Akum

And if we'd put as much planning and preparation into countering their strengths & exploiting their weaknesses as well as they did, and if we'd thought as much about getting the match-ups & positions right as they did, and had worked out what we might need to change during the game if we found it getting away from us ... it would have made no difference at all? The Bombers beat Geelong because they planned & prepared so well, having inside knowledge about the Cats' strengths & weaknesses (and surprise surprise, those brilliant rebounding Cat defenders don't like being manned up - who would have thought?) If a strategy has been worked out that stands a fair chance of succeeding, it's easy for the players to believe that their strategy will make them win. If they believe it will make them win, they will throw everything into it. That's how the Bombers played. If the other team's strategy has covered all our strengths, and the harder we try the worse it gets ... then what the hell do we do now? That's how we played. Sorry, I just can't accept that the apparent consensus that all we have to do is wait, nothing needs to change. If nothing changes, we'll top out at 6th in 2014 if we're lucky.

Summary so far: Out: Everyone I don't like In: Everyone I like

Looked to me that a number of them weren't right physically - as well as Col, also Garland & Jamar, and Frawley lacked his usual zip. Not a co-incidence that these guys recently returned after injuries, and maybe these are the guys who really found the successive 6-day breaks hard going. Moloney didn't look well either.

Just a little concerned that we don't delude ourselves into thinking that all we need is physical maturity and 50 games and everything will be OK.

The difference between this year and last year is that the best coaches (Malthouse, Eade, B.Scott) are planning on how to beat us - how to nullify our strengths and expose our weaknesses. When this happens, we simply aren't able to counter it, and what at half-time is a struggle ends up in a blow-out. Opposition coaches seem to be more aware of our strengths & weaknesses than ours are. Last year, Malthouse & Eade didn't plan for us and we nearly caught them by surprise, and made us think we were better than we actually are. We have to get used to the reality that we're now the hunted. If we don't have the capacity to counter the opposition coach's moves, then this is as good as it gets.

Did anybody see it in the last quarter where Trengove (with Cross in tow) ran up to Moloney & Boyd, told Moloney to get the hell away somewhere and physically restrained Boyd from following Moloney? Cross ran after Moloney, leaving Boyd to stay with Trengove. Pretty much says it all. Or did I just imagine seeing our future captain exercising leadership over someone that many would like to be our current captain?

Petterd's use of the ball was pretty ordinary though.

Consider yourself traded.

Absolutely right. Eade planned it against us brilliantly, his match-ups were spot-on. He knew where WE were going to be in trouble with match-ups and exploited it to perfection. Unfortunately, when the opposition coach has worked out how to destroy our effectiveness, our coaching staff are totally unable to counter it. And equally unfortunately, the best coaches like Eade & Malthouse know that too. It's not just Bailey; we simply have no strategic or tactical capability at all among our whole coaching staff. If we don't get it from somewhere, then this is as good as it gets.

That seemed to be the problem - they don't seem to be able to FIND space at Etihad. Doggies had no problem with it.

His use of the ball was embarrassingly bad. Amazing that he can't kick 50 metres. The Doggies' goals from 45-50m set shots in the last really showed up him & Green On the other hand, should get credit for being one of the few who worked hard to get to it. Didn't do much with it though.

Huh? At Least Martin was having some impact in the ruck, & picked up some good possessions. Jamar wasn't, and didn't.

You mean there were others?

... and another swing and a miss! The Callan Ward thing beautifully shows up the morality of the GWS people though. They know the AFL isn't going to take any action against them for breaching the rules. These (Gubby et al) are obviously the "those-who-should-know" who keep feeding morons from the press (like Mark Stevens) the rumours-of-the-week, knowing they can't resist.

Totally agree. Apparently some of Sherman's teammates were trying to intervene during the match too. I'd be surprised if the Dogs weren't exploring this option already.

Already looking forward to it RudeBoy!

Something else I'd like to see on You Tube was Liam's second goal (I think it was). The ball came high to the top of the square & he stayed down while Jack flew against both their opponents. Jack didn't try to mark it, just got it down to Liam who did the rest. It looked as if they didn't have to talk, they just each seemed to know what had to be done by both of them and had faith that the other would do it. Turned a 50-50 situation into a relatively easy (for Liam) goal.

Gys had been tackled to the ground, and by the time "The Clamp" (don't know where I heard that, but I love it) made his tackle, Gys had done some speed-crawling that my 20-month-old would be proud of, to get to the contest & help knock the ball out of Dusty's hands. They are both just terrific.

