titan_uranus

Mate he was running around with a lacerated kidney that night. His 2023 form before that game has been strong. Whether or not he gets back in depends on our current backline’s ongoing form but IMO he’s far from “cooked”.

I don't think we can or should drop Rivers. IMO he offers positional flexibility and should be rotated between the backline and midfield as part of our ongoing attempts to revitalise our midfield. He's also been very good for most of the year and even if he was down this weekend that can't cost him his spot.

Adelaide are so incredibly overrated. One win away from the Adelaide Oval all year, and that was Hawthorn by 3 points.

…do a barrel roll?

At the absolute least, someone who deserves a spot in our backline. Let alone someone who has played forward for the last month and then in a quarter as sub against a flagging side didn’t register a stat. Who are you dropping from our currently in-form backline to put Smith in there?

[censored] I hate these sorts of posts. For starters, @fr_ap didn’t say they’d be happy if we don’t win the flag. It’s not “accepting mediocrity” to enjoy a H&A win even if there is room for improvement. If all you do is sit there and derive joy from flags, you are going to be disappointed 99% of the time as an AFL supporter because flags are so hard to win. It’s perfectly reasonable to enjoy a H&A win, still want us to do better, still consider our overall goal is to win the flag, and still be disappointed if we don’t win the flag.

Getting 4 points in a classic "8 point game" is hugely important when the reality is we've been struggling for form post-bye. Have just completed three straight games away from the G, now we have 5 of the next 6 at home (the only other game being vs North in Hobart). A good chance here, starting with the ultimate test in Brisbane, to build into some form. But pocketing this win before the Brisbane-Adelaide quinella was critical, no matter how we did it.

Have just realised that Joel Smith broke his own career record by playing a 5th straight game for the first time in his career. Sadly, he may well be the first ever player to not record a stat after being subbed on.

Despite their inability to rotate, they had more possessions and tackles than in the fourth quarter. I'm confident someone will say we were fatigued.

An important 4 points to get given the ladder positions. Can’t be relying on opponents only being able to have 52 interchange rotations though (we had 69 for comparison).

Things I am desperate to see: A win No injuries Things I want to see but will forego if I get the above: Better accuracy More fluent ball movement A lesser forward half press with defenders sitting further back A reduction in our desire to have repeat stoppages in the forward 50 Pickett and Brown to look a million bucks

Agree with all of this. FWIW, LN’s rumour on BigFooty is slightly different to what everyone’s saying here. But it should be treated with a massive lump of salt because of who is spreading it. Thing is Luci, before his injury Petty was a forward. So was it really his spot in defence? Last year I’d have fully agreed with you that Petty was an automatic lock for ohr backline. This year, I challenge that notion. In part because he spent most of his time pre-injury as a forward, in part because I just don’t think he’s been that good this year. No doubt Tomlinson was picked as a short term cover option but his form on KB was well above what should be considered good enough to hold his spot. Petty, IMO, should have come back via Casey or into the forward line where he’d actually shown a bit of form vs Hawthorn before his injury.

Add me to the perplexed and disappointed camp. Fritsch out so we drop Smith as well, and the only replacement is Melksham, who as sub played nearly the whole game last week for 6 touches. Spargo’s barely played football since being dropped but gets recalled. Being picked off reputation not form is not right. I support Jordon’s recall though. We all cry out for VFL form to be rewarded and Jordon’s VFL form completely warrants selection.

Do they? Who? I feel like most/all posters acknowledge that he talks in cliches and gives very little away.

So who do we think Woewodin's replacing? Harmes? Surely not Fritsch, so someone else has to come out, whilst someone else comes into the forward line (should be JVR but I'm not confident after that non-committal presser today).

No I’m not putting the entire blame on Oliver. I’m not even saying he’s responsible for anything. I’m just saying that without being a doctor or physio and without knowing what actually happened, it’s not fair or reasonable to say the club’s stuffed up. It doesn’t have to be the club’s fault or Oliver’s fault.

Big fan of this. Let’s see what difference we can get with a fresh face in the side, particularly someone who has worked hard at VFL level.

Yes you do. You don’t know what impact playing out the 4th had. You don’t know what Clarry reported at the time. You don’t know what impact running on it days later had. You don’t know (or mention) what impact being immobile in hospital had. You don’t know what the doctors asked him to do or what he did in response. You don’t know where he’s currently at or how “bad” things are now.

You two are doctors/physios? No? Then perhaps re-think posts like this.

I agree. Another stat I'd love to see (maybe @WheeloRatings can help us out) is our percentage of scoring chains from the back half vs from the front half. It feels like recently our scores are coming from forward half turnovers/stoppages a lot more than earlier in the year when we were able to generate more scores from our back half. If you look at our xScore maps from our earlier games, we were taking a similar spread of shots but were nailing the easier shots. For example, we were efficient vs GC:

Have we really had an OK run with injuries? Gawn missed 5 games, Oliver's missed 5 games, Petty missed 5 games, Salem missed 9 games, Brown got injured after kicking 8 goals in two weeks, TMac can't get fit, Hibberd's been good when fit but ruptured his kidney, Dunstan got injured right when he was in form. Collingwood and Geelong are considered to have had bad runs with injuries this year - they've used 34 players compared to our 33, so we're not exactly shooting the lights out by comparison. Obviously we're not at West Coast levels, and it could definitely be worse, but I'd argue we've struggled to get continuity due to injuries at inopportune times, and particularly to key players. PS: I still think we have had enough quality and continuity to make top 4 so I don't disagree with the overall argument that top 4 is where we should be finishing.

I agree. But this is intentional. This is what Goodwin wants - a strong forward press, domination of the territory game, and repeat entries. Whilst I've said before that I don't believe Goodwin's press conferences reveal everything he's thinking or working on, he is consistent with his messaging that we are doing largely everything right and that if we work harder, the forward connection will come. But as you've pointed out, we're trying to score goals from messy entries in a congested forward half.

Here's the AFLxScore map of shots: Both our arguments are supported IMO. We're taking too many shots from too far out on angles - look how many shots are wider than 40 degree angles. But we're also missing too many shots from which we should be doing better - we missed three shots that the numbers say we should kick more often than not (one of which is rated over 5, which is a disaster to have missed), compared to GWS' one. With the number of shots we had, and with the amount of the game spent in our forward half/50, we should have scored far more than 45 points.

It’s both. The expected score metric tells you that we’re not scoring what we’re expected to score based from the shots we’re generating. We’re taking too many shots on angles, but we’re missing too many shots that aren’t so hard.