Bonkers

Of course, I think almost everyone sees it. Sign of getting old I think. He will still leave a gaping hole when he hangs up the boots though. Unfortunately he is probably the best player at the club in terms of waiting for an option to open up before disposing of the ball and he almost always hits a target with his kicking. We could do with a few more players that are composed with the ball in hand that don't blaze away.

I think you are onto something there DA. We will play a back 7 with Lever playing as the loose man. Then play with one player short in the forward line with occasional stints of Max Gawn resting forward and Hogan pushing into the midfield. It will leave us short of one tall forward obviously but they are trying to put a bit of extra leg speed into the forward line and midfield by bringing in Kent. Hopefully this will result in greater pressure across the forward half proving they can defend well as a team.

It was a bit of a roller coaster ride again. There are elements of our game that are very good and when the game is on our terms we are capable of beating any team. On the other hand it seems we are switching off defensively at stoppages and allowing teams to run off us outside the clearance. I believe that this is happening partly due to running our players off the back of the square and hitting the inside contest but leaving the outside of the contest open for the oppenent to control the outside space. The other issue is Lever. He's a 3rd man up tall defender and that can add a lot to our attacking game. Having him to try hold down a key tall is taking away from his game as well as leaving us open defensively. Someone also mentioned we are a slow running team, I think there is truth to this and we might have to look to address this to give some balance to the side. Would love to hear some theories from others about how Goodwin can prevent teams getting a run on us. Apart from that part of our game we are looking good.

Personally I think the game style is out of balance with the players we have at our disposal. Currently it's really inefficient going forward unless we are going to have more forwards that run and chase harder to lock the ball in harder than Garlett, Fritch and Hannan. Richmonds game style works when they bomb it forward because they've got 6 forwards that will work there backsides off to lock it in. We don't have that so we can't afford to bomb the ball in the way we are at the moment and turn it over. We can go toe to toe with any team when it comes to attack on the footy. But and it's a big but we don't have the players to run into space and hit up targets that expose teams the way we get exposed going the other way. That's probably our biggest weakness at the moment that we lack polish when moving the ball by foot. When we score it seems like it's a lot of hard work, in comparison the opposition scores very easily. Perhaps we have to look at locking the game down a bit and playing stoppage footy a bit like the old Paul Roos style of football to stem the tide in games when we are off balance like the first half yesterday.

You make some good points. Leadership and direction starts from the board and executive level. Things like this don't usually happen unless something else stinks in other parts of an organisation. Warner and Lehman I've never been particularly sold on as leadership figures. Those decisions to put these leaders in place have been endorsed by higher up. The thing is Cricket Australia just had a review a couple of years ago so it doesn't fill me with much hope that the right decisions will be made for the ongoing good of the game in Australia.

Smith has been playing cricket his whole life and should know better. I find it hard to shift blame, but you are right that there needs to be a shift in the culture.

Well we don't know how much of a collective it was whether it was Smith, Warner and Bancroft or whether it was more than that. It'd be even worse if there were more involved than those 3 as we then have a systemic problem and pretty much no worthy leadership in the team. Smith has to be stripped of the captaincy and at least face a ban. Bancroft whilst he is stupid is not as culpable as smith IMO. I also wonder whether Lehman is involved in this. He will be leaving as coach after the next ashes anyway so won't be a huge loss if he's implicated. Looks like a time of change in leadership & direction whatever way you look at it.

As a CEO what can you really say? He has to go through due process and then hand down findings. He basically said he wasn't happy about what happened and was shocked. He can't go and shoot from the hip, if he does that just makes the sutuation worse. I'm neither here nor there about his leadership but he's between a rock and a hard place on this one. Don't envy him being in this position.

Tom Mitchell 54 disposals. Great to see Buckley put a hard tag on him to try and limit his impact.

Watching on tv I thought that the kicking inside 50 that quarter was just long bombs mostly to the top of the square. Either the forwards weren't leading to space, players kicking the ball I50 weren't looking for shorter options or both. It looked like lazy careless football to me. Others have commented we had our 3rd string midfield at centre bounces, but I think if the delivery was more effiecient we could have matched the saints that qtr. In the final quarter they moved the ball a lot better and lowered their eyes to hit up shorter targets.

Lexus are the luxury division of Toyota. In terms of size of the sponsor that's a pretty big company/brand, it doesn't really get much bigger globally than Toyota. Congrats to the club if true.

Shaun Marsh named man of the match, not a bad effort considering most people didn't want him in the team outside of the selectors. 2nil to the Aussies with the remaining venues likely to suit Australia. Adelaide was probably Englands best chance to beat us in terms of the conditions being more conducive to Anderson and Broad exploiting swing. 4 or 5 nil looks highly likely from here you'd think. One negative is Peter Handscomb. He's looking very ordinary and a shadow of the player he was when he broke into the team. Maxwell will be looked at as a replacement you'd imagine after scoring 270 odd and 96 in consecutive Sheffield Shield games. If selected in the next test that will give us more options with the ball as he can bowl part time spin. In saying that the WACA is not the best place for spin usually.

You'd think with all the money involved in sport they'd be able to get a camera or sensor system installed. For what it's worth I think he was out.

Yeh I don't see much point in dropping Renshaw either. He's been quite reliable so far. Seems to have a good head on his shoulders for a young bloke. It will be interesting if the selectors are willing to drop anyone else if they have some scratchy form. Probably more benefit with your idea of Bancroft at 6 I'd agree.

He actually played quite a good knock. Second top scorer and if it wasn't for him and Cummins supporting Smith we'd be in strife.

Pretty entertaining and interesting first test so far. There's not much between the two sides. Anything around 200 will be difficult to chase down from the Aussies perspective, especially as the pitch detiorates. It will be interesting to see how Anderson pulls up after the 1st innings of bowling. It looked like he was carrying a niggle and spent some time off the ground.

I can see where you are going with this but he has also been in the system for 3 years? The first 2 years he was injured which is noted.

I think Gaff may be a free agent next year. I get what you mean though that we could use the pick in another trade.

We got a second rounder back. Pick 35 was the Cows second rounder this year.

This is taken directly from the trade radio/afl trade news feed: The future is looking brighter for wantaway Adelaide defender Jake Lever, with Melbourne confirming productive talks with the Crows on Monday. It's been reported all has not been rosy with Crows after the third-year backman declared he wanted out of his first AFL club to return home to Victoria. But, Melbourne football manager Josh Mahoney said talks were "amicable" on Monday, with both parties working to get it done. The Crows then confirmed via list manager Justin Reid there had been some "good dialogue" between the parties regarding the 21-year-old's wishes.

4 Years at $750-800 is what was mentioned on Fox Sports News.

I'd suspect the decision to leave was probably made 3-6 months ago. I don't think the result will have any bearing on what happens after the GF.

He's important in setting up structure behind the ball & provides almost an on field coach. It was noted last year by hawthorn supporters that he was slowing up & beginning to lose his feet quite often. He is clearly slowing up, but he was still good enough to come 2nd in Hawthorn's BnF last year. Calling time on his career after 1 borderline bad game is jumping the gun. He will get plenty of games this year & next year. How he goes in the 3rd year is an interesting question.

I don't think there's much chance of us becoming like north. I'm pretty sure we only have 1 player over 30 years of age? We've been playing as the youngest side in the Comp for around half of the season. If the club can identify players like Hibberd or Bernie Vince I think it would go a long way to pushing this team towards finals. Our midfield is getting close to being complete & will mature again this preseason. The areas of weakness are outside run, skilled ball users & a second ruck/forward ruck. You could also say CHB is not covered off either as Frost is not proven & looks shakes at times, same could be said of Oscar. I'd be happy if the club targeted experienced players in some of those positions to attempt to complete the list. I should add, so long as they don't target a player like Vickery & continue with their ok record of picking up experienced players.

The two kicks by Kent & Stretch were exasperating. I don't know if there is any level of football where those decisions would be the right decision ever. Then the skill execution after the decisions that were made were just as bad. Sometimes I wonder if the players either over think a simple scenario or are over coached at how to move the ball. I would have thought that the decision to move the ball in a certain direction would almost be instinctual at that level after years of training? It's the one area of our game that is still average & has stopped us winning multiple games this year. I'm hoping that some of it can be coached out of them, but I think the club is going to have to really focus on bringing in better decision makers & users of the ball over the next few years if we are going to be any chance at getting near competing for a flag.