bing181

It's clear that sports medicine isn't one of your strong points, but numeracy? We have 3 Hamstring injuries (Kent, Salem, VDB ... oh look, all young players ...) Hogan doesn't have a hamstring injury, he has hamstring tightness. By pulling him out, Misson is doing his job, by, you know, helping to PREVENT injuries (hamstring or other ...) BTW, lucky you don't follow Fremantle .... currently with 5 Hamstrings. Or Adelaide with 3 bung ankles. Or maybe you'd prefer the Lions with 5 Knees, same number as Geelong, though the Cats are doing better/worse with 4 foot injuries as well, unlike the Swans who seem to be able to limit their injuries primarily to Knees (4, which are 67% of their total) ... etc. etc.

Gonna be what it's gonna be. I don't get all the doom and gloom. Looking forward to the odd cameo, and hopefully, some more signs of progress from the future. It's about winning the battle in the longer term, not getting too hung up on the odd skirmish.

Well, Joel won't play anyway, so no need for concern on that front. Fitzy has had some injury issue(s) the last couple of weeks, so perhaps that's a factor.

No point dissecting every word and doing in-depth analyses of off-the-cuff remarks. I just take it as he meant that it wasn't something that you dwell on. It's clear that it has and will form a major part of the review of the match. But as always, another match rolls round in a week, you learn from it, you move on.

Another informed contribution.

Pretty well our first-choice HB line. Not sure how much any of these are preventable. Note that the hamstrings etc. are all across the younger players. Short of not playing or training, not sure what more could/should be done, it just takes time for bodies to build up to the load of AFL. Does seem to be a league-wide problem though, there are more than a few teams with injury lists that are as long/longer than ours.

Good chances for a few of the younger guys, but anyone who thinks that this isn't having an impact on our season is kidding themselves. It's not just who is out, it's just the constant changes and instability in the team. More than anything else, they need to be playing together on a regular basis. Not helping.

Which we've already done this season. 3 wins. Progress. From reading this Board, you'd think we were at the bottom of the ladder without a win to our name.

Well, I hope that comes about OD, not often we see the word "happy" in one of your posts.

Good analysis/breakdown of what went on. But you've omitted (IMHO) the key Melbourne player in that passage of play - Viney. He was right amongst it, and in some ways, central to both Stevens and Montagna getting away. Not blaming, just observing. But also, it was only one play on a day where there were quite a few that we messed up. Turnovers are killing us and undoing a lot of good work.

No-one's trying to defend a loss, we clearly didn't play well enough to win. End of. St Kilda aren't as bad as what you're making out, far from it. They still have some solid/important players from the team that got them into the GF in 2010, that in itself is enough to make a difference, especially in a close game. But that's not in itself the point. We were in this game, as well as the previous weeks' up until the end, and in both games, we fought our way back from being 5+ goals down to be in front - something we could never do in the past. Just look at the Collingwood game - we managed 3 goals in 2014, but 13 last week. And you can't see the improvement? Thompson remarked in the commentary on Sunday about the progress at Geelong when he was building: at first, you try and get it to work for a quarter, and then a half, then 3 quarters, and eventually for a whole match. Our problem is not that we're not a good team, or can't play well, it's that we can't always do that for 120 minutes. Both against Collingwood and St Kilda, there were longish passages in the game when we were clearly on top, with some exhilarating play from the whole team. That never/rarely happened over the past few years, yet we're starting to see it more and more. Not sure how old you are, I'm getting on myself. But as I get older, the more I realise that sometimes, things just take time, and that at the end of the day, it's what happens in the long term that counts, not what's going on over a few weeks or even a year or two. Enjoy the ride OD, bumpy as it may be. If you can see past what's not working, there's a lot to like and to be positive about. Seriously.

Jones and Bail. Going to be very useful players for someone, especially at this level. If only they could bring half of that to the seniors on a regular basis ...

