Akum

A much more tasteful version on Joffa's golden jacket.

If Fagan was there & saw him follow Clarko for a distance & Clarko tell him to go away a few times - why on earth didn't Fagan intervene? Visually deficient Frederick could have seen what was going to happen. And Port need to step up and say they don't want anything to do with this guy etc etc. Otherwise the hero gets exactly what he wanted - leading the evening news!! - and there will be any number of cretins out there lining up to do the same.

One of Chunk's few mistakes was a hospital bandpass to Brayshaw that could have put him there.

I think it's a judgment call and it's line ball. And I'd have much more confidence in Roos's ability to make that call than anybody on DL. Especially myself.

We are the mighty staging sniping Hawks! Not covering themselves in glory tonight.

Looking at that match, we've got the best Frost brother too.

Fully agree. It's far better to make a mistake trying to do the right thing - miss a 5m handball to a teammate accelerating away from a pack - than keep doing the wrong thing - handball to a stationary teammate. The mistakes will drop off the more we do it. Last night they would have had another 5 or 6 line breaking attacks at lightning speed if the handball had been nailed. But it will certainly come.

Good point. We need to learn to handball to where they're going, not to where they've been. But it's something we're still learning. For years, we've mainly handballed to stationary targets, not to moving ones.

This is a terrible game, both Pies & Dons making laughable mistakes. Interesting to see umps giving the druggies an armchair ride. Would have thought the opposite.

It has to be Grimes for Jetta. Can't have a stop-gap small defender to try to stop Ballantyne & Walters. Gawn may need to come in for Watts. I'd like to throw Gawn in against Sandi & see how he goes. If he can hold his own, Jamar could be too strong for Clarke. If Gawn gets smashed, we just swap him & Jamar. At some stage we need to get info about whether either Gawn or Spencer are capable of taking the next step, or whether they'll continue to just star for Casey.

No, but we might miss Jetta against Ballantyne & Walters.

Totally and absolutely disagree ... ... because from tonight's performance you've got to include VandenBerg, Salem, Michie & Newton as our future too. And Kent and Viney. And we haven't even seen Petracca yet.

VandenBerg is too old, isn't he?

It was unbelievably soft, just put his arm up to defend himself. One of about a dozen soft soft frees to Tiges.

I think he's so much more effective at stoppages when he can run at it, rather than have to dig it out. VandenBerg & Michie did the digging for him tonight. He got some really clean clearances as a result.

And for that reason, we can't afford to play him if he's not 100.00%, as good as he is. We'll need him at the top of his game against Swans & Hawks.

Just a brilliant captain's game from Jones, being captain has added another dimension to his game. He was there every time we needed him.

Everybody contributed - not a single passenger. VandenBerg BoG. He & Michie were the missing links in the midfield, the whole midfield structure looks better with one of them at the ruckman's feet. It means Jones can focus on what he does best. Brayshaw is AFL quality now, and definitely adds value. Vince is the equal of any midfielder in the game in a run-with one-on-one role. And I loved the way that when Jetta couldn't go on, Salem & Garland both stood up & took their games to another level. Salem was great in just refusing to let them get it past halfway in the last quarter. And I've been critical of Jamar, but he was great tonight against a tough opponent in Maric. He really varied his taps & was much less predictable, so it shows that eh can do it. And he gave us more around the ground by getting into the right places a lot more. And Hogan. What more can you say?

So he disappears & turns up in another part of the ground 5 minutes earlier???

Good article. Really like Lewis, but I still think we've got the best Jetta.

This should be good for another 2 or 3 pages.

Great effort from the Kimberley Coast, nor'wester! Hope it turns out to be well worth your while.

THAT'S IT!!! This is a good post, and sorry for cutting out all the rest of it and just quoting this bit, but I wanted to highlight this bit. When Tomlinson went off, they were forced to play small, and from then on, they killed us. You'd think that losing their main tall forward & second ruck that early in the game would kill them, but it killed us instead. It forced them to play even more small, to run the ball and to kick low into the forward line instead of bombing it. And it left Dunn, Howe & Garland sharing one sorta-tall (McCarthy) and two smalls. And the game changed completely.

The thing is that once a team works out how they can outrun us, there's very little we can do, unless we can bring Speedy Gonzales and the Road Runner off the bench. Once we get exposed for speed, Roos can change the positions on the field all he likes, it's not going to make a jot of difference, we'll be chasing tail the rest of the match. And we have to pick our side with regard to who the opponent is. In hindsight, Mummy pantsing Jamar was a clear & present danger, so we may have been better to go in with Gawn (who has been rubbish so far this year) or Spencer instead of Frost (I was expecting they'd stuck with Frost because they had a plan for him to try to run Mummy off his feet, but ... no plan!) We're not yet a complete enough team to ignore the main risks of who we're playing against. We may have selected our "best team" for this match, but in hindsight (again!) we played right into their hands.

Out: tall, slow. In: small, fast. At least two talls have to go, for two smalls. Out: Dawes & either Garland or Howe. In: JKH, Michie. And I'd bring in Bail simply for his speed and run, and drop one of our too-many slow mids. Don't care which one, could even be Tyson or Cross. Apart from a couple of cameos last week, Tyson has given very little this season, and he's not good defensively so if he's not getting the ball, he's on shaky ground. I love Cross, but we just have one slow mid too many at the moment, and against fast teams, the risk of getting exposed for speed is too great. And Vince is sub until he can run out a full game.