layzie

Hanging by a thread

They will run us over. Only hope is at the contest

We all would. Loving his job today but he's an expensive tagger.

You're right Brownie, always seems instinctive to take the outer side. Hopefully we can take a few more risks through the middle.

For the first 10 mins, we made great decisions and used it well, stuck to the plan. Somewhere it changed, I'm saying we look gassed because its the only explanation. We hardly laid a tackle for the latter part of that quarter. Almost double the uncontested ball, we are sticking to the plan well, but the worry is the moment Adelaide dialed the pressure up we didn't go with it. Looks like a young team that drifts in and out. At least we have the lead.

We look gassed towards the end of this half. Not fit enough to play the uncontested game

Went into HT early

Order is restored

Chippin around

In a holding pattern

Who's watched this video tape before?

Bad kicking is bad football. So when we kick 9.16 today let's not talk about how well we moved the ball and breated chances.

And this is why I had some questions about the Kozzie contract (despite the fact that he's probably the first that you would give this contract to right now). We've given out some mega deals lately and that extends to players like Jack Viney who needed needed a solid deal to commit. I felt that people looked at this with the belief that our list was set and ready to go again for years to come. I don't believe it is. We have a reasonable nucleus and many areas covered but we have some glaring holes and some areas covered for now but no succession plan at all. It's not like 4 or 5 years ago when keeping the gang together was all we needed to focus on, we need space there to be ready to throw at any out of contract player that can possibly help us, especially with compromised drafts coming up in future years. Big calls need to be made now and this is what happens when you back yourself into a corner with big contracts.

Asked this in the stats thread. Is it just speed of ball movement that this measures or does metres gained and effectiveness of chains come into it?

I know you're a fan of more games BBP and I wouldn't mind something to liven up the season for the lower clubs but there's still something just a bit off about this. Wish there was a way to trial it out other than the real thing.

Isn't this a bit like getting annoyed when Port drafted Dom Barry?

Stupid article. In other news crystal balls are $4.95 at Dimmys.

Talk about rewarding mediocrity. We've beaten two sides that will be in the 8 this year and we'd still be a shot.

Hearing a lot about ball movement stats lately and how we are ranking pretty high. Does this just measure speed or does distance and effectiveness come into play?

I left out that this was in 2021 but I don't think there's one person here that didn't know what I was talking about 😉

Absolutely, but it has to be both. The forward movement is one thing and it really astounds me that this is the same every week. However this year the one problem we haven't had is a supply of fresh meat produce because he have some A-grade butchers distributing from the middle. Binman really hit the nail on the podcast when he mentioned that these guys looked like above average or even decent kicks in 21-23 because the gameplan at the time allowed them accelerate away from the contest and launch it in where guys like T-mac and co would get it to ground for the mosquito fleet to get to work. Now these guys are being asked to hit guys on the chest with much more regularity and surprise it isn't working. I do agree though, too many of our forwards like to lead back to goal. It almost the forward structure version of the 'bees to the honeypot' issue that the midfield had.

I still want to see Viney played as a pressure forward and I hope it's not abandoned. Just because he had to go into the middle and helped us a lot when he did doesn't mean the experiment was a failure. 1 quarter is a useless sample size.

Mentioned this recently, but it saddens me that some winning streaks over teams were broken this year. North, Hawthorn St Kilda. These were ironically long term losing streaks that we needed to break to develop as a team that was genuinely going forward back around 2017/18. The last streak that I'm proud of isn't really a long one, but that Rd 10 game at Adelaide oval against the Crows was up there with one of the best I've watched. This game will forever be Clayton Oliver's finest hour for me. I am still absolutely awe shocked every time I think about the game he played that day. His acceleration out of the contest, the ball would always bounce directly up to him he literally had it on a string. And I just remember being so, so angry about losing this game. I like to think that this one point loss was the catalyst for our side binding together and going on to win the flag but I hated this loss so much that I personally swore that we wouldn't lose to Adelaide again ala Paul Chapman against the Hawks. Ok, in modern day AFL I'd take a 5-7 year stretch of beating them. Sadly this does not look to be. It would be nice to get a surprise but it's a tall order that would need to be a birthday and Christmas present. I'd rather get the new runners I've been putting off...

I was strong on fitness being a big factor in our first 5 losses this season. It's much more complex than that now. It's all of what you've said: personnel, holes in the list, poor coaching, psychology, decision making, execution of fundamental skills and yes probably still some fitness issues. It's a tangled web and I sure as hell am not going to try and fix it.

It really is a write off season now. No big calls will be made with an acting pres, CEO that starts later this year and a coach that probably won't know his future until the above get sorted. Put yourself in carbonite and set the timer to unfreeze in 6 months.