The Bulldogs will be absolutely livid about this internally. There are a number of African communities in the west, and the Bulldogs really bust their guts to work with them. In fact, a huge motive behind "Footscray" changing to the "Western" Bulldogs in the first place was their desire to embrace all the cultural groups in the west, and they've worked hard at it over 15 years or so and been in the forefront of standing up against racism in sport. This threatens to undo all of that.

That's it in a nutshell.

Not to the same degree. Our style of play seems to rely more on quick & precise ball use than other teams, and maintaining it under pressure seems to have been much more of a problem for us. Remember the comments of one or two North players, that even though we killed them in the 1st Q, they had complete confidence that if they just applied a bit more pressure our game would fall apart at the seams, and that's exactly what happened. Clearly, most other teams have much less trouble than we do with the sort of pressure that North applies. North aren't great, they're just well-drilled and disciplined, and that's the problem. This year, our game hasn't just wilted under pressure; it's completely collapsed. Hence the roller-coaster - under no pressure we're millionaires, under pressure we're paupers. It means very little if we smash teams who put us under no pressure, like Adelaide or a depleted Freo or a Gazza-less GC17. My point is that if a well-drilled side puts us under pressure and our game doesn't collapse, that's a real yardstick of improvement. We're not there yet. But there were some good signs against the Toigs, and maybe it's just a matter of the bodies getting big enough, or enough confidence in each other, or getting injured players back. The rest of the season will be interesting.

His goal where he made a deliberate decision to let Watts fly with two big-bodied opponents and got it off the hands was brilliant. It took some discipline to resist the urge to fly and to show enough faith in Jack that he would compete. In fact, he seems to have a really good understanding with Jack, they both seem to be a couple of moves ahead of everyone else from time to time. It's a difficult situation for him when he's being bodied and bustled by a bigger opponent. I'd bet that if the ball comes in quick & high and he gets a good run up we'll see more speccies. He's just being intelligent & selective about it, but he's no less effective. Could have had 5 or 6 today and absolutely blown the game open in the 3rd Q.

I'd definitely encourage it

The thing about our game-plan is that it can totally unravel if enough pressure is applied. We need to get it to the stage where it stands up under the extreme sort of pressure applied by the top teams. That's a huge challenge, but games like the last two give me much more hope.

Totally agree; I also watched the game again the afternoon. His first bad kick led to a point, not a goal. But none of his other disposals led to a goal, or initiated a piece of play by the Toigs that led to a goal. He was never the direct opponent of Martin. And he made good position on a number of occasions to give the defender with the ball an easy release. Some people see what they want to see. It was decided to recruit him, ahead of all the alternatives, because of his strengths - his huge tank (combined with good pace after the first few strides), his uncanny ability to find space, his good aerial skills for an "outside" mid, and his ability to move the ball a long way up the ground very quickly because of a long low penetrating kick, plus the fact that he was extremely difficult to match up on. He also had weaknesses - he was an out-and-out spud with his defensive game, with contested ball, when put under pressure, with avoiding physical contact, and with his short game. So considering we'd recruited him for his strengths, we started by letting him play to his strengths, in a similar role he did for WA in the TAC Cup when he won the best player award (I didn't know this until Dermie mentioned it last week). He got on his own a lot, racked up possessions (almost all uncontested), and looked the goods. We could have kept doing this - that would have been the option chosen by Essendon or Richmond, to name two. But after his first season, we chose the "development" route - to stop making it easy for him and to work on improving his weaknesses and forcing him to become a more "complete" player. This meant playing him where his weaknesses would get maximum exposure, and to some extent sacrificing "output" for the sake of "development". I'd say he's improved a lot with physical contact, improved a fair bit with his defensive game and with contested situations, but he's still shaky under pressure and with his short game (his kicking action allows him to kick very well for long low kicks but will always be a problem for short kicks unless he learns to use a different action when kicking short). He's been given a lot of roles that he's not suited for, and most of the time he's worked hard to improve himself (whenever his workrate slackens, he gets dropped). It was similar with Stef Martin. He started as a very promising tall defender, and 2009 & 2010 might have been a lot easier for him if he'd been kept there, but we had a surplus of good tall defenders. What we needed was a tall strong forward & 2nd ruck, and before 2011 it seemed to me like he was a square peg that we were trying to squeeze into a round hole. Some were even wondering whether he may be delisted. But it's all come together for Stef, for a number of reasons but a lot of it is because he's physically much better conditioned. When the time is right, we'll decide that output takes priority over further development, and his output will be better for having had the development phase. And we'll have a potent attacking weapon who will make great position for hard-pressed defenders or outside mids and move it quickly into a forward line chock-full of both long and lead-up options and great crumbers.