rpfc

Hardly revisionist. I remember talking about our lack of forward pressure or enterprising ball movement and that argument simply eschewed by a loading devotee. I don’t disagree that this board can be more nuanced than broadcast footy talk - my opinion is that it dominated the discourse on here to the detriment of actually seeing what might happen if it was wrong. And I am much more polite than JimmyG ;)

Panacea was wrong word, although you probably won’t agree with the edit.

And lastly, and this is the most laughable one - the existence of loading was seen as the reason for our ails and to the point where we couldn’t discuss anything around the performance of the team without it pivoting back to ‘loading means that blah’ or ‘well with our loading’. I understand that high intensity training loads will be placed on athletes at certain time to maximise performance, but that doesn’t account for what many of us were seeing even during our 10 game winning streak, or when good teams obliterated us in last terms. So this season is a good education in watching and synthesising footy for next year. If you have a simple answer, you haven’t thought about it long enough…

I don’t see the staid and ubiquitous practice of ‘loading’ to be flirting with our form. The real frustration for me was self-defeating playing of obviously injured players, some specifically playing through injuries (that always has a disbenefit at some point), the lack of desire to use our squad in a marathon season. The flirting of our form was the seeming abandonment of our forward pressure game and the reliance on our back 6 to repel and then slowly work it up the ground again. My gut feel it is because it is so taxing on the team, but I would have revolved Chandler, Bedford, JVR, and Melksham through there throughout the year. Who cares if you lose one or two, we might have been better against better teams in the run home.

Richmond know that while they have Lynch they need to have a midfield to get enough ball there. Bolton is just the cherry on top that can steal you a close one.

Yeah, I think he will be good for them. Realllllll good…

You laugh at that, but during 2012/13. Me, Redleg, Old, CB, and a couple others would have run a far better club (I would have been the leader). Glad we have matured past that…

That was one game. After a very good month. Essentially BOG against Carlton without which we would have played Richmond in an EF and I don’t know how that would have gone…

My god we have to win this Friday; such pressure on the club to at least get to a PF. Love it! They will have to get used to that pressure with that midfield and backline for the next 4 years or so until May and Gawn depart. Now, for the rest of 2021, the changes need not be personnel; we need a change of mindset with the footy and be quick on turnover and take the extra second that we have with our bulls in the middle to get it cleanly out of the stoppage and not just to another contest 30m away. This Goodwin can get us back to - but he has to get us to a PF to show we have improved.

I keep forgetting Queanbeyan is 20 years behind; wait until Hawthorn and Geelong win 7 flags in a 9 year span… I still shudder at the thought of such evil.

Whatever happens, the club has handled this in a very mature way that will be noticed by the players and the agents trying to help 20 year olds with life changing decisions. I hope he stays of course, am sure that we will be fine if he does leave which leads me to the only truth; if LJ stays, Brodie Grundy won’t be a Demon.

Now it’s on Thursday. So people get what they want and they have Saturday to read about on Sunday if they don’t want to pay.

Well as much I hate Murdoch, Fox does a good job with footy. Seven not so much. Really interested to see what their app looks like and whether I can get it ad free. Kayo is decent but I can see it degrading and skipping and struggling and (as someone in IT) I wonder if they are actually working to improve the app or have moved to ‘break/fix’ mode because it’s ‘good enough’ for people to not complain too much. This will drastically push up the salary cap in a couple years and this will have implications on our cap situation with so many players on long term deals. Some will soon say that it gives us a competitive advantage but I doubt it - I think the deals are tied to a percentage of the cap…

Fort and McStay will compete. Ironically, this makes the smaller and more dangerous up forward and better equipped to get around May, Lever and Petty.

To me, it looked like until the last few rounds and sporadic qtrs and halves that we de-emphasised pressure in the F50. That was borne out in the stats as well as the eye test. Now we up the pressure and we can’t execute; teams are dealing with it. We are not in sync; two will go to the ball, none to the 2nd attacker or the 3rd. Or the next line in the web doesn’t react as it should and they get an easy hit up. As our web/zone was deep we defended differently than to the last few weeks; notice how high up our HBFs have been the last month. Teams now slingshot against us with all the space behind us or before they get to May. Posters on here talk about not having a Plan B and that has always been such a misguided desire; teams need to be predictable to each other so they work like it is second nature. At the moment we don’t seem to know our Plan A well enough.

We sweet top 4 in pressure last year and now we are one of the worst in the league. Whatever the metric - they are applied the same this year as to last. Allowing teams out of our forward 50 is a specific weakness, we are one of the worst there too. I think it is direction, a choice to allow the water to crash against the rocks of our defence further up the ground. And now when we want to turn the pressure valve back on and then burn into our transition it comes and it goes - it is not second nature. What we are trying to play in the last few weeks of the season is different to what we have all year. As Boromir would say - it is folly.

Yeah, he has his 22 and it’s ride or die. ANB for a tall or a pressure forward in form is but a small change yet too large for those with a set mind. We wait for summer for change…

When your trust between your players is just a little off, it shows when you play teams (like us last year) that; don’t second guess a quick hand pass, make the effort to run past for overlap, leave their man to impact the contest. The boys have looked ‘tight’ all year and we have not prioritised our own pressure game all year and I would love to know why. Form is not to be flirted with; if it is such a taxing game style then rotate players through the forward line. That is my main critique of the FD this year, and tbh the whole club, we just seem rather arrogant in how we go about things. Altering your forward pressure game style because your defence CAN absorb it most of the year is, I am sorry, an arrogant and misguided thing to do IMO.

In fairness, we are already very young. However, watching Lever, Kozzie, and a couple others play through obvious injuries is something that I will not understand. Part of being this good is that you should be able to use your squad. I get all players play through ‘niggles’ but Lever for instance was in so much pain and discomfort he took his boot off at half time in games for a month there.

Reality will decide that soon enough. I hold out hope.

Our scrappy forward line can get us there but they need to lift their pressure and the whole team needs to execute skills better on transition. We aren’t doing that. It’s not cattle, it’s the cattle not doing what they did do last year under pressure.

I’m learning that contested footy isn’t necessarily King when it comes to finals footy. Pressure on that contested possession and what you do with it in transition when you win it back is now our true sire. All hail King Pressure Rating and Queen Turnover Differential! Long May they reign. Avoid weddings or drinking anything at weddings if I know my GoT…

Get over the Lions and get yourself to a PF and if that forward line can click and get good connection suddenly you are in a GF and we can beat anybody. It is so open this year that we should still have expectations on ourselves to perform in a PF. As a fan of this great collection of players that is all I ask; get yourself into a position to get to a PF and give it a red hot crack.