Because it was for the on field leaders to make the call, and because all players make mistakes. I imagine that with 40 seconds to go, in the heat of the moment, a) no-one (i.e. one of the leaders) thought of it and b) if they did think of it they thought that there was so little time it wasn't necessary. In reality, they needed to be setting up from the moment of Howe's shot at goal. But they were almost certainly focused on a setup to defend the kick-in if there was a point (most likely outcome given the angle and Howe's unreliable kicking ...). Then, instead of instantly switching to get forwards back, they were too busy running round back-slapping and high-fiving. A lot of it comes down to Nate Jones. With so many inexperienced players around him, it was his call. Look at him after the match - he knew. Not blaming anyone either, it's not often we're in this situation. In fact, when was the last time? A good lesson in the school of hard knocks.

Surprised by some of the comments here. It's obvious the players knew how much time was left but stuffed up, and that Roos (and Vince) is protecting them. They thought that with only 40 second to go, they had it won. Too busy celebrating after Howe's goal, instead of putting it to one side and focusing on the job at hand. Reminds me of the scenario in the third quarter, where Tom MacD lost a mark/gave away a free. While Tommy was remonstrating with the umpire, his opponent simply took off unhindered towards goal, with predictable results. I don't actually blame the players, they've had such a rough time, and wins have been hard to come by. But it's the difference between a team like a Hawthorn and a team like ours. We need to harden up mentally.

A small edit if I may ... And if anyone believes Vince's "we didn't know how much time was left", get in touch, I have a bridge for sale.

In public, he's doing what he's supposed to, protecting his players. Smart man. Says what he needs to say. As a consequence, I'll bet that not a single player will be asked by a journalist why they didn't flood back after the Howe goal.

Corrected.

Gullible? This whole "they didn't know how much time was left" is just some spin cooked up to protect the players. Roos didn't even mention it in the press conference, even though he was specifically asked about the final moments. It's something that came out later on. It saves people asking why Nathan Jones wasn't in the centre for that last ballup, or why the leaders (cough cough) didn't organise the players to get behind the ball etc. etc. Roos (and the club) is just covering for his team - well, in public anyway, but the players know that they stuffed up. Everyone knew how much time was left, including the players on the field - it's partly why there was so much celebrating after Howe's goal - with under a minute to go, they thought they'd won it. Roos was screaming into the phone to get them back ... even if the runner wasn't around, the bench was close enough to communicate with the players onfield. Hard lesson, but the players won't let that happen again. Hopefully.

Then you never cared enough in the first place.

And you believe him? The players always know how much time is left, at least to the nearest minute or so. Grain of salt. Very big one.

Jimmy did the right thing in trying to tackle the St Kilda player who ran past with the ball, who then passed to Stevens. There's no single player at fault here, but Viney didn't cover himself in glory - first letting Stevens get the initial disposal out of the centre, then not following him down to stop his subsequent hand pass receive, and finally, letting Montagna run free past him. There were others involved - Viv Mitchie, who was trotting behind Stevens. etc. etc. Sure, everyone has a player that they're "on", but equally, they're trained to pick up opposing players if the designated player (who presumably would have been Toumpas) is otherwise engaged.

You referencing something that's not actually occurring is the biggest mistake you're making. But as you say, we are our thoughts. BTW, no credit for Jack Watts' game today Ben?

Didn't mind Stretch today, felt that it was his best game so far and he's starting to get used to it. Unless there's someone clearly better to come in, I'd leave him there. You'd surely have to give ANB another chance, even as a sub. Riley and Mitchie on the other hand ... sorry, but let's just play out the year with Matt Jones and Bail, knowing that they'll be moved on. Injuries hurting us, we just don't have the depth.

Spot on. Fear of failure runs deep amongst this lot, with fairly catastrophic results. It takes real guts to take the game on when a) you're losing and b) the last 10 times to take it on it resulted in a turnover. As Roos (and he's not the only one) commented, the players tend to go into their shells. Lack of leadership not helping, but even there, hard to blame the leaders, it's not as if Nat Jones has been playing under sterling leaders himself for the last few years.

Perhaps, but Fitzpatrick was withdrawn/unavailable due to an injury (described as a "niggle"). Frost would have been handy - or Garland. Or Salem down back. Injuries hurting us more than some are admitting, we just don't have the depth to cover +/- 25% of the players being unavailable. Garry Lyon article was spot on.