BoBo

Lever out for up to 8 weeks. Going in for ankle surgery. Coooool.

I feel like our midfield set up dictates where others play on the ground. Do we keep rivers back and start with Kozzie, Tracc and Oliver in the middle? Viney goes forward? Do we stick Rivers in the middle? Windsor? If Riv and/or Windsor go in the middle, who goes back to the flanks?

This has been mentioned on here so many times. It’s the ‘kick it to Maxy down the line’ and ‘kick it to a contest in our F50 near the boundary line’ instructions. Percentage plays. Create a contest. It’s killed our instinct to look for the best options available and instead instilled a reactive adherence to a now defunct system.

Yep, did a good job.

What are you referring too here?

I’m sympathetic to this and I don’t place the blame solely at Goodwins feet for our performances this year. The reasons we find ourselves in the current state is a lot of different problems all adding up and coming to fruition. He has made bad errors though. Reverting back to the old style mid way through last year to mitigate losses was him losing his nerve and all it did was push the problems we had then, to now. So we lost half a year of in game development for the current style of play. In essence, he played to ameliorate criticism, which any way you cut it, is a failure of leadership and lack of foresight. Forward connection issues are HIS problem. Had years to fix it and hasn’t or is unable too. There is no escaping this. You can say we don’t have the players down there required (which is probably true) and we don’t have the skills to execute properly, but long bombs into the forward line, for years, over and over again? If players were not instructed to do this then the only other explanation is he just allowed players to get away with murder. To me, this is the one where Goodwin lost me, probably starting sometime mid 2023 to be honest. Complete dominance and forward F50 entries for [censored] all scores. We’ve all known about this problem with us, it’s been spoken about to death, the same conversation over and over again and we are STILL DOING IT. I cannot get over this.

He’s had a great start to the year. It’s been very worrying that his intensity at the contest has been a point of difference to the majority of other players. A number of times over the last 3 games I’ve asked myself why is it he looks like he’s on another level in terms of being hungry for the ball?

There have been too many games over the last few seasons where he’s gotten the ball and I’ve done the whole ‘oh, Tom Sparrow is playing’. He plays ok and has some good games, but isn’t damaging. I doubt his name is mentioned by opposition coaches very often, if at all. Which is what I was saying about him in 2022 with the caveat that he’s still learning the game. Turning 25 this year.

We’ll need around about 8/9 wins from the next 19 rounds to not finish bottom 4. If we lose to west coast or Richmond in the next few rounds then I cannot see that happening. We are so far behind other teams.

This year is a learning year and seeing who wants to play with us moving forward, nothing less. Forward connection blah blah blah, exactly the same issue for years bloh bloh bloh. Sick of talking/hearing/watching it to be honest. Skills below AFL standard (ESPECIALLY HAND BALLS) which is frankly unacceptable on behalf of both the coaches and players. There is zero reason for players not being able to handball. We did play better for longer this week which was good. Melksham burnt about 4-5 times F50? I feel like he's our only forward that repeatedly finds himself alone in our F50.

Is that a 2 goal rebound from 2 Fritsch behinds this quarter?

He looks a bit one dimensional. And he might have speed in a straight line but isn’t evasive. Reminds me of Sam Blease, except not as quick maybe.

I don’t think Turner takes that kick to Kozzie in previous years.

We’re back! C’mon Dees

Umps need to fix up their understanding of 15 meters. It’s way more inconsistently called than last year.

Nice one. Get another one.

Execute skills - goal. It’s that simple.

Hand ball execution, decision making still causing us problems.

You beautyyyy

All I want to see is communication, accountability, executing basic skills and players gut running into space to provide options. The bare minimum to expect from a professional AFL side.

Nah it was a good digression! Very interesting WW2 plane knowledge. And yes you’re right, AI is very problematic. I was reading about model collapse the other day and although I don’t know very much about technical stuff, it intuitively seems correct. The more AI generates results, the more it becomes self referential and spoils the information pool.

Right ok, thank you for the correction, then I’m wrong @Gator . He did indeed Blink. Never trusting Google AI again.

Is this a lesson in the pitfalls of trusting AI? Locked in until 2024 season? If he signed a 4 year extension, then doesn’t that mean 25,26,27,28?

Wasn’t Lamb stuck in a pretty hard place with everything though? Interest from North for Viney for more money (who went on to win our B&F), Petracca frankly burning the club down publicly at the time of Viney’s signing (considering Tracc wouldn’t deny any of the media reports which is tacit confirmation he was ready/threatening/wanting to leave) and we were, now known factually, floating Oliver around to other clubs because he was off the rails. What leverage did Lamb have to work with considering the club was an absolute [censored] show at the time? If Viney left, there would be a 1000 page thread on ‘why didn’t we re-sign our 2024 B&F player’ right now and how it’s one of our biggest failures.

If the hawks are going for Oscar Allen, I’d imagine his asking price would be fairly hefty. Lots of hawks players prices would be rising too. Cant see them re-signing all of their current players within their salary cap either this year or next if Allen goes there. Could be a good time to target one. Lloyd Meek contract ends 2025. 26 yo. Serong 2025. 22yo. Calsher Dear 2025. 19 yo. Dylan Moore 2026. 25yo. Jai Newcombe 2026. 23yo. Josh Weddle 2026. 20yo. Mitch Lewis 2026. 26yo. Nick Watson 2026. 20yo. Unless some of them take unders, Hawks may not be able to match what they would all ask for, especially if they do take Allen. I think that’s 8 of their starting 22. Mitch Lewis is probably the riskiest, only 70 games (same average of 10 as Mcadams) since starting in 2018 but averages 1.79 goals a game… Allen is averaging 13 games a season but a worse goal average of 1.48. Massive risk paying both of these guys big bucks for the potential of both of them playing a low amount of games respectively. So I recommend hawks keep Lewis AND recruit Allen and giving them massive contracts.