bing181

Having quality senior players is the difference. Pendlebury and Sidebottom have 750 games between them. They're smart with ball in hand and very clean and effective with their disposals. They're also both high-disposal players, against us 29 and 25 respectively, so they have the ball in hand a lot. And it all rubs off on the other Pies players. The nearest we have to them in Melksham, but unfortunately he's not a mid. Equally unfortunately, none of our main on-ballers have those abilities, as Petracca's errant handball and Oliver's OOB at critical moments late in the game showed. And when things are close, it's all about critical moments.

Sure, but they also have to come up with a huge offer for De Konig.

If this gets done a lot of the credit should go the club of course, but especially to Goodwin. From Kozzie’s POV, you don’t make that sort of a commitment to someone you don’t believe in.

I went with a mate to the Ess Carlton game on Friday night, and Caddy hardly even looked like taking a mark. The difference with Curnow at the other end was stark.

Not to mention, we won more 4th quarters under Griffith in 2023 (18) than we did under Burgess in 2021 (16).

The players are fit. Or fit enough. The rest is all between the ears - you're always fitter when a win is within grasp, and less fit when you're losing. For those into cycling there was a great example in the Giro last weekend where Wout van Aert was able to go above and beyond and put in a "one-hour career-best performance" because he knew that if he did so, his team-mate Simon Yates would win the Giro. It's not just Red Bull that gives you wings. Personally and with no actual evidence, my guess is that the players have been pushing themselves since the Fremantle game and in particular the Lions + Swans games, and sooner or later they were going to run out of steam. You can only go to the well so many times.

"Everyone's trying to crack the code in terms of goalkicking," Goodwin said ahead of the King's Birthday blockbuster against Collingwood. "There's certainly a skill to it and there's a mindset to it. "We believe that we've done the work to get the skill set. "It's now making sure that mentally we believe that we're capable and we finish the plays."

Of course it is. The greatest enemy of in-game skill execution is fatigue.

Because there are other things to focus on as well. No point practising skills (or goