranus

On 28 April David King said the flag race was down to three: Geelong, GWS, Carlton. That was at the end of Round 7. Since then those sides are a combined 1-8, with the sole win being Carlton over us by 1 point. This is your regular reminder that David King is, contrary to what SEN calls him, not “the best analyst in football”.

300% better? He’s averaging 16.7 disposals (up 3 on last year with us), 3.7 marks (up 1), 4.2 tackles (up 2), and 4.9 score involvements (up 1). But from 25% more TOG than he was getting last year. He’s playing better, but not by anywhere near that much. And if he and we had known Gus wasn’t going to be play this year, he may well still be here.

I know the Darwin venue and the shorter breaks will have impacted, but I think (hope?) this might be an insight into the potential cliff that actually is coming for Geelong. Their missing players were Dangerfield, Hawkins, Duncan, Stanley, Cameron and De Koning. The first five are over 30, and there has to be a strong argument that the first four won’t play beyond this season. Without them, they were 11 goals behind a mid-table side (who themselves had a couple of outs). They’ll no doubt be throwing cash to whichever midfielder is available this year because their midfield is no good.

So could be McAdam, Brown and Salem for JVR, Turner and Langdon. For them, McGovern stays in despite sore ribs and Waterman is back. Take them lightly at your own peril.

@Jaded No More I think perhaps this is a different point. It's one thing to not have Brayshaw anymore, it's another to not have a replacement for him on the list. We're not on our own there though - Collingwood's in the same boat with Murphy and the Dogs today lost O'Driscoll. But for us we also have Smith inactive on the list too, without a replacement. So as @Farmer says, we're two down in terms of players available for selection before you even start with the injury list, which is now up to 7, most of whom are forwards (JVR, Turner, Melksham, Spargo - Smith being a 5th forward).

Assuming Round 24 is a Friday night game (or any night), we'll end up having 14 out of our 23 H&A games at night. Same as 2022, up from 10 last year. Far cry from the 3 we had in 2016!

Even allowing for the Round 24 game, only 2 of those 9 games are our home game (Brisbane in Round 5 the other one). Somewhat disappointing for the bean counters.

It's great that we're on FTA so much. Unfortunately 6 of our 7 Wed/Thur/Fri night games are away games (Brisbane in Round 5 the exception). But we still have the chance to draw big crowds to the Essendon and Port Saturday night games. We've got to be a decent chance of getting the Round 24 Friday night game, too (Brisbane v Essendon the danger).

Jon Ralph’s article says clubs can have 3 per season, which I thought only came into effect from next year.

Jon Ralph reporting that our game at the Gabba in Round 16 will be the Friday night of that round. Guess we’ll find out tomorrow when the fixture is finally released.

Haven't heard it but I suspect what he's saying is not that Trac isn't capable of playing that well, but that he won't play near-permanent forward each week, so that's why he won't "play like that".

Essendon nearly lost to them last week. They're the media's current darlings. Sydney was behind them for half the game in Gather Round. They're the undisputed number 1 seed right now. If Yeo and/or Waterman play, they are a much stronger side. I don't accept that if we don't "win this easily" we "have some way bigger issues".

Tom Morris on radio this morning said Turner may have a calf issue. Going to be interesting if he and JVR are both out at once.

How we replace JVR will be interesting. Do we go with a tall (options seem to be Brown, Fullarton, Schache...?) or do we go with someone smaller (Tholstrup, Laurie)? Either way, you'd expect Turner/Petty will be doing all of the second ruck work.

The Bulldogs are 11th but have outscored their opponents by 25% more than Essendon, who are 3rd.

Did you mean Essendon? Because Sydney is far and away the competition's number 1 seed right now, mainly because they have the league's best record against good sides. They've beaten the sides currently sitting 3rd, 4th, 5th and 8th, plus 9th and 10th. No other top 8 side has that many wins against fellow contenders, nor are any of them undefeated against fellow contenders.

Did you read Demonland last night?

The best I'll accept is that it's a mix of both but the way in which people suggested it was nothing to do with missing players was ridiculous. They may still have defensive weaknesses but they aren't the same if they have Kemp and McGovern instead of Young and Williams. On a side note, I had Carlton fans sitting around me who spent the whole game expecting us to run them down and the final 10 minutes convinced we'd lose. There must be a CFCSS which is worse than MCFSS!

Have you been watching West Coast lately? Their recent form at home includes a win over a top 8 side (Fremantle), a close loss to a top 8 side (Essendon), and a win over Richmond. Prior to that run, they led Sydney away from home for a half and lost by 26. A 10+ goal margin is far too high of a bar. Right now, West Coast in Perth is not a walk in the park.

As much as your posts often take the extreme view of things, there's definitely merit to your views on Fritsch. Last night he showed the poor parts of his game too often: lazy/soft when it hits the deck, and playing from behind far too often. He was pushed up into the middle at one point in the second quarter (IIRC), which I thought was interesting. IMO he has more than enough runs on the board to guard against being dropped but that doesn't mean we can't call out the poor parts of his game and you'd hope/expect the FD see it and are working on it.

I agree that the response after quarter time was more than encouraging given how on top they were. There aren't that many sides in the competition this year who are capable of coming back from 37 points down when Walsh, Cripps and Weitering are playing as well as they were. But there are problems we have to address. One of them is our first quarters. We're 4-5 in first quarters, but over the last six weeks it has felt like we've struggled to get going on the scoreboard early: 3.2.20 vs Port was pretty good but they were 4.1.25 2.0.12 vs Adelaide against 2.5.17 2.0.12 vs Brisbane against 4.2.26 2.3.15 vs Richmond against 1.3.9 3.2.20 vs Geelong against 2.4.16 0.0.0 vs Carlton against 5.0.30 2-4 in that period. Admittedly not an easy fixture run but equally one of the two wins was against Richmond. Last night the only blowout loss but accuracy was a big part of that. Regardless, it just feels like we're too slow to get started and give ourselves more work to do in the middle of the game than we'd like.

Do you seriously think this? The middle two quarters were intense and even. If we didn't turn up until three quarter time, do you really think the game would have been as close as it was? I have to stop myself from OTT posting about this but ask Carlton supporters for their views on Young and you'll get a strong majority telling you he's a real problem. Williams was struggling defensively too. Replacing them with McGovern and Kemp was enormous for them structurally. Daniel Hoyne on radio wanted people to believe it was a system problem, not personnel. In a not-uncommon occurrence, he is wrong.

https://www.afl.com.au/news/1125436 More wins than losses for sides on 5 day breaks so far this year. This also says clubs can have up to 3 5 day breaks, which I wasn’t aware of. If we cop a third, when others so far haven’t had any…

First time this has happened all year. We’ve been losing the inside 50 count most weeks to date.

Classic case of causation vs correlation. Are we actually losing because of the timeslot? Or because the opponents were Sydney (away), Brisbane and Carlton, three sides we match up on poorly? And one game was humid and another rained?