Akum

It's much easier to replace star mids than your best talls, as long as you're not playing a team with an A-grade midfield. Tall strong forwards are essential to Roos's game plan, because they give you a forward target and put pressure on the defence. Without the forward target, it gets very indirect and it's extremely difficult to move the ball forwards. You're absolutely right that West Coast will do the same thing as St. Kilda. And if Roos can't work out a way to counter the extra man (mobile tall, like Gilbert, is ideal) across half-back, we're really going to struggle to score. And if we get behind by a few goals, we're going to struggle to catch up, which is why those missed shots in the first half really killed us.

Just disagree on one thing - he probably had the #1 & #2 defenders on him a lot of the time. And Gilbert, Gwilt & Dempster are fast so they have no trouble keeping up with Howe. They would have got completely outmuscled and outbustled by Clark & Hogan, but that's another story.

Clint Jones & David Armitage say hi. Yeh, both B-grade. But their midfield has played together much more than ours has, so they combine much better, especially at stoppages. Our midfield (as a combination) will only improve as the season goes on.

Well, sort of. We had enormous obstacles to overcome to win this game, after halfway thru the first qtr. Despite that, we got ourselves into a position to win it. In the end, we "didn't know how to win it". Overcoming the obstacles - great! Playing well enough that we should have won - great! But not winning cancels all that out. There was a lot of good, and a lot of bad. But it wasn't all bad. And it wasn't all good.

I'm wondering if we won't be able to muster up enough talls to counter theirs (and we almost certainly won't), we might just try and run them off their feet, especially up forward. Which won't be easy to do, they're not a slow side. But what choice do we have? That means including some of (in descending order of probability): Blease (definitely), Clisby (if fit), Nicho (getting lower down the barrel, but he has unique running ability, both pace and endurance), and even maybe Hunt (just for his pace). And keep Bail, who can run all day. Maybe play Watts CHF but play it like a mid. But we'll need to include Viney if he's fit, and Gawn, and perhaps Jetta by the sound of things. That only leaves room for Blease, and perhaps Clisby. We'll have to shed 2 or 3 slower smalls, so that's Byrnes, but who else? Toump? (who I thought was good - I love him with the ball just outside 50, he always spots someone up) Michie? Trengove?? And I'm betting we'll need Pedo just to make up the numbers as a tall defender.

In hindsight, we didn't have a chance. That game answered the question of whether it's easier to replace 4 A-grade mids, or 7 of the 8 best talls on your list? (the 7 being Clark, Dawes, Hogan, Garland, Gawn, Jamar, and then McDonald; the only one of our top 8 talls who played was Frawley; Watts played as a mid; our only other talls are Fitzy, Spencer, Pedersen, and King) The answer is: It's easier to replace the A-grade mids, because you replace them with B-grade mids, and as long as you don't come up against an A-grade midfield, you'll get by. But you just can't replace that many of your best talls ... you can only substitute tall-spuds, or not-talls. Either way, it's a loss that simply cannot be made up for. Then Fitzy and McDonald were both injured 15-20 minutes into the first quarter; we were effectively playing two short from that time on. They may well have been our two most critical players in that game - our only remaining half-decent tall forward, and the one man who could nullify the other side's one matchwinner (who ended up winning the match for them). If it was, say, Bail & Byrnes who'd been injured, we'd still have been playing two short, but it wouldn't have mattered so much. And not only did we lose our two most critical players & have to play 2 short - those injuries totally destroyed any semblance of structure. And any switches that Roos tried only made things worse. Watts or Tyson or Vince to the forward line weakened the midfield; putting Frawley or Dunn onto Riewoldt meant that we lost any chance we might have had of attacking from defence. We have gained some very good midfielders, but that doesn't mean we've yet got a good midfield. These guys are just starting to learn how to play together, and it will probably take them the best part of the season. Plus nobody seems to be able to work out yet where Spencer's going to tap it to (least of all Spencer). But it won't take much for the mids to gel. And Viney in as another clearance in-and-under mid will improve the balance. Oh, and St.Kilda's midfielders may have had less polish than ours, but they were fast and tackled hard, so they were able to nullify us to some degree, and limit the damage of having their star mids out. Newsflash - until our mids work it out and it all becomes instinctive instead of having to think about every disposal, they will do better against a skilful midfield like RIchmond's, and will struggle against a hard & tough midfield of whatever quality. The most amazing thing was that with all these obstacles, we still could have - and should have - won the game. We created far more chances, but they were able to simply make the most out of fewer chances. That's what tall forwards allow you to do. I can understand the frustration at losing to the Saints, but when you analyse it (rather than just react out of emotion), it wasn't so bad. A lot of Demonlanders had way too high expectations. We've definitely improved a lot since last year - we've got the foundation (but only the foundation so far!!) of a game plan, the framework is looking promising, and a lot of the building blocks are there to be put in place, but there's still a lot of building to be done. Roos said during the presser that the players are much better than they think they are, and he repeated that it will take until Round 5 to see the total picture of what he's trying to do. We've still got a way to go until we're a good team. But the signs are there.

