Adam The God

You beaut, juicy fruit! Just about the perfect result, because we haven't completely shown our hand. What do I mean by that? We have a few more gears to go to yet IMO. Not only if we kick straight do we win by 8+ goals, but if we moved the ball quicker still, we'd be getting out the back against them more often. This ball movement is still not totally instinctive and it robs us of points. I'm hoping we can use the back half of the season to fine tune that and find that killer instinct with ball movement. As for our defensive system, it completely strangled and panicked Collingwood after half time. There was a heap of inferred pressure and Collingwood skill errors, fumbles etc as the game wore on and I thought in the 3rd, we lifted our intensity around the ball and pressure rating even more. I'd love to know what our pressure rating in the 3rd was. Loved that we started manning up the spare (often Daicos) in the last quarter. Will watch the replay tonight, but I don't think we started 1v1 at all stoppages until last quarter. We essentially let them have +1 at contest and sat our +1 a 20m kick behind play, so mostly just in front of the next 1v1. That very first goal of the match was textbook Collingwood though and we failed to get the job done there defensively. Daicos kicks out. Kicks short, gets the handball receive, hits a target on defensive wing and bang, it's up the other end for a goal. But after the first 15 minutes, we settled and tidied up across our half forwardline, and we no longer allowed that ease of ball movement from back to centre wing. One of Viney's best games ever. For a guy whose disposal I often lament, I thought he was A+++ today. He was clean, tough and showed excellent disposal all day. One of his greatest games IMO. Despite what I just read in the match day thread, I thought our tall forwards were excellent. Max played his best game for the season. He, along with JVR, Smith and at times Grundy, were brilliant at bringing the ball to ground (often against -2 or in Max's case -3). Our small forwards applied great pressure, but struggled with their cleanness, which cost us further scoring opportunities. That Quaynor is a bloody good player 1v1 and he saved them 3 or 4 goals. So the next time we meet them, either his opponent (likely Kozzy) has to get the job done or we avoid kicking it near he and Moore. As the game wore on though, our forward and midfield pressure pushed them wider and wider and they couldn't handle our press. They dump kicked into the corridor a number of times, and gave us great looks on turnover. We need to utilise those opportunities better next time. Our defenders held up really well. After giving up 2 early goals, May played a superb half of football, and then started to drop simple uncontested marks again, that opened the door for them. But I thought Tomlinson was really good, McVee is a beauty, love his composure and ball use. Salem is back to his elite 2021 form. He's found his feet quickly this season, and his cleanness and disposal makes our backline soooooooo much better. I've been really impressed with our midfield the last two weeks, minus the best contested player in the game. If you'd said earlier in the year that we'd beat Collingwood without Clarry, I'd have been rubbing my hands together. But Petracca stepped up last week, Viney this week and Sparrow is giving them superb back up, loving his season. Despite his iffy disposal, I thought Rivers was decent too, moving inside more and took some important intercept marks too. Overall, we've shown that we can suffocate their ball movement and turn the ball over in the corridor, as well as force them wide. Kick straighter and we're looking at 15+ goals, and I'd say from where we want to (and can) get to, we were running out about a 6 or 7 out of 10. It will be interesting to see what the competition learns from Goody today.

I'd prefer a consistent four quarter performance, rather than 1 great quarter. A lot to ask for a young KPP though.

@WalkingCivilWar 🙏❤️

Don't get me wrong, I'm negative during the game. I'm positive when my rational side takes over post game.

I would hope it'd be like the end of 2021. The negative posters disappeared and the positive posters stayed humble. The positive posters know how long we were terrible for and as I said to another Melbourne supporter who was giving it to his Carlton mate last week, stay humble. We don't want to turn into Hawthorn. I understand not everyone is like this, but to be fair to Demonlanders, I reckon the positive were pretty humble after all the negativity during the middle of 2021.

Don't worry mate. They've over committed numbers to the contest and we'll get them on turn over.

I love how parts of Demonland is framing this one already. If we lose, we're hopeless and no contender. If we win, Collingwood were missing all their players. 👌

You mean like the 2015 premiers who finished 3rd and lost to 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th during the H&A season?

Love Bowser, but reckon he's too small for the midfield.

He's certainly big bodied. He's a good player when fit and a reasonable user of the ball. Wouldn't say he was an elite user though. It'd be hard stopping a midfield of Petracca, Yeo, Oliver, Viney and Sparrow. That's a strong, aggressive and powerful mix.

Thoughts on Darcy Parish to complement our mids with a bit of speed? Not an elite ball user, but he's probably quicker than anyone else in our midfield. I guess it depends on cost...?

I can't stand sitting anywhere other than the wing or flank. Elevated, behind the goals is probably a better view for structures, but you can make them out from the wing/flank too.

Both teams are in the same boat. I'm sure we'll have multiple plans for certain players, but we'll focus on ourselves as always. Collingwood's ball movement and what they try to do isn't drastically going to change from the last year of football, so it's about how our system can combat this and exploit it. The personnel is largely irrelevant, although we know De Goey and Sidebottom won't be playing.

Some people will find the following remarks inflammatory, but these are people that are completely caught up with groupthink or don't understand football. It's one or the other. And this is driven by the media narrative.

Great article. The only bit I disagree with is the following: "More emphasis has been placed on having more numbers higher up the ground – it leaves the defence exposed if the opposition can win effective clearances and get it long, but it improves field position offensively on neutral balls." If by this, the author means we have outnumbers at stoppages, that's not my take on how we play at all. That's Collingwood's model and it's what leaves them so vulnerable on counter, and it's what I believe we'll exploit tomorrow. With Oliver, Petracca and Viney at stoppages, we'd win our fair share of CP and stoppages to exploit a full strength Collingwood.

Really? Does it really matter?

Bailey is always very dangerous against us. He does have good burst from the stoppage, but my read on him is he's better offensively, without much defensively. This is probably a Brisbane problem.

Half our team was injured and yet we still led at half time and they only just got over the top of us. Their game doesn't stand up in big games, because it relies on 1v1s that are a lot rarer in big finals. Their midfield hasa record of going missing too. They bat deeper this year, but Indont consider them a great threat. Port in Adelaide, maybe, but other than that, it's Collingwood, us and the dark horse is Adelaide.

He reminds me of Tom Phillips. Is that a fair comparison?

It shows how easily the media narrative seaps into the public consciousness.

That was my first thought too, but I reckon it's more likely Viney they work on IMO. Good luck on Trac, he's too powerful and big, but Jack is smaller and was key in breaking up stoppages last week. Port targeted Jack and I suspect Collingwood will do the same.

Again, Clarry is the best player in the competition IMV, but we will beat them without Clarry.

Exactly and it makes us less predictable without Clarry in there. Don't get me wrong, he's my favourite player and we need him there for finals, but we can and will win without him.

Yep, given Higgins is super flakey, inconsistent and poor defensively. That said, he too managed 3 tackles inside 50 last night, so maybe I need to give him more credit.

Butler was very good in this area last night. 5 tackles inside 50, which puts him number 1 in the league for the moment, 1 ahead of Koz.