BoBo

Fair call Fair call!

Yup. 3 weeks in a row, oppo defenders taking marks, time and time again, off forward entry kicks. We don’t kick it to the advantage of our forwards or we continually do the long bomb, which evidently, opposition defenders can cope with easily. In the 2nd or 3rd? When we kicked it to Cox twice, within a minute? There’s no unpredictability. Opposition teams just have to put a tall marking player 20 out from goals and the ball WILL go to him. Watch how Carlton move forward, their entries are very good. Makes McKay and Curnows jobs much easier.

I’m not sure how many premiership defending teams would have lost 3 in a row at home, after getting 20-30 point ahead, then get chased down for 3 quarters. Losing the same way repeatedly is saying to me that teams know they can grind us down.

I’m seeing lot of complaining on here about how quiet Dees fans are. Either we all join the cheer squad or we try and organise something else. If neither of these options aren’t to demonlanders liking and nobody else puts forward a better idea, then the topic should die off pretty quickly and this thread never be bough up again 🤷‍♂️ P.S. this isn’t directed at you specifically, just generally.

I’ll get a sash made just for you Layzie.

50 would do the trick. You bring yours?

We need to expand the cheer squad across the ground and change our meek culture. We can do this by making us demonlanders easily visible to each other, which means when we see earth other in our uniform, we’ll know that were going to have someone nearby that’s going to join in with chants and be loud.

*I’ve pasted this comment from another thread* I think the low attendance part is not so much the issue in all of this. If we had the same attendance but we were LOUD then it wouldn’t be brought up as much. I sit in Dees members and I yell and carry on as well as one guy in front of me. I’ll be honest, I feel like I’m ‘carrying on’ because me and this other guy are the most vocal just in our little area. There’s just no voice! We’re meek. It isn’t the cheer squad, it’s us other Dees fans that are so quiet. *Suggestion* We need ‘supporter’ reps that G up the crowd. All this means is being vocal and joining in chants and such when the cheer squad does in different parts of the ground, even when it’s quiet 🤫 I’ll put my hand up first. I’d suggest we make a ‘reps shirt’ or something and get as many people on demonland to get them so we’re visible. A kind of uniform. It can be as simple as a scarf. If everyone on Demonland can commit to this then this seems like something that we on this site can do? It might become a thing? We need a cultural change as supporters, so we need as many of it on demonland to appear official and just make it happen. People will get louder if others are already doing it. We need to make I semi-official so people don’t feel self-conscious as that’s what I feel like the culture is. If people think this will work I’ll make a dedicated post and try and get some kind of ‘rep’ uniform made by polling or something. That’s the best I’ve got. There doesn’t need to be heaps of us, we just need to be loud. As much input would be appreciated as I don’t know if this is a crap idea or not. If lots of people buy into it, then let’s make it happen!

I think the low attendance part is not so much the issue in all of this. If we had the same attendance but we were LOUD then it wouldn’t be brought up as much. I sit in Dees members and I yell and carry on as well as one guy in front of me. I’ll be honest, I feel like I’m ‘carrying on’ because me and this other guy are the most vocal just in our little area. There’s just no voice! We’re meek. It isn’t the cheer squad, it’s us other Dees fans that are so quiet. *Suggestion* We need ‘supporter’ reps that G up the crowd. All this means is being vocal and joining in chants and such when the cheer squad does in different parts of the ground, even when it’s quiet 🤫 I’ll put my hand up first. I’d suggest we make a ‘reps shirt’ or something and get as many people on demonland to get them so we’re visible. A kind of uniform. It can be as simple as a scarf. If everyone on Demonland can commit to this then this seems like something that we on this site can do? It might become a thing? We need a cultural change as supporters, so we need as many of it on demonland to appear official and just make it happen. People will get louder if others are already doing it. We need to make I semi-official so people don’t feel self-conscious as that’s what I feel like the culture is. If people think this will work I’ll make a dedicated post and try and get some kind of ‘rep’ uniform made by polling or something. That’s the best I’ve got. There doesn’t need to be heaps of us, we just need to be loud.

The lack of pressure has been very noticeable! Freo and now Sydney just walked it out of our forward line over and over again. We depend on being able to lock it in to both strangle the oppo from scoring but also to force goals for us as part of our game plan. I guess my point above is, because we couldn’t do that, then our f/50 entries have to be much more dangerous. And when the game was there to be won… we were just standing still. That says to me that there isn’t adaptability to the situation or an over belief in our game plan… even when Sydney defenders were marking absolutely everything in our f/50. There has to be a different option going forward.