I'm interested in this little snippet about Garry Wilson, WJ. Does this mean that GW had to pull him up at some stage? Or was it about other teammates who weren't putting in? I remember GW being renowned for his work ethic and leadership.

Feeling optimistic about the intraclub OD?

Seems like a fairly simple equation. We had a D-grade midfield, we're now maybe B-grade. We're still going to get smashed by a well-drilled side with an A-grade midfield. If Roosy can't come up with a way to offset this - and without tall forwards and Garland, and with only Spencer as ruck - we're gonna get smashed this year against the sides with A-grade midfields. If we've modelled our game style on the Hawks - "once we get it, we try to keep possession until we score" - then it sounds like it was simply the Master vs the Apprentice. Then again, any game style breaks down if you can't get first hands on the ball.

Sorry ... Cam Bruce has a better rack than Lara Bingle??

What!!!! No fight-to-the-death-in-a-cage!!?? You're getting soft.

Yeah. "Excited but optimistic" wouldn't be right.

Thanks master. Was the wind a factor? Executing our game plan is gonna be a problem in windy conditions.

Back to bitter, I suppose

... with Rhonda

If you can get away with just duck feathers you'll have done well!!

I think if a large proportion of your i50s are on breakaway attacks (because most of the game is played in your defensive half), you're going to convert better than, for argument's sake, a team that bombs high to full-forward (where the i50 conversion rate will be 10-20%), or has to score through a relatively crowded i50 area. In other words, the higher i50 conversion rate says more about how we score our goals than it does about us having more efficient forwards etc.

I'm not going to disagree with all the nervous nellies that it's going to be a long season if we maintain i50 counts of 31 against 62. But the less fragile among us are confident that's probably not going to happen. Due to the many one-off factors from that game.

Yeah, but equally blindingly obvious is that we stand more of a chance of winning with 100 more possessions than with 100 less possessions.

Hey, you're as entitled as anybody to get a few pre-emptive kicks in on Watts before the season's even started. At least this year it's not coming from the coach.

Oh come on! Either "the head is sacrosanct" or it isn't. Roos hinted that Toumpas had headaches after the match and the next day. If it was a bump, it would be held that if you decide to go in hard on someone with their head down, any impact is your responsibility, whether you have your eyes on the ball or not. The same should apply with punching (at head height) from behind, especially if you're going to punch in a "round-arm" fashion like Smedts did. It wasn't deliberate, but he got off extremely lightly. The trouble with MRP decisions like this is that it gives the impression that some heads are more sacrosanct than others. Which is why an overhaul is needed.

This is true. But just about all the bad turnovers were from trying to kick across the ground into the wind. In other words, they tried to switch instead of keeping to the defensive side of the ground. In a real game with a strong and flukey cross wind, I'm sure they'd keep it on the defensive side and let the other team try to get it out, rather than switch to the attacking side and do the hard work for them. Remember Cross's goal? Blease ran it across the ground, got a "give-and-go" from Watts and short-passed to Cross, who goaled from 40m. The commentators gave him heaps for "overusing the ball" and not going for the long kick to Cross in the first place. If he'd tried that, the wind would have blown it back and it probably would have turned over. It was actually very clever play to run it across the ground against the wind so that Cross could shoot with the wind behind him.

As a kid straight off the ship (ten-pound pom) I used to love Johnny Townsend.

Or something to do with where the steady stream of recent leaks of confidential information to the Murdoch press have come from?

Georgiou certainly has a lot to offer, much more than was expected. On the other hand, it will be interesting to see what a real hard nut like Riley has to offer in this midfield or defence.