Dr. Gonzo

Bowey to half forward

I agree to an extent taking the last two years as a whole but I thought we came out against Carlton playing with more movement and freedom, ie quick play on, using the corridor etc. So is it a coaching thing or do the players revert to the safer options when games tighten up?

Vale the greatest name the sport has known

We have Ports pick? Edit nevermind 🤦‍♂️

Sure fatigue may be a contributing factor. So we should play a less defensive game and open ourselves up to opposition scores - then what happens when we still have trouble converting? We can't stay in games. I'd like to see us play with a bit more flair and I think they were looking at that early last night (and last offseason) but we still lack personnel up forward. Brown and TMac are finished, Max can't kick, Grundy can't mark, JVR is still a kid and Petty and Melksham were injured. Moving forward I'm confident if we can keep the combo of Petty/JVR/Fritsch/Kozzie/McAdam with ANB/Spargo/Chandler floating through we will have a pretty potent forward line and it will allow us to play a more attacking style having confidence that the forwards will contest and convert.

Plus the pre finals bye which allows them to freshen up and lessen the impact of having to travel

Sure it's subjective, but then you would have to put the King's Birthday game in the 50/50 bucket too. That's fine.

So what's the solution? What can we do to tinker with the gameplan to fix this? If the issue is accuracy due to poor overall skills then surely the best gameplan is to create as many opportunities as possible and hope that enough of them go through to kick a winning score, which is exactly what our gameplan is.

He'd make a great intercept defender, Dogs should shift him to defence.

So it's because of the gameplan Max chokes and misses a sitter 25m out right in front? Or Kozzie and Fritsch miss regulation set shots they generally kick? Nah I'm not buying it. I do agree we need to draft some better kicks, hopefully we use pick 5 to get someone in. But that's not on Goodwin, we have a recruiting team that owns that.

Goodwin's job is to create a gameplan that gives us the opportunity to succeed. He's done that. It's the execution that is killing us, you say we should've won both games? Why? Because we dominated possession/territory and created enough opportunities to kick a winning score. The fact we didn't is down to execution, not strategy. That's not to say we couldn't rejig things or consider another strategy, we could and may well do so. But it doesn't mean Goodwin is the reason we are losing.

Yeah but Port really controlled the game and should've been up by far more at halftime. I listed the Pies game as a win so thought it fair to list the Port game as a loss.

Our inaccuracy keeps other teams in the game

He is a superstar, so glad we recruited him to the club. I love Maysie

We changed things up last night, started the game with intent, were physical, playing quick and through the corridor. But we couldn't put goals on the board, shouldve been 4 goals up early but then TDK gets two in a minute and all our hard work was for nought. Other than the Grundy/TMac/Schache debacle I don't think we can point the finger at Goodwin, I think he coached exceptionally well throughout the year. Our gameplay needs tinkering, we need a new forwards coach and perhaps a ball movement coach (Caracalla?) but the structure and gameplay holds up. It's just the execution that's lacking.

It did make sense because more oftent than not it ended up working in our favour

Ok but how many of those games were we comprehensively beaten and how many were 50/50 games that we happened to be on the wrong end of? And how many did we comprehensively win? I count 9 wins, 5 losses, 7 50/50 games. The 5 losses were Lions round 2, Bombers, Port, Freo, Cats. We won or were in every other game, average losing margin of what, 10 points? I think if we go into next year with Petty, JVR, Fritsch, Kozzie, McAdam that's a pretty potent forward line just unfortunate we had so many injuries to our forwards this year. But Petty/JVR/Kozzie will be around for another 8-10 years together, there is reason for optimism despite how disappointed we all are.

Spargo was great. I thought ANB very good too and Chandler was ok. Most played their roles just didn't finish 😢

Because he was such a weapon teams started tagging him and playing the opposite wing. I thought Langdon was pretty good last night barring the two on the fulls.

How was it flukey? Minor premier, dominant all year, dominated the finals series, backed up with 2nd and 4th after H&A next two seasons. Yes we haven't lived up to expectations the last two September's but to say 2021 was a fluke is dumb. I do question how long you can go with the type of coach Goodwin is. I think it's a great culture he's built and the care for the players etc but after 7 or 8 years do the players become too comfortable? I'm not calling for his head, far from it, just wondering aloud whether the message becomes stale.

Naughton would not help out goalkicking woes

I feel exactly the same way as you mate, absolutely gutted. This team is having a laugh losing 4 finals in a row at the G, biggest case of team yios since North in the 98 GF but at least that was only one game.

It probably would've been touched by the Blues player but he should've shepherded it through.

May and Lever were huge (Lever especially early) and McVee was solid. Not blaming them for the loss just pointing out those that had zero tackles.

They clearly had him as sub as insurance in case Max went down because they needed another ruck option but didn't want to name Grundy in the 22. Just dumbfounding decision making by the match committee, they should have brought in Grundy, dropped TMac and put Hibberd or another runner as sub.