Akum

Disposals 406 to 286

Except that he's the only one who's trying to make something happen. Everybody else seems to be just watching things go by. Tho' we're always going to be in trouble when Hogan, Viney and Gawn* are neutralised. Gee, didn't see that coming!! * Not to mention Watts, Jones & Vince.

Beginning to panic ........ now!!!

Absolutely nailed it. This is our default game plan and it never works!

OK, I get your point. I understand your frustration. The thing to me is that against good teams (not the great teams, but good teams), we play and coach "smart". Against poor teams, we always play & coach "dumb". And it's always the same "dumb". It always plays into the opponents' hands. And we always think that continuing to play the same "dumb" is going to work. The same thing happens, every time we play a poor team. It's predictable, but we fall for it again and again. That's my frustration.

Yeah, much better to just blame the umpires. Sheeeeeesh.

Parish BOG???

Gee. Roos said Dunn was left out because there wasn't a match-up for him. So did he really think that Garland would be a better match up on Daniher than Dunn????

We aren't playing nearly well enough. Garland on Daniher??!!

Well, they've definitely planned well for this game & tied up all our best players. Will we just keep on with the same stupid game and play into their hands?

As much help from the umpires as Fasolo tonight and he'll get a dozen. So two.

He's an elite idiot

Couldn't they have paid it against the Collingwood guy for just watching the ball trickle over the line while his entire effort went into appealing for the free? Disgusting umpiring in the last qtr. If Hogan got as much help from the umps as Fasolo, he'd get a dozen every week.

I may not agree with your bollocks, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Haven't seen the Dogs' team this week (and CBF looking it up), but don't MBoyd, Morris & Murphy all play in the back line?

Ryan Crowley will go to Viney. If anybody can shut him down, Crowley can. Leuey will do what Hickey of St Kilda did in preseason and just jump into Gawn whatever chance he gets. And Mitch Brown will go the full Silvagni octopus on Hogan. And none of these will get any help from the umpires whatsoever.

Essendon will think this is one of the few games they have a chance. Expect to see Woosha's plans to stop Gawn & Viney at stoppages. They will expect us to bomb it to Hogan at every chance, and will do the same as GWS and crowd his area, trying to turn over the ball in their d50 and to get out the back of our press. We need to anticipate that they'll pull out all stops, legal or not, to stop our 3 most effective players and try to tie us up and make us play stupid like we did in Q2 & Q3 last week, thinking that the way to win is to exploit our marking power up forward. We could find ourselves halfway thru the third quarter within a goal of each other and wondering what the hell's going on. Unless we've worked out how to win the ball at stoppages without Gawn & Viney, or to lower our eyes and kick into space when going inside f50. But if we go the whole game without bothering to work out their tactics, it could be line ball.

... and may it long continue!!

But that free kick isn't meant to be decided on "intention". The biggest surprise to me on Monday was that the Hawks weren't able to capitalise on some incredibly generous umpiring. This was but one example among many.

Needs a chop-out for Gawn.

My concern is that the only reason that both Frost & Pedersen are picked is that neither of them can do the job by themselves. And if we pick them both, we miss out on another runner (e.g. Stretch) when we need the extra foot speed.

Was it a coincidence that our worst periods of the game were when Watts (because of his corkie) & Oliver (because he was being saved for the last quarter) were off the ground? And in the (all-too-brief) parts of the game when we got our F50 entries right, we smashed them. For the other parts, I'm sure I heard a comment on the replay (just before Kent's goal in the third) that we'd had about 25 F50 entries for a score of a few points (or something of that order).

Great effort as always Joe. Yes, I disagree with a few, but that's the whole point, isn't it?

That's not the half of it. These two are developing a great understanding.

Phil Davis has one attribute - he's very strong physically, and was simply able to out-muscle Jesse. We played right into his hands by bombing it high. In the last quarter Jack Watts went onto Davis (& Hogan onto Marchbank), ran him around & made him look very ordinary. Oh, and who the hell thought it was a good idea for Gawn to take the kick-out that he ended up hand balling to Vince who turned it over, (mostly because he didn't have a tall target so had to kick it back across goal).