Gawndy the Great

Let’s just hope it absolutely pelts down with rain and is ice cold and windy. With our luck we’ll get an unseasonal warm front from the Bahamas with no wind.

L,W,L,W,W,L,W,W,L (5-4)* *Subject to change if we beat the Lions next Thursday.

Maybe they should consider delivering F50 with those NRL style rugby kicks and get the small forwards to hunt the grubber. Do it a few times and the backline will become a little anxious. Every now and then change it up with a dart to the top of the square, right on BBB's head. For mine: Out: Max, Turner, Mitch Brown In: Tommo, May, Bedford and Weid as Emergency B: Pig, May, Lever HB: Bowey, Petty, Salem C: Brayshaw, Viney, Langdon HF: Harmes, Tommo, Spargo F: Kozzy, BBB, Fritta Foll: LJ, Trac, Oliver Bench: ANB, Sparrow, JJ, Bedford

Bar the Harmes injury, all have been joint / concussion (Smith, Salem, Gawn, Tmac, Lever, May and now Max) which are a little more luck than training / loading. We are now without Gawn for a few weeks, but aside from him and Tmac we are full strength football side with an upcoming ruck star (i get the jury is still out on that). Ideally we would be able to have a straight swap for both of these with reasonable depth, we don't. LJ must take the load now and im not sure he's completely ready for the challenge purely from a fitness standpoint.

When it rains it pours. We have been cruelled by injury this year but so have many other teams. given the significance of Gawn, i now think we will be lucky to hold onto a top 4 spot. Upside is his body will be allowed to heal and hopefully he can return quicker and provide us some energy towards the tail end of the season. I'm not a fan of Weid until he can string 4-5 games in the VFL and be busting door down for selection not a gentle tap. He is not the answer right now. Joel Smith should be approaching fitness by now so hopefully he can provide some alternative forward options 2 weeks time. We do need to bring in some additional height though to cover Max, so i think Tommo could come in here. He can play both front and back and provide LJ some chop out in the ruck. He is much more versatile than Weid and has some physicality in his game.

There is a lot to read into that statement.

The one thing id add to this is that we dont know how other teams in our run home will fair over the next 9 weeks. Anything could happen that completely derails their season (think Bruce @ BullDogs;) just because their formline is hot now, doesnt mean they will be any good when we play them. This all goes to [censored] if Gawn has done his ankle though. I can live with a few weeks but a full syndesmosis will pretty much ruin our season.

Yep I can’t handle the demon bashing in the media as it makes my blood boil. So I have nothing to listen to or watch.

He’ll be ok. If it was an injury he wouldn’t be ae to stand on it

I think they are doing a good job of that already. We saw how coaches can act in game when Longmuir realised Trac was not fit and they adjusted mid game. The moment they can detect we lack run. Exploit, Exploit, Exploit! I listened to the Jonesy segment on SEN and he does mention it but quotes he is not close enough to the club to say definitively. But I chose to say he knows and he has all given us supporters the relief that it will pick back up.

Why is it a big secret? if they are loading just somebody from the club come out and say it! It doesn’t have to be disrespectful to the oppos but give the fan base some explanation of the cliff dive drop in form.

Yep it was evident even during the WC and Norf games. It’s a hallmark of our game plan and when it is not there expect the opposition to run rampant. There is plenty of data to suggest this has been problematic for at least a month so that is before any reasonable loading etc became a suggestion. To me it’s simply desire and that extra 1%. It’s not there or the players are fried. Let’s hope it’s the former because that can be fixed easily.

One of the hallmarks and foundations of our game plan is pressure on the ball carrier and around the ground. If that’s not firing then the rest will fall apart. But similarly, you fix the pressure and you’ll wonder how we lost the past 3 games. Funny listening to ANB that we were not gassed in the last quarter and it was more about wrestling back momentum.

Not necessarily. It’s scores from turn over and speed on the ball with high risk taking. This was the Swans effort repeated. Dockers was hard to say given the May injury and Trac illness but they don’t play this brand of footy - they are more like us. But mostly it is pressure, no matter how solid your back six when you don’t have enough pressure on the ball, bad things will always happen.

I think this too. We are in need of a key forward and we have one that played his junior footy as one. Not saying we put the ruck development on ice but maybe have him play 80/20 forward and only give Max the chop out when he’s on the bench.

The mistake was that long loopy handball from Oliver to Sparrow. 2nd mistake was Sparrow handballing it to Gawn. 3rd mistake was Gawn not being able to hand ball through one player. I mean you cannot make this crap up. Oliver had to turn and break through the traffic or give it to Viney on the inside.

Tell me about it. Tommo was the obvious matchup here . Just cannot understand why you wouldn’t keep him in and instead back Turner in a game that was so important in a number of ways. Could have bought in Turner against the Crows.

It’s been on the various media platforms for a few weeks now.

This is not about loading. Our pressure has been down for almost the entire season. We are 17th in the comp! Chew on that for a moment. Only Essendon are worse. You fix that and it is fixable, then we may have our season back, but don’t think for a moment we will win a final let alone a GF with that effort.

I like a small forward line but with our ball movement this is a death wish. If we spread like wild fire from turnover then it may work but slow transition will make it near impossible to score.

Left field idea. Move Trac to the forward line and Brayshaw inside. If Goodwin is all about reward performance then he has to look at Tracs form in the middle. It is well below par. Brayshaw on the other hand has been in the top 3-4 players for the last month.

This is indeed worrying . It’s like sacred ground and teams have no worry going through it. FWIW the sheer balls and skill required and how many teams seem to pull it off is amazing.

I get where you are coming from but people need to vent. I ride the wave of emotion like many on here so absolutely understand where they are coming from too. I say, let them say anything they want within reason and move on - I hold no grudges or take anything too seriously.

We take zero risk and as a result we are slow and predictable. We used to have some dare and exploded off turnover but once we push out the lead we just drop back a gear and try to defend. It’s so frustrating to watch what is so blatantly obvious but we know how stubborn Goodwin is with the game plan.

We would have still lost had May been in there. The team is not running and out hunting like last year. We are near the bottom of the ladder on team pressure and it is now telling when a mid table team beats us. We will struggle to win many more games this year if we don’t get this back. It is the one thing we can fix easily without form. However, I’m most disappointed at the response. I was expecting something special and finals like and yet bar from a few it was insipid and embarrassing.