I agree with a lot of your points here and right now it’s hard to pin point the main reason because we have a few issues. I know your not a Tom Sparrow fan and that’s fine but he was one of only a few today that were any good.
For me our biggest issue is mindset, we simply aren’t working hard enough for long enough and I think our leaders have been poor particularly the last two weeks. Again people we smack me for bringing up Collingwood but the buy in they have at the moment is exactly like us in 21. Yes they will lose games like we did but I feel you can trust them unlike us at the moment.
I personally don’t have an issue with Petty playing as a forward but I don’t like Lever playing as an actual key position back, it’s just not his go and throws our backline out of balance.
I was not a fan of bringing Grundy into the team, not because he’s not a good player because he is. But again I feel our team balance is out, with Grundy, Gawn, Mc Donald or Brown all playing if where not dominating clearances or marking the ball good teams will chop us up on rebounds. Yes we needed another ruck option but would have preferred using the Grundy money on a key position player.
Our clearance work is also a massive issue particularly when your playing two big ruckman. It feels like where not just losing them but letting far to many centre clearances out without even touching the ball or the opposition player putting added pressure on the backline.