Red But Mostly Blue

Our forward 50 work was atrocious in that qtr. That said, we're well and truly in it, and that's not something we've been able to say this year.

We CAN do this, and it would be sweet to take the Tigers scalp to resurrect some fire in our season.

4 minutes ago, Cards13 said:

Old misery turns up. Every time I see his name I think of this Gallows song called Misery.

 Listening to it again just now I think the last part of it relates to us Dees fans, stuck in the Misery of the Dees. But I still love us/can’t break free.

PS long intro, kicks in around 1m 33s.

Love this track, and Gallows at this time were great. Saw them live at Festy Hall, was nuts.

Great reference, feels like this a lot of the time.

...What happened to the buy-in?

...Being outplayed by the St Kilda Spuds. 

Such mixed emotions. If my son hadn't been born on Wednesday, I'd call this a bad week. Instead, it's my best week ever. Maybe when my son starts to follow along we'll be ok?

I can't wait for the presser...

Goody (with that silly smirk of his):

'We're not happy with the way we're playing'

'We have to get better'

'We're not thinking about finals right now, we're just looking to next week'

THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THIS CRAP. 

We're slow, lazy, unfit and sloppy. And our coach doesn't realise he's being outcoached most weeks.

Fancy that, the guy who couldn't get a game in our team (admittedly sometimes through injury) has now kicked one less goal than our entire team...

Great performance from the boys! It wasn't perfect, but you could just tell that the team felt it was coming back to life - and are starting to believe again.

Jones has been under the pump, but how good was he!? Petracca was a straight up bull. Maxxy owned everything in the centre, Preuss showed a lot of promise, loved his hunger and the physicality of his game. Hore was tops, as was Oliver. I really liked Hunt's run, Wagner's enthusiasm, and the ferocity shown by the team. It was also great to see Goody down there tonight.

You could see how much this game meant to the boys. I hope they take this belief and run with it. 

2 minutes ago, beelzebub said:

It's a blended family mine. Hers are both Essendon though my wife and all her her lot are practically Collingwood. My girl turned defiant years ago when we were rubbish ( hmmm ...) and began following Aints. My lad though not an ardent footy fan does support Melbourne

It's probably ok to adorn yours in red and blue...by the time the kid understands footy hopefully we've bounced back.  . Hopefully 

Go Dees and again all the very best.

Life will never be the same...but that's a good thing

Oh wow, last night would have had plenty of vested interests then haha (especially the sisters v bro). I can relate to the family mix, I defied a family full of Tigers to become a Dee way back when Jimmy and Garry threw me a footy when I was 7 (I'm so cheap haha).

Very true, I'm banking on the long-term here.

Thanks a lot, appreciate it - I'm looking forward to life being very different ? 

3 minutes ago, beelzebub said:

First ? 

Yep! So much unknown, but max excitement for the challenges and joy ahead. It's been a long road. I've had the kid's Dees gear ready for a while haha. I've also had to get in early, as my wife is a Pies supporter (sorry) (although to be fair, she's more of quiet Dee nowadays).

You have any little Dees?

10 minutes ago, beelzebub said:

Good luck. Hope all goes well

Cheers, buddy! Exciting times ?

I've been trying to find an upside to all of this.

My wife is due to give birth in 2 weeks, and I knew that I wouldn't be able to get out to many of the games, at least initially, and had become ok with the prospect that I'd miss some of our romping wins. 

Thanks to the Dees, it looks like I won't miss any of our (romping) wins, and I'll probably be well timed to return to the games when we've turned it around!

I look forward to taking our kid to a game, and being able to tell him/her (we don't know yet) about how much we have our sh*t together.

49 minutes ago, Sargent Shultz said:

Personally, I am not buying into any of the rubbish on this thread about our players not being good enough or trying hard enough. I do think the amount of surgery that went on after last season has hampered our start. Logic suggests the following:

• they are the pretty much the same players who got us to a semi-final last year- the only ones missing last night were; Lewis, Tyson, Vandenberg, Hannam and Spargo. Vandenberg, Hannam and Lewis may have made a bit of difference. But not substantial, as Hunt, J Wagner and  Fritsch (new to the team) played well  last night

So what has changed since September 2018?

• well - the rules. I think, the most significant change in the last 10 years; 6/6/6, kick out from goal square and the willingness of umpire to play free kicks for infringements that were not paid last year

So what has the coaching staff done about this?

• well - not much. As we sit 0/3 and likely to be 0/6 in a few weeks logic suggests to me that  the coaches have totally failed to adapt to the new rules, and the players are simply executing a failed game plan- these are pretty much the same players that were a game away from a grand final

So what to do?

• anyone that knows anything about coaching young people (in business or sport) knows that piling on criticism and anger tends to make them withdraw, lose confidence and perform worse. Coaches must take responsibility, admit their plan is wrong, learn from the likes of Geelong who have clearly adapted to the "New Way" and change their model- quickly. As my old friend Darwin said:

I was flat last night, and I didn't wake up much better, so it was kind of nice to see something positive/real. I think the coaching staff have failed to adapt. We've got a good core, we just need to be honest with ourselves, and start fresh next week with a better gameplan. With some luck and grit, we'll win the games we need in order to stay in the mix, then put it all together when the rest of our boys are back.

