Fromgotowoewodin

Agree with this, not many thought TMac and BBB were going to get through a game and they did. I’ll be shutting my eyes anytime it looks like someone’s stood on Perry’s foot but I don’t think it’s worth panicking over picking him.

Thanks for bringing this up on the pod @binman (and apologies my username is a bit of a tongue twister!). George makes a fair bit of sense that we were going head to head our bulls against their bulls and he’s right that they had Bont and Libba in all day with Treloar at most as well. They did spread it a bit though with a few others (see below). I still think it’s strange we didn’t have Sparrow in for 5 or 6 at any stage. We were basically 2 bulls out of Oliver, Trac & Viney in with one outside mid being Salem at most with Kozzie in for 7. I would’ve thought we could afford Sparrow in there as the second bull at times to give the others a rest but maybe it wasn’t so much us matching against their bulls as us not giving them a chance to rest Bont and Libba? I’d expect if McGuinness goes to Oliver again we’d see him push forward and Sparrow might get a look in this week, and just more general spreading the load with the hawks not having the firepower the dogs do.

Surprising to see Kozz get 7 CBAs and Sparrow none, especially after Sparrow was in ~25% against the Swans and ~45% in 2023. Seems about right for Kozz imo, get him in to shake things up but not wear him out. Sparrow might have an injury? Seems odd not to use him in there at all.

He knows the feedback he’d get if he did, genuinely one of the worst in a crowded field

No ones crowd is a reflective of its membership (except GC, see below). 2023 average H&A crowd vs final membership totals, pies had 106k members, averaged 60k at games or 57%. Tigers had 101k members who thought they were still good, 49k still committed enough to turn up or 43% - I’d expect they’ll get around 92k members this year as those bandwagoners realise its another rebuild. We got 56% of our member number to games on average at 39k of 70k, slightly above the overall average of 53%, so we bat above. Suns are an outlier as they got 82% at 19k ave crowd vs 23k members but that’s just cos their membership is so low, get 5k oppo fans to a game and you’re laughing. Our crowds are fine, it’s bias and [censored] from the media and oppo fans that we don’t turn up (and it’s not much better when our own club talks us down as fans).

https://www.instagram.com/p/C4mdKoPRrBK/?igsh=OXdyYXUzdGVrMTQ= that link doesn’t seem to work but I’m talking about Chandlers goal in Q2

You could live in a world where you expect a man united or Liverpool crowd to Dees v Dogs and you will probably be disappointed most weeks, or you could live in reality where our average crowd in 2023 was 5th in the league at 39.5k up from 11th in 2019 with an average of 32.6k. In that context 44k looks ok to me, above average vs a low drawing team. Also coming off the back of the highest attendance in rd1, 40k v Swans. Next best in rd1 was 33k blues v lions, and the greatest draw card on the planet, bigger than football itself Collingwood pulled 21k - up a whopping 17% on the average Giants crowd in 2023 of 18k (yes I know capacity is only 23k..) We’re doing ok.

The crumb goal Chandler got was a case in point, the kick to brown wasn’t great and Khamis was a chance to mark it but BBB with his reach was able to spoil it to the front where Chandler was waiting. That’s the sort of stuff that’s been missing and it gives the small forwards a chance to do their job. I know the Schache point has been done to death but my biggest disappointment isn’t that he’s not Tom Hawkins or that he doesn’t kick 8 week on week but that he doesn’t compete and bring it to ground at the front of the pack where his teammates can do their bit.

Our movement is better this week but our kicking inside 50 is still ****house. 3 marks i50 from 27 entries, vs 8 from 27 for them. Need to do a lot better at kicking to advantage

BBB may not be as mobile as he was but he knows where to be and how to move and makes us better

I understand the plan now, bomb it to the hotspot so many times that the defenders crash into each other and take out their ruckman - and hopefully crumb a couple of goals in the process. Nice to see it come together after 2 years of trying

He’s the best in the business at “accidentally” hurting opponents.. even gets a free kick for it now

Hopefully not, hopefully they play us and we’ve got it won by quarter time like the cats in 2022.

There’s no alternate universe where we have both, losing Hogan got us May which got us the flag. It’s frustrating that we haven’t got a Tom Lynch to take us back to a flag like the tigers did, but who have we missed out on? Can’t buy if there’s nothing for sale.

Swans took 19 marks i50 from 51 entries, magic what happens when you move the ball quickly and create space. Impressive that they used the full ground. (Could just be the pies are cooked too..?)

Get [redacted] pies, hope it all falls apart like the cats last year. Look out for kings birthday tickets on Facebook marketplace

Also uninstalled and reinstalled, had to log into Ticketmaster again but once I did that the tickets were there. I did have a hawthorn ticket but I just went back to look and it said “error, retry” and when I refreshed it was gone. I’d say it’ll come back during the week

Love to see that (if true) - rent free

It’s just the worst system, I’ve never got any idea what tickets go with what

The club needs to park this make more noise rubbish, play good footy and we’ll make the noise. There was plenty of noise vs the Pies in the QF, then we kicked a whole bunch of points and everyone got deflated. Must be my fault cos I didn’t make enough noise, not the blokes paid money to kick it between the big sticks.. those paid to run and play for the club should stop telling the fans we’re letting them down and worry about doing their bits right. Make a granny at the G and you’ll hear noise.

Agree. He’s lifted at GWS but he didn’t do much when he got chances with us, and certainly wasn’t applying the kind of pressure he does now.

I think they know BBB and TMac are cooked, and I’m not sure what they ever saw in Schache apart from emergency depth. We got Grundy when there were no key forwards available for trade, hoping we could get ~40 goals out of him and Max. That didn’t work as one or both didn’t like sharing the job, Grundy wanted out so we let him go. Unfortunately we still couldn’t find a key forward for trade and are now stuck hoping Petty and JVR can get it done. I think in hindsight we’ll look back and wish we’d traded one of the untradeable mids for a gun forward but I don’t know if there were any deals to be done.

No argument here, we’re hanging on by the width of either Max’s knee ligament or May’s hamstring tendon - either of them go and we’re cooked. My main worry is that even if they hang on we’re still short a tall forward. 1min to go, 5 points down, kick to the hotspot and McKay takes a mark and puts them in front - we could’ve tried that 30 times and not got it to work.

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)