Fromgotowoewodin

On expected score that was a 21 point win, which feels closer to the mark to me than the 43 points we got away with. They didn’t take all their chances, and our defence held them out well but they also didn’t have a forward line. Put Lynch and Balta up there and those wasted i50s they had turn into scoring opportunities. On our side we kicked 13 goals but had 3 at half time (after 3 at 3QT against the lions). Did the tigers set out to stop us scoring? Yes. Dud teams do that every week, and good teams kick goals anyway. We’ve still got issues going forward, hopefully we can get them sorted - ultimately there’s still time to get things right by year end, but you don’t make top 4 kicking 2 or 3 goals in a half cos you won’t win enough games and you won’t keep the % high enough. The biggest plus for me is that we aren’t playing all that well and 3 of our best 6 or 7 aren’t playing that well (Trac, Oliver, Viney). If your guns are firing and you’re still struggling there’s a big problem, but if those 3 can get back to their usual then we’ll be in a much better place. We have room to grow into the season, but we don’t want to lose too many as we need a top 4 finish. Hopefully put two sketchy games behind us and give the Cats a flogging

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C4MXr6bPW6v/?igsh=MW9hcmNrZnB2bWltaQ== A few months ago now but nice little clip with one of the young blues talking about Claz giving him tips during the preseason game, he’s a nice guy Clarry

May and Lever have been best on for mine, not playing on much of a forward line but kept us in it in the first half. Disco kicking 3 has been the difference. Langdon solid and Windsor came into it in the 3rd. Koz makes a massive difference to the forward line. Petty can’t move, I think they’re hoping to run him into form but I think he needs to go behind the ball until he gets fitness and touch back. Billings needs the mids to be feeding him or he’s useless and he’s pretty hungry at the moment.

I’ve never been more sure a player was going to miss a shot than watching Max then 🫣 Hopefully we can get the next one

I wouldn’t be surprised if we do eke out a win here and yes they’ve thrown everything at us but if we were as good as we’re supposed to be we should be able to control the ball under pressure instead of turn it over in dangerous positions time after time. Decision making has been atrocious.

They’ve updated the offer, it’s 4th rounders now

Um.. they’ve had 24 i50s already and they only had 40 for a whole game against the eagles last time out. We’re under the pump against a VFL team..

They can’t help but make a mess every time because they always allow special pleading. Step 1: any contact to the head is now medium impact and a week, no ifs no buts. Step 2: ok there are some ifs and buts, it kind of depends. If you’ve got a good record maybe it’s ok, and if you do good off field stuff. But otherwise no ifs no buts. Step 3: no really we mean it, there’s no ifs no buts, we were very clear in step 1. Step 4: we’ve just got to stop citing these, get them all talking about the dissent rule again or something for christs sake.

The outcomes are predictable, it’s how they get there that keeps you guessing

Sorry, should’ve linked: https://www.afl.com.au/news/1110271 “Cameron's exemplary record was taken into account in the verdict, with the 29-year-old playing for 10 years, or 207 games, without being suspended.”

The Tribunal found the incident was still medium impact, but downgraded the sanction to a fine based on "exceptional and compelling circumstances". [censored] 🤦🏻‍♂️ not even pretending it’s about consistency anymore

That’s different to where you started though, you were talking about heavy training to prepare for later in the year - training normally to maintain the same level of fitness is something else. That I don’t really disagree with. They train to play, and potentially train harder over the bye to play harder later on - they aren’t going to train harder between games to rest on the bye. They monitor each players loads individually, and players will go up or down depending on where they need to be that week, you can’t plan for the whole team to be 95% in 3 weeks and 100% the week after that because it doesn’t work like that. Players have interrupted preseasons (Oliver, Petty), old age (Brown, McDonald), injuries (May, Salem), changing loads (Salem going down would’ve changed the loads for McVee, Rivers, Woewodin and they’ll need to account for that) - there’s no one fitness level it’s about maximising the chance of winning each week. No point targeting a game 3 weeks from now and finding out when you get there you’ve got half a vfl team in the 1s and you’ve lost 3 in a row. It’s a dynamic process, I’m sure there’s a very detailed plan at the start of the year but as per Iron Mike everybody got a plan til they get punched in the mouth. It’s a week to week proposition to get as many of the best 22 on the park as possible, as close to 100% as possible to win as many games as possible. Hopefully we get a chance to do some extra work later in the season before finals but there wouldn’t have been extra work this week.

“They have us worked out” is such a nothing statement though. 2022 semi final we were shot, Trac had a broken leg, Gawn was stuffed, we still beat them for clearances and contested possessions and if we hadn’t kicked 11.13 we probably win anyway. 2 of those 4 games we win clearances and contested possessions so I don’t think “continually get us at stoppage” is accurate. If Gawn could start tapping it somewhere near our mids instead of there’s it would certainly help though. We were bad on Thursday, I think it was a one off. I don’t think there’s a secret method that shows teams how to keep Trac and Oliver to 20 or less disposals otherwise every team would be doing it.

I don’t believe it’s possible or would be at all sensible to target specific games at the expense of others. We win one more game last year and we get a home final against the lions instead of an “away” final against the pies. There’s no margin to drop games against other finals teams. No way we put at risk 4 home points against the lions for some potential fitness advantage a month down the road, that will wear off by finals anyway. Thats on top of the danger of soft tissue injuries if we were to overwork them. I think your point on the pod regarding Goody’s game style is correct, we play the way we want to play and we play it all year and we don’t chop and change mid-game and we don’t tailor it for different opponents week to week. It’s all about preparing for the end of the year and I think that applies to fitness as well, it’s all about getting to the end of the year in the best shape, not peaking at different points through the year against various opposition - win as many games as we can to get top 4, get to the finals with run in our legs to take advantage of that.

Yeah nah. Combined margin across those last 4 games is 45 points - if you add one game further back it’s 13 points in our favour. If you start in 2021 it’s 5-3 our way. We were bad, we got beat - they don’t have any magic spell.