Dr. Gonzo

GWS were capable of beating the Saints last Friday, why didn't they?

I'm as frustrated as anyone but demanding calls for the president to come out and address things, questioning the co-captaincy, going back to the "woe is me we're cursed, same old Melbourne" [censored] is what I'm referring to. People need to take a step back and get some perspective, we are improving we've been on the wrong end of some genuine 50/50 games and have had a pretty wretched run with injuries too. Losing sucks and I'm not happy we've lost winnable games but there's being unhappy then there's being irrationally hostile towards the club.

Excuses are different to reasons. If the favourite won every match they played we wouldn't have to play the season, let's just let the Crows and Giants play off for the flag.

Yep and the Hawks knew this. Within the first couple of minutes they controlled possession with kick/mark style play and slowed the tempo down before it even had a chance to build. This messed up our rhythm, but when did start to become more break-neck in the 3rd we got well on top. We need to figure out how to play the game on our terms when things aren't going our way. The opposite was true in the Freo game. In the 3rd quarter of that game we needed to control possession and take the sting out of the game for a few minutes but were unable to.

That's rubbish, we were in front in the last quarter of every game except yesterday where we drew level. Not playing at 100% capacity 100% of the time is different to having no chance of winning the games we lost. We've suffered mental lapses, the Hawks game definitely the worst, but to say we've been no hope of winning every game this year is tripe. This isn't like Neeld-era where we went in expecting anything under 10 goals to be a win. There's a distinction between not having won and being incapable of winning. Not winning a game does not mean you are incapable of it. Play the game 10 times and it's likely we win at least 5 (if not more) of them all things being equal.

They did it once and instead of being penalised the ball was called back for the player to take his kick again. If it's against the rules then we should've received a free, if not then it should be play on

Kicked into the mark after a free kick in the 2nd

Precisely.

Schwarz and Lyon may be right but the issues have been present since they were in the red and blue, bit hard for them to pass judgement when they were susceptible to it as well

Good post, hopefully it will provide some perspective to some of those wallowing in hysteria.

Yep, I was gonna tell him it's not a fact it's an assertion but the nuance would probably be lost on him

We've lost 2 games by less than a kick, one game after being unable to hit the side of a barn and another after leading all game and being overrun in the last with injuries taking a toll. Explain how each of these games was unwinnable.

Yep I noticed that when I was watching yesterday, he definitely stepped outside the paint. I thought there was an interchange steward watching all this, how can they miss something so blatant?

West Coast got towelled up by the Hawks 2 weeks ago and they're 4th on the ladder. The Hawks aren't as bad as their position/performances indicates, how many 4-time premiership players/leaders do they still have out there? And they'd been given an absolute rocket by their coach this week, they were always going to respond. The loss is disappointing, frustrating, but it's not cause to blow the whole place up and start again. We are still on the right trajectory and the wins will start to come. They should be coming now and it is frustrating because they are clearly good enough (could be 7-0 if things had gone our way or had we made things go our way) but cutting loose at the club, president, captains whoever isnt gonna help.

Hawks dropped 4 extra men into our forward line, had he bombed away they would've marked or cleared it and game over. The right option was to try and get the ball to around 50 and either chip a pass to someone or have a crack at the goals. Vince made the right call.

That's just a complete cop out. They've been good enough to win every game so far, the fact they haven't isn't because of youth.

I was thinking about this on Saturday, knowing that in the past this is the kind of game we would turn up to at less than 100% intensity and reflecting on the saints win the night before where they brought pressure and intensity to the game. In today's footy you must bring that 100% intensity and if you don't you will lose. What does it take to get the players to be "up" for the start of every game every week? It can't be one or two players, it needs to be the entire team otherwise things will break down. It's clearly all in the head - do they need sports psychologists working with them to prep them for gametime? Their entire week is geared towards that 2hrs to perform so why can teams (not just us) turn up without the required mindset/intensity? What needs to be done to ensure that by the bounce of the ball they are ready to run through a brick wall?

Watts FF Hogan CHF

A minute or two before that he wasn't happy when Petracca burnt him and kicked the ball over his head going for a low percentage goal. It seemed to me like that was still in his mind when he tried to chip it to the player in the goalsquare instead of slotting the goal.

Completely different circumstances

Can't remember who it was but an almost identical "hold" wasn't paid to us earlier, may have been Hodge on Hunt in the 3rd.

Salem and Oliver spoilt each other too which resulted in a Hawks goal. Gotta talk out there, Oliver should've either called it "mine" or called Salem back.

Excuses. We're not "a year off it". We could realistically have won every game we've played this year. Time we started hating losing and stopped making excuses for the team. They're talented enough, big enough, fit enough. They just need to bring the mindset/workrate and we can take it up to any team. Drop off a few percent and we'll get rolled.

From memory they took it down and kicked a goal too. Halted some momentum we'd built up and didn't get it back for another few minutes.

Nah those are the games we'll probably come out and win/go down fighting