What I don’t understand is why we didn’t have game awareness to adapt to what was happening? The best teams in the same situation of past years would have: Had their forward line constantly in motion with dummy leads disorientating oppo defence until the right option presents itself Or Forwards creating blocks on oppo defenders allowing space for a forward to make a lead. They would have some kind of set ‘play’ for lack of a better word. At a crucial time in the game, our forward line was stationary. No blocks, no forwards pointing where they wanted it, no dummy leads. Just, stationary. I don’t understand how we were expecting to score by doing this at a time when we had to get a goal right then and there. We gave ourselves no chance.

BBB looks like he’s double/tripled teamed constantly but to be fair, he also looks way off rhythm at the moment. Can’t get near it

The bombing it to the top of square thing works out when we are able to lock it in our 50 for like 5 minutes straight and get repeated entries over and over again. In a game like last week or tonight where the oppo was able to waltz out of of forward 50, means we need to make the most of our entries. We did it in the first quarter when we were winning clearances, outside of that we just seem to have no plan B. And yeah you’re 100%, leads aren’t being honoured. During the 2nd and 3rd there were guys in so much space and they were ignored.

I don’t know who our ‘forward captain’ is but in that last term we had 3 times where we had someone outside 50, waiting for an option to kick into our forward line and literally the entire forward line was standing still, no leads, nothing. This is under 12’s stuff. I remember earlier in the year, a broadcaster was showing our forward line where everyone was moving and they used it as an example of how hard this is to defend against. That went completely missing in the last qtr tonight and I have no idea how an AFL standard team, let alone a premiership defending one, could allow this to happen especially when the game was on the line. Our forward connection has never been the best, but it’s worrying seeing this level of ZERO EFFORT from our forwards.

Our forwards, literally all of them, were standing completely still just before. What is happening in there??

He looks a million bucks and all he’s doing is leading into space, taking marks and executing his kicks. He just gets the basics done.

Mitch Brown is more damaging than Weid….

This is spot on. Him in his current or last years form, BB and Bailey in the same forward line. Try stopping that. On the flip side… I think Roos’ no [censored] policy also set us on the right path. Tex is more a [censored] than he is worth vs him as a player IMO. I’m a big believer in second chances also but geez… he’s a hand grenade to bring into our club especially.

Our defence and ability to lock the ball in our f/50 has glossed over this in large part. We generally get a lot of entries so it’s inevitable that we’ll score when we can pull it off, in a game like today, we need to fix this issue otherwise we can’t score enough. I’d guess that we have one of the lower conversion rates per inside 50 of a premiership team for the last 30 years. It’s a problem that hasn’t ever been addressed that much as we’ve dominated in other parts of the ground to compensate.

Freo applied more pressure for longer than any team we’ve played this year and we couldn’t absorb it. Credit to them for that. We didn’t apply the kind of pressure or effort that we’re known for to gain momentum back either. We couldn’t lock it in our forward 50 as we usually do to strangle teams. Tom Mac plays this game, he takes Mays spot…. Big difference him not being available to fill in. Not the sole reason, but he is so valuable as a back up defender if needed. The forward connection (because our defence was compromised) is an issue we really need to fix. Teams have figured us out, so we need to make our forward entries count even more.

I’m a fan of Wiedemann but this isn’t good. Have to factor in that Geelong we’re amazing during Hawkins time and we’ve only come good in the last two really, plus Hawkins is an awesome player so comparing isn’t really that fair but: Weidemanns first 6 seasons 49 games 48 goals Hawkins first 6 seasons: 101 games 169 games I think this has changed my opinion on Weidemann. I’m shocked he wasn’t a goal a game in his first 6 seasons. This was supposed to be the period when Hawkins wasn’t doing that well which I also thought he started slowly from what commentators at the time were saying. Hawkins early years are pretty bloody good.

Couldn’t pull up Weids numbers so we compare could you…?

To be fair, wouldn’t a part of that be that he was trying to get into one of the best teams of the modern era though? I could be very wrong but I think his start was probably better than others because we was in that team (lots of opportunities to score) but also he was being compared to that team too (high expectation because of how good that team was). So he may not have set the world on fire, but I’d guess his game to goal ratio was still very good.

Feels like he hardly ever gets injured too. Seems to always play.

Fair point