1 minute ago, Collar-Jazz-Knee said:

Our FIT starting 22 next year must look something like this:

B:      Jetta                      May              Lever

HB:   KK                   New CHB      Hibberd

C :     New outside mid  Oliver          Salem

HF:     Vanders               Weid           Hannan

F:      New Small forward   TMac      Melk

R:    Gawn       Brayshaw      Viney

Int:   Preuss     Petracca      Hunt    Fritsch

Emg:   Jones     OMac       New Backup Ruck     Some new player with heart

This is a great team. Can't wait for 2020!!!

Seriously, how have we allowed ourselves to be overtaken by everyone else, again?

We set ourselves up last year. We finally broke the finals shackles, and hoodoos against some teams, like the cats. But here we are, apparently an 80-point worse team against the cats, a loss to the bombers who have thus far been a joke. So much so that there are murmurs of that drug cheat Hird returning to the club?

Was it the rule changes? Nope, because we have all had the same time to adapt. Are we tired? What the hell!? It's round 3 and it looks like we're slugging it out after a long season. Where is the heart? Why are the Cats playing out of their skins (weren't they 'done' last year), why are the Bulldogs playing good footy with a mixed list? Why are the Lions firing? Why the hell did Goody's contract get extended without some proof this year? He's been outcoached every game this year! He is always reacting, never ahead of the curve, and his stupid smirk at the presser is driving me nuts. He's being paid a lot of money, tell us how he's going to fix this... not that it will get better over time, or that am 80 point drubbing is a positive sign.

What is happening?!!

3 minutes ago, Wiseblood said:

Been a while since I felt this flat.  I'm not panicking yet, but I couldn't feel any flatter.  Just an awful feeling.

The bottom line for me is the gameplan, which is what many of us discussed last week.  Yes, ANB should be dropped, Frost and O Mac were putrid pretty much most of the night and we have others like Hibberd and Tom Mac who are horribly out of form.  They are are small pieces of the puzzle right now.

But the ease with which opposition teams are scoring against us right now is alarming.  In that third term the Bombers kicked 7 straight from roughly 12 inside 50s at one stage.  This is horribly similar to what the Cats did in the third term last week.  Every time they ran forward they looked like scoring and we did absolutely nothing about it.  When you have McKernan and Tippa kicking 4, you know you're in deep trouble.

We simply made the same mistakes last week and we paid dearly for it.  How often did we turn it over at half forward and they hit a couple of over the top handballs and ran off with the ball?  How can we let that happen?  Are the instructions wrong, or do we have players at the moment who simply aren't putting them into practice?

The pressure is on, now.  Goody had a week to rectify things and he didn't.  Thankfully the Bombers are rubbish as a half decent side would have probably beaten us by more.  

If there are any positives, it's that we seemed to lower our eyes a little better this week, but we still allowed the ball to get out too easily.  Gawny wasn't bad, Gus tried hard and I thought some of the lesser lights like Lockhart and Corey Wagner did some good things.

But we have nowhere to hide now.  The season is slipping out of our grasp and we have very little time to get back into it.  It seems hollow for me to say, but don't lose the faith.

Great summary. And it's taken a lot for you to still hold faith. I haven't lost it, but I'm so confused by our effort this year, frustrated by the terrible coaching and angered that all the other teams went away and did their homework in the off season, so they didn't have to blame the new rules/adjustment on their performance

It's possible that we're not bad...

... maybe we're just TANKING?!!?

What a weird game. Increased output from many of the guys we expected to lift from last week. But so many are so flat. Our gameplan is (on best view) non existent. It's a long season and there's still time, but we're going to need to fix whatever is going on, very quickly.

I'm not up for any of Goody's fluffy garbage at the presser either. I want to hear him say that his gameplan is stuffed and he's going to fix it. Oh and that backs and forwards are going to work out what is going on.

2 minutes ago, jnrmac said:

No one stood up. No one.

Uncontested possessions showed how lazy they all are.

Pathetic effort.

Agree, but I thought Salem was very good, and did about as much as he could. Wagner was decent, but that might just be in comparison. 

Above all, I was expecting a return of our agro and pressure, and I saw none of that. Losing is one thing, but looking like losers is another.

Bring the passion back in R2 boys, we're going to need it!

I hate getting shown up by Westhoff. He's a spud who kicks his goals against spud teams. And fancy bloody Watts showing us up as well. Classic stuff.

I know some of our boys were underdone, the injuries, lack of game time etc, but geez we were bad, and we got worse as the game went on. Jones was terrible, Maxxy was worked out, some of the boys were not even sighted, and we were outcoached. The icing is NO SCORE in the last qtr which is unforgivable.

We're only 1 game in, and it's a long season, but we have some serious questions to answer.

We look absolutely knackered. It's like Port is playing in different conditions. I know some of our boys are a little underdone with game time, but it's not a great look.

Gotta suck in the big ones this QTR and do what a top 4 team would do/needs to do - take our 4 points.

I think we've got this, but it's going to be ugly.

I reckon we'll kick a few quick ones to start though...

When we win the flag next year, the tough draw won't mean very much at all.

Tough draw, but that's what happens when you're seen as a top 4 side. It's been a LONG time since we were in this position. The boys will embrace it. Loving the extra tv exposure.

I'm sorry to see Jesse go, he's going to be a star...

...But we're building a legacy here - so we can't afford to take passengers (in a physical or mental sense). Jessie wanted to go home, and that's where he's going.

Us? We've got ourselves some guys who are seriously talented (+ fill some gaps in our 22), and they're also coming home.

And now we're going to win some flags.

Be excited, we're about to see one hell of an era.