Adam The God

What a disappointing first season Kozzie has had. Yeah, he brings some pressure, but very little goal sense.

Pathetic Max. And how was Fritsch there?

Why do we keep using the same side of the ground?

We clearly didn't listen to Benny on Before the Bounce. The two major take aways were make sure when we're kicking to the flank (from the left hand side of screen) to avoid kicking it out on the full like we did last game. What happens? May's very first kick out goes out on the full. The second major take away and is the far side of the ground. What do we do? We let Fremantle own that side of the ground and we also let them use the corridor whenever they liked. There's no work rate or structure today. No plan for ball movement that I can see. We have players handballing when they should be kicking, we have players trying to pick it up when they should be kicking it off the ground. Another horrible display. I really thought we'd make finals. Turns out... no.

I'd take a look mate. Good suggestion. He did play forward-mid early on. He's got a bit of that zip and creativity that we lack around the ball and inside 50 (outside of Pickett).

Disagree mate. Although one-dimensional, St Kilda are a good side and we were half a kick from beating Geelong and Brisbane, two top 4 sides. No, I don't. I think our mental fragility is based around a lack of experience. The players haven't got it to click regularly, not because the game plan is too hard to sustain (as I had previously thought), but because they haven't worked out yet how to bring consistent performance and what that feels like. The automation of that and the mental preparation that it takes to bring consistent elite performance in system based sport hasn't been discovered yet.

Completely agree. We always do know whether we're on or not in the first few minutes.

We're playing completely different zones to 2018. If we didn't lay tackles with our aggressive 18 man press we were [censored]. We no longer play an 18 man press. Tackling around the contest to ensure we break up the opposition's clearance work is far more important in the style we play IMV. On that stat, Oliver is equal 5th in the league. But once again, I don't subscribe to the tackle metric being necessarily the best way to view our work rate. I'd almost prefer the opposition's score as the best indicator of work rate over tackle count anyway. If we're restricting opposition scores without a high tackle count that tells you that there is something else going on that is preventing that scoring (ie work rate to implement the zone).

Haha, I was joking. I think they're the most dangerous top 5 side, particularly as the Grand Final won't be played at Optus Stadium (ie West Coast).

Such strong culture. I'm just not sure they'll win the flag anymore. Culture is so important.

Yeah, you're missing my point. You keep linking tackle stats with work rate and I'm saying our zone does the work of making the opposition give the ball up (on the most part). We don't have to tackle to regain possession. The stats in our most dominant wins bear this fact out. The stat that might be more relevant, which I don't have access to is failed tackles.

I don't think tackles or 1%ers are necessarily relevant, because they're not constant attributes of our wins, when we clearly bring work rate.

To be fair, Goodwin gave a massive spray at half time against Sydney and we were better in the second half. Langdon kicks that goal from 15m out directly in front and it's less than two goals with plenty of time left.

I think that's more a reflection on you and your posts, which to your credit have remained consistent, but you have no idea about the internal culture. You're basing culture in this post on tackle count, which tells me you're still stuck in 2005 with your analysis of the game. If we use evidence here rather than a nebulous guess on your behalf of our "culture", you'd see that even when we work extremely hard, our zone and corralling does the work of defence and our tackle counts are still much less than the opposition. So if we'd brought the required work rate every game this season, we'd still likely be near the bottom for a metric like tackling. Some of our players are in the top echelon for 1%ers though. Once again, I am not saying our team isn't mentally fragile, I'm just refusing to put it down to something like culture. That's far too easy.

That's certainly not a quote from me. I'm not prepared to say it's cultural or it's because we grew out of a suburb or some other strawman. I did say they do appear to have mental fragility, that's not inherently about culture. People have talked up May's leadership credentials and rightly so, but where was he when we were being spanked in the second quarter? Perhaps there are other factors at play? Nah, it's all cultural and down to the board that sacked Norm Smith.

He also said Weideman needed to get to more contests though. It hardly takes an expert to realise we were off from the first bounce and that Sam wasn't making contests. The rest of it was just self indulgent twaddle IMV.

I didn't see this, but at the end of the day, they are being paid to talk footy, so will talk for the sake of talking. I had to turn off the Sydney game's commentary because I can't stand to hear Dermot, who for most of the game, was completely off with his analysis and loves to hear the sound of his own voice. He's got such a limited understanding of the modern game that it's embarrassing. Whilst I think our playing list does have a mental fragility about it, the list is as others have said, not mature enough yet to bring the required consistency and take the next step. Nor does it have the required balance. If you look around the league, every single team has had an off game or two. Inconsistency is seemingly a larger motif than in any year I can recall. I think 'analysis' of culture is a BS, weak and shallow cop out for some people trying to examine inconsistency of performance.

IMV, Hore is better in the contest, but OMac is the better kick. It's much of a muchness for me. Petty was recruited as the KPD. The way I see it we have May, Lever, Tomlinson and Petty who can/will play the role solidly/to very well. Clearly, the club doesn't particularly rate Oscar, otherwise they wouldn't have first targeted Lever and then targeted May. He can play zone defence better than Frost, but the bar is low in that regard.

The ball use was horrendous. Interesting Max talked about 'bombing it long being in our DNA for nearly two years' and that we'd got that out of our game the last few weeks. It was back tonight and although we were terrible in the second quarter, we failed to convert our dominance in the first quarter (unlike against St Kilda in that first term) and it meant we were playing catch up after that.

I'm just hoping the ridicule directed towards the club makes the players realise you have to bring 4 quarters of football every week. Not too much to hope for, hey?

Oofa doof. Petty, please. Hore is a turnover merchant. A decent intercept market, but Tom McDonald-like with ball in hand.

I've changed my mind on the letting Viney walk as a FA. I think we need to keep him. Particularly, when we'll need more mids in the longer format return next year. He should be very rarely played as the number mid though. His go is defensive mid or pressure forward.

You guys were watching a different game from me. As soon as he went into the midfield we started to win the ball and get it inside 50. He needs to play midfield or forward.

Reckon you might be right, Clint. Thanks for your service, Nathan.

I'm not a fan of the way he plays, but when he's working hard, he's still a valuable contributor.