rpfc

No it’s as good as 2 with a huge percentage boosting loss…

I will resist the urge to say I told you so to a few of you about our forward pressure being down most of the year. I’m good like that… Pressure is about attitude - that’s why NM and WCE can be above anyone in anything. The players have an option to lift and apply themselves for the last two months of the season or leave a golden chance to cement their legacy go begging; they are so good, that they can compete while ignoring a cornerstone of their game. But losers always talk about competing, don’t they?

Thanks to all those with their bloviating judgements and negative psychoanalysis. I now understand, with more clarity, why someone would want to leave…

In the bottom 4 for pressure, where we were first last year… Thats attitude. I’m sorry to burst your weird reality where we are the Schrödinger's Cat of form - neither in form nor out of form… But the players are so talented that they know they can get away with stuff and still win - well welcome to thunder dome because that won’t work against the best nor those with an axe to grind. Lift or get left behind.

You need to chill out. Of course we can get nothing through an unlikely scenario. But Craig Hutchison is banking on your neurosis firing up so he can get people watching and listening to his nonsense. He is a gangster, and not the ‘fun’ kind. He is Jabba the Hut of the footy world and the quicker you help Leia straighten that chain - the better…

Leave it to you to inject some humour about Essendon. Pretty dank.

Do you know the meaning of ‘official?’

We don’t have to find a win, we have to find form. I don’t care if we limp into 4th; it will be straight sets if we don’t actually find the form, and apply the effort without the footy, we showed at the end of last year. So lose as many as you like trying to get that discipline and defensive intensity back…

Lloyd was right on all of those plays. Angus was banking on us winning the footy, we didn’t and we got punished. His message is that we aren’t doing the things we were last year and I agree. It can tighten up quickly and we can alter our trajectory but he is right.

Max/LJ we’re disrespectful to English.

Our pressure game sets all other aspects of our game up, the backs can get higher up the ground and make the ground smaller, we get turnovers in our half which enables our forward line to kick goals - we don’t have a forward line built for slow build up and transition. They are designed for rapid movement from turnover that their pressure causes. The alchemy isn’t there this year. I think it is a lack of discipline to structure for enough of the game. And that is where the other teams are cutting through us and putting our defenders under pressure that they are not built for. All it takes is one or two in the wrong spot in that Demon web and they are in the corridor with runners beside them. We were the best without the footy last year, and we aren’t anymore. There are a number of reasons/excuses for that. Form and adherence to structure, and also health and consistency - back to backs are so hard in the modern game because this group has not played 26 week season and backed it up for another 26 week season. It’s tough. And those carrying knocks this year for long periods are at least Lever, Salem, Petracca, Rivers, Hibberd, Brown, and Petty; that’s a fair group of players.

Not much more has to said; other than some Dees fans have no idea how a good club should be run…

Tell your friend that either Dogs, Tigers, or Saints have to run the table from here or we have to get smashed a couple times and then the Dogs can drop one and get over us. Assure your friend that if we lose the next 4 (ala 2004), our embarrassment will be a first week of finals exit…

So you are quadrupling down on this Friday night being the releasing of the decisive ‘loading shackles?’ Like I thought we agreed last week - there are other factors to why we cannot seem to lift to near the same level of pressure in our forward half or why we are not winning the territory battle and playing a lot of the game on our back half. We may win next week, we may lose - but this curse that lasts 9 of the 22 rounds is either a red herring to one’s fortunes and a short revealer of form around the bye, or it is the arbiter of a season and one we have not been able to handle at all in 2021 or 2022. We won’t always go undefeated in the first two and a half months and we are destined to be also rans of this loading ‘curse’ continues into the future. I obviously think it’s the former, but the latter is the most concerning - and if you are right - then perhaps Griffith and the FD have their planning wrong if we are this troubled for 40% of the season.

It’s three weeks after we had to travel to Sydney to play a Qualifying final because we didn’t win enough practice matches, and two weeks after we were sent out in straight sets by Collingwood because we had to play a semi final against a team too early because we didn’t win enough practice matches. Fitness-wise, the boys are peaking watching Geelong and Sydney play so the cones and [censored] should go down real good on GF day.

You want a ‘Plan B’ - you want a completely different way of playing? Do it over the summer. You don’t have time to train the intricacies of a gameplan in season. Oh, and that plan then becomes Plan A with no other plan because it is a ridiculous notion to coach two ways of playing to a group. Our players are not playing well enough to the gameplan; the plan is sound.

They play the same as the seniors. With one way to play so it is understandable and followed. Tactics change but not your plan of playing. There is no plan B.

That ‘ship says otherwise.

But this other player that is leaving is giving you genuine distress. This player you can’t remember.

Sparrow and Harmes are going to go missing from time to time because we have a set midfield who dominate minutes in the middle. Therefore, mids outside of the big 3 are always going to have another role that is their dominate role. It’s like the back up ruck - they have to be a good forward THEN a decent ruckman around the ground. Same with the flankers that alternate into the midfield - they have to be good forwards AND good mids. That is such a hard trade off and makes any progression from Kozzi into the middle valuable and what ANB does for Petracca (blocking, defensive running) invaluable.

Objection. Sustained.

I would say so. Most demanding spot on the ground is CHF. If ever a first year player is going to do what Bowey did - it would be off a HBF.

Nah, I like what I said. Case closed.

Of course they are but the specific allowance for ‘sign and trades’ are good for smaller clubs to get *something* for this player that is leaving.

It’s not ridiculous. The NBA calls this a ‘sign and trade’ and they have are very mature when it comes to movement of players.