Fromgotowoewodin

I agree it had gone bad when they went with “we’re dropping him so he can learn forward craft” - he’s an all Australian ruck and we knew what we were getting when we signed him. That was a weak cover story. There was a choice to be made, get 60-70% out of Max and 60-70% out of Grundy or get 100% out of Max and send Grundy to the 2s. Choice was made. I’m disappointed it didn’t work as we now have stuff all back up but it didn’t cost us last night, ****house forward line work cost us.

A couple of things jump out at me from this: - 4.2 from set shots, which highlights how important it is to mark it i50 (I’m going insane over this). 4.8 and 2 no score from shots in play. Need space and movement and to find targets. - 5.7 and 1 no score from their set shots, should’ve been a bigger margin. (I think there’s an error in there somewhere. Table has 11.15 vs 8.10 when the actual score was 12.14 vs 9.10)

I thought we’d get better as the game went on, and we did for a bit in the 3rd but then it really fell apart. 5 marks i50 is equal to our worst all last year. Nowhere near where it needs to be. Worse than that we actually got flogged in i50s overall - last year our worst differential was -13 in losses against Essendon and Port, tonight we were -14 so it wasn’t poor conversion that cost us we just got flat out beat. Kozzie and McAdam to come in but it’s gonna take more than that to fix. Mids were sub-par and too many extra-smalls.

100%. It’s criminal that they’re not all on their bikes anytime the ball comes past half way

Fumbly and panicky, making some real dumb decisions. Add in the bad goal kicking and it’s no surprise we’re behind. I think we’ll get better as it goes on but Christ it’s hard to watch

1 goal 6 - gagf

Not sure about Spargo, Laurie, Bowey, Chandler all in the same line-up - Billings isn’t huge either so it looks a bit short to me. In an ideal world two of those go out for Kossie & McAdam but it’ll do for round 1.

With Dixon and King putting us out of the 8 you can pretty much lock us in now. Easy option to nominate the pies again but I think they’ll struggle to go back to back. Won a lot of close games last 2 years, could’ve lost any of their 3 finals last year. Pundits overrating them. That said we have a fair bit of work to do to stay in top 4 contention as other teams are coming (giants and swans worry me)

I think ANBs biggest strength is he’s aware of his limitations so he takes a lot of care to overcome them. When kicking he always works to get his body lined up to kick properly and is generally trying to hit a 30-40m kick rather than biting off too much. Trac knows he capable of anything so goes for the harder options and doesn’t pay enough attention to body position or ball drop. He puts in work on it but doesn’t apply it every time in games. I don’t mind connection so much as a term, it covers both sides being the kick and also the movement by the forward. It’s easier to hit a fwd moving into space (and there’s more margin for error) than trying to pin point a stationary target in a crowded area. As @Altona-demon has pointed out it seems like we’ve made some changes to the forward movement to create space, this makes it easier for the kickers and gives fwds a better chance at a mark.

My issue is that he’s not, or at least not all the time. When he gets it right he can literally put it on a 20c piece but he gets the ball drop wrong too many times in front of goal and shanks too many for a player of his quality.

I think this is the most promising sign out of the game. In wins last year we averaged 14.9 marks i50, in losses 9.1 so to get 20 is solid - obviously no Weitering helps there. 20 marks allowed us to get a goal from 23% of i50s (25% in wins last year, 17% in losses), and convert at 58% (goal from scoring shots, 58% in 2023 wins, 45% in losses). If we can play that way this year we will be in a strong ladder position at the end. We also held them to 8 marks i50 which is strong given they’ve got Curnow, McKay, TdK but I’m less worried about defence in general, hasn’t been our issue last 2 years, hitting the scoreboard has.

Fairly weak start by the Pies media machine but they’ll be working on some stories of Maynard adopting lost puppies and helping out at food banks etc to step things up

Can’t see how we hold on to the top 4 at this point. Forward line is still a work in progress, TMac and Brown don’t look like they’ll be back, leaves us with JVR as the key tall. No Gus. Reliant on Max to stay fit all year with no backup. May’s another year older. Oliver may or may not play the full year. I think the pies, lions, swans and giants are ahead of us, probably the blues. Port also potentially although they could drop like us. I think we still make the 8.

