Watson11

It was a great effort overall against Port. I thought Port would be too good but we really made them earn it. A few things in the last qtr were frustrating. When Narkle tied the scores, was Clarry our best matchup for Rozee at the next CB. It was like the GWS game on repeat. Then they ran down the clock too easily at the end. We played a zone like we were 30 points up, not 1 or 2 points down. They had 9 marks in the last 90 seconds. Last night Kane Cornes claimed we are a poorly drilled side on The Round so Far in relation to this. We are 1W and 4L this year in close games, and this follows on from the horrendous final against Carlton last year. Does Cornes have a point?

The Hawks must be very bad at tanking. They were right in the battle for Harley Reid at round 9 or 10 last year. Then they purposely smashed West Coast by 100 points and won 6 of their last 12 or so games. And last year was their worst end of year ladder position.

Tracc’s injury was bad luck. But the rest wasn’t. And Geelong had just as much misfortune with Hawkins carrying a foot injury, Cameron doing a hamstring on the eve of the finals etc. Our 2022 issues were all self inflicted.

Your quoting 2023 not 2022 like I was referring to.

How did we have horrible luck in 2022. Games lost to injury that year are below. It is more that we blew the season by not using our depth with Casey only losing a single game that year. That is not bad luck.

I agree with a lot of it, but how was giving Brayshaw a long contract a mistake? Genuinely would like to know. Does he think we would be better off if he had a 2 year contract and got wiped out? Or is he implying that we are picking up the bill to pay the entire contract out?

Crows have been below average in q1 and q2, terrible in q3, but I think have the second best q4 record this year. Don’t think Burgo is the problem.

I don't know why Cornes triggers supporters. He will say stuff to grab headlines and is open about why he does it. But he is a good analyst of the game. He has no agenda against Melbourne and is calling it how he sees it. He went on the Deeluded podcast in July 2021 and predicted us as premiers reminding everyone how good and underrated Fritsch is, how BB will come good that year, how good our defence was etc etc. He is different to say Dermott, someone with a hatred of MFC, who even after we won the flag hardly conceded it happened.

Only can be good or bad. Have you ever seen one of these things...

Although its interesting to look at Traccs stats and impact. He played mostly forward up to 2019 and he was involved in 22-29% of our scores when he was a forward. Since 2020 when he went midfield, the impact was immediate and he has been involved in 33-37.5% of our scores. He has been number 1 or 2 for score involvements in the AFL for 4 years. By comparison, Clarry's best year was 2021 with involvement in 28.7% of scores, but he has generally averaged around 26% (dropping to 19% this year). But this is probably for a different thread. On topic, I'll be interested to see which Port turn up this week. Hopefully they are busy drinking their bathwater.

Do you really think Tracc needs to play forward? We need stars in the midfield. And with his spleen injury and the way we bomb it into our forward line, it would be the last place he would want to be.

So that would mean only 2 finals in Melbourne 6v7 and the GF. 2006 was close. Top 4 were all interstate.

That’s such a ridiculous argument. I mean by 2013 Hawthorn only had 9 of their 2008 premiership list still playing. It just happened they were all absolute A-graders which is what premiership teams are built around. Same with us. It was actually 10 players and included Max, Tracc, Viney, Salem, Brayshaw, and Oliver. Also Jesse Hogan who turned into May and Sparrow. That was the core of a premiership list. Also included Hibberd, Harmes, TMac, and ANB, as well as Joel Smith and Hunt that were injured, and of course Jones. Goody had a lot of A-graders and top 10 draft (and top 3) picks to build premiership team with.

1945

Considering that every coach who has coached as many games as Hinkley has got their team to a GF and Hinkley hasn’t, it’s a lost final or two from exploding again.

Nah. They’re doing heavy loading. Not joking either. PS Not an excuse, just a reason…

Does it make any sense that Geelong are paying $1.31. Dogs are paying $1.32. Crows have lost their last 5 against Geelong and not won at the cattery since 2003.

I think this is spot on with another factor. I’m always surprised at who is the quickest in the GF sprint. You could probably throw a blanket over 50 afl players over a 40m sprint. But give them a footy and I would expect some who are classic sprinters become plonkers. They just lose all their power. Kossie, Windsor, Hunt etc and others seem to be efficient with a ball in hand while plenty of others (say Chandler) who are super quick without a ball drop right back to the pack.

Another viewpoint is May had the strength to matchup on Hogan while TMac didn’t. Hogan didn’t get many 1 on 1 opportunities until that 7 minute patch. And when he did get them he monstered T-Mac, kicked 3 quick goals, and they won by 2 points.

Lamb and Mahoney had different jobs. Did you mean to compare Lamb and Viney Snr?

That was the year before which was also poor. INS: Schache, Hunter, Grundy OUTS: Hunt, Bedford, Wiedeman Lloyd Meek, who was unwanted at Freo that year, would have worked much better for us as a backup to Max than Grundy. And he would have been good for 6-8 years.

That was always going to happen. Even last time when Darcy and Jackson were up against Max they won 15 hit-outs to advantage against Max. Our only chance was to crowd stoppages. I was watching and counting numbers at stoppages at the start hoping we would crowd them and could not believe what I saw. Below are the first 2 non CB stoppages. What you can't see at the first is that Jordan Clark was 5m off to the left by himself and Darcy tapped it in that direction for an easy clearance. No idea what Chandler and Throlstrup were doing. The second boundary throw in shows it better as its wide angle. Freo brought their high half forward (Frederick) and we had to have Sparrow pick him up, meaning Freo just had numbers on the outside that could do what they liked. Then we reset at half time. In the third we started crowding stoppages (see third stoppage). We have everyone there. That worked better but the game was done by then.

Thanks for pointing that out. BTW, good article. But including loose ball gets as a contested possession seems confusing. In the passage of play shown, if the soccer by Heeney had bounced in front of Clark does it become an CP to Clark rather than UP?

This will be a tricky one. MFC and Geelong were bottom 6 for pressure act difference in premiership years. Pies must have been lucky to win last year as they were 8th while the deserved premiers (GWS or ourselves) were bottom 4. I guess when you have the ball more the opposing team has lots of opportunities to create pressure.

@binman I'll just start by saying Goody will be a legend simply because he led us to a flag after a 57 year drought, no matter what his final W-L record is or how many flags he ends up with. Same as Roos at the Swans or Beveridge at the Dogs or Bomber Thompson (who for some strange reason you left out) at Geelong. BTW Bomber coached 264 games, won 2 flags, and had a W-L record of 62% (and a finals W-L record of 57.9%) so he has Goody covered in every metric. Of coaches to coach at least 150 games, have >50% W-L record, and win 1 premiership, there are actually not 14 but 34 coaches. Did you mean to say 150 games, better W-L record than Goody, and at least 1 premiership. If you had then the list would have been 18 coaches. But in this list only 2 have not won multiple flags (Goody and Longmire). So on behalf of all demonlanders, I request Goody win another flag so he can fix that anomaly. PS How did you leave Checker Hughes out of your list? 348 games coached, 6 GFs, 4 flags, 65.4% W-L record.