Adam The God

Just on scores from ball ups, how is that measured exactly? Because Crisp's goal in the 1st and Daicos' goal in the 4th were both from ball ups.

20 scoring shots from turnover. That is huge! Love it, Wheelo. 👌

But you tend to lean back on your kicks when you're fatigued, so it's interlinked. The other thing notable was that when reading the AFL ap at half time, it said our 3 goals had all come from 40-50m, while four of Collingwood's five goals had come from 15-30m out. That obviously makes a huge difference with accuracy. But this is a ball movement thing that I'd suggest is also linked to fatigue. We go wider and we're happier to go wider during the middle part of the year, and then I suspect we'll start to go more central at the back end of the year.

He really looks like some nuffy space character out of Star Trek or something. Just a really tall gronk. The picture is excellent, thank you.

In Round 20 this year, David King will wheel out his new phrase for our press: the Demon Press of Death. He won't credit @rpfc of course. And in Round 21, he'll say we're [censored]. But don't worry. By Round 22, he'll be saying we're his premiership favourites. A bigger muppet there isn't, in a sea of AFL press muppets.

I wasn't sure where to put this, so I'll put it here. Gus started the game horribly, including being responsible for Crisp at the stoppage in D50 when Crisp goalled. Gus then worked himself into the game and had a couple of important clearances. The final Collingwood goal from a D50 stoppage though, Gus is again responsible for Daicos. And like the Crisp D50 stoppage goal, Gus was left ball-watching or simply too slow. I worry about Gus, because I'm not sure there's a position for him when we have both wings covered, Salem back in the team and Oliver back in the team. He's a good reader of the play, but he's not quick and he's not a good user by foot either. He's wonderfully courageous, but I do wonder where he fits when/if we're at full strength. Is it just me?

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, but Smith may get a week off for his tackle on Murphy (?).

Because to play wing and even half forward, you've got to have a really good understanding of the game, and I wouldn't say that's Smith's strength. Whereas, as a FF or second tall, he basically just has to create a contest and provide frontal pressure.

And watching our maligned small forwards bring great pressure on the replay, I wonder WTF people are talking about. Sure, we want them hitting the scoreboard more, but if Chandler and Kozzy kick straight, only Spargo of the smalls would've failed to kick a goal for the day - hence his subbing. It was a good move. It'll be interesting to see if Charlie loses his spot to Clarry.

Goody and the rest of the FD clearly spent the summer building a game plan that would play to our defensive and CP strengths, but would also beat Collingwood. It's why we look to score big from turnover, and we caught them out so many times today. We just needed to execute a little better. And I've just finished watching the repaly of the first quarter. Our ball movement is still not a team wide instinctive thing, although if you watch the build up to Viney's goal (or at least the kick to Gus), we slingshot really quickly. May is good at this, as is McVee, I think we really missed Bowey, who will come into his own with this new offensive flare to the game plan. But it's notable in the second half of the first quarter that we started to clog them up. Collingwood's forward handball is so good, but our ability to meet it head on with frontal pressure / press, but still maintain some integrity behind the ball is excellent team defensive synergy and beautifully coached.

I suggest we try and have a little bit of a mental break. If you chart our kicking inaccuracy from being the most accurate in the league to Carltonesque, it's very clearly a fatigue thing. So I know you're being flippant, but this is the last thing they should be doing in a shortened bye.

Don't you mean all ducks, no dinners?

Pretty sure it was Mitchell. How the feck was that not a free kick to McVee? He's good for May's game too, because if Tomlinson can take the bigger bloke, it frees May up to be able to outmuscle the 2nd KPF. I was wrong on his match up too, I thought May would go to Cox, but despite giving away a head and a half, Tomlinson did so well on Cox.

I'd say it was a 3 and a half quarter effort. We started vvvvvvery slowly and let them play their game. Lots of room for improvement, which is what's so exciting!

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...?