Clearly we should trade him or send him to Casey until he learns how to play or something 🙃

This is right and I have to admit part of the reason I’m so annoyed about another straight sets exit is that I overrated us. 2022 we clearly weren’t going well in the second half of the year but I talked myself around and convinced myself we were coasting into the finals and would hit the gas when we got there and go back to back. We had no gas left and I should’ve seen that coming. 2023 I had reservations again. We’d lost more games than ‘21 and ‘22, were sitting lower on the ladder, had injuries but I still convinced myself we’d come good when it counted. Yes if we hit some targets against the pies we’re in a prelim, yes if we kick straight one more time against the blues we’re off to the Gabba but maybe this is just where we’re at. Tiges hit the jackpot snagging Lynch and getting 2 more flags, Grundy was the only option we had in trade period last year - there was no one else to be had.

100%. All year when we lose games we should win or scrape over the line against bottom 6 teams we’re told “this team is built for finals” or “the game plan is designed to win finals”, well something appears to have gone wrong cos we didn’t win any finals.

If someone told me pre-game that we’d keep Curnow to 1 goal I’d have said we win, easy. No way we lose if we keep Curnow to a goal. How the [censored] did we manage to lose when May kept Curnow to a goal?

And unfortunately that’s the only stat that matters.

I’d prefer if he mentored the senior players and coaches to be honest. Rolling over and asking for a belly rub doesn’t win finals.

Rubbish. Did Cripps get the free reversed when he was chocking Salem on the ground? No. Plenty of jumper punches week in week out don’t get paid but they pulled it out tonight. You’re anti-Koz, that’s fine. No one else got anywhere near the line, timid.

Kicked 2 goals, 11 score involvements 3 goal assists. FMD everyone on here pre-game saying we want them to breathe fire and hit them hard and we need to smash them, Koz ruffles a few feathers and everyone sooks about it. McGovern flopped for the reversed free (rarely gets paid, surprise surprise they pull it out for the Blues). Flopped again in the 3rd when Koz massaged his ear and spent 5 minutes trying to sell it walking around holding his neck Iike he’d been in a car accident. Weak as [censored].

Could be worse, Port will be asking themselves later on tonight why they extended Hinkley on the basis of zero premiership wins

Yeah I should’ve been clearer that they were separate points. The marks i50 thing referred to my earlier post about hitting targets and converting i50s into goals not specifically Gawn/Grundy. We needed 2 rucks AND we also needed to hit targets i50. Gawn helps with the second one if you use him properly (took 2 tonight and kicked points) but overall we needed better ball use going forward again. Or better forwards who know where to be.

Thoughts: 1) not making a prelim 2 years in a row after finishing 2nd and 4th is underperformance. 2022 was excusable due to injuries, we got run over the top of as key players were walking wounded. This year not so much, we should’ve won both games and choked. 2) window is closing fast, Gawn and May have 1-2 years left. Running Gawn into the ground while we had an all-Australian ruck in the 2s is a failure on the part of coaches as well as Max. Everyone can see we need another key forward but we also need a replacement for May. 3) key players need to look at themselves a bit - Max needs to stop trying to carry the team and share the load with another ruck. Trac needs to get off his food channel and focus on executing in games, blazes away at goal and bombs it on top of the forwards. He’s a freak but his freakish skills don’t show up enough in games and we get to see lazy wasteful disposals. Ditto Oliver but he was out for 10 weeks so gets a pass imo. 4) purely a vent with no logic or reason (I’ve been into the whisky): I’m sick of seeing [censored] football at the G. Yes the game plan is effective at grinding wins and finishing high on the ladder but scoring is painfully hard and painful to watch. It’s now 5 years since I attended a winning final in person and that pisses me off. Maybe this game plan wins us the next flag but I’d hoped to see us piling on goals and stomping on the faces of those teams that had thumped us and mocked us for so long. I want to revel in their pain, instead when we win it’s by 2-3 goals, or we lose in ****house fashion like tonight and I can spend the next 6 months getting kicked again. Men’s footy can get stuffed, hopefully the women go back to back.

I dunno about his commitment but Christ he was bad tonight. Fell over about 8 times, kicked it out on the full more than once, was the target of some kicks to the square (why I don’t [censored] know) and stood flat footed while a Carlton player marked both.. waste of space and I would say choked under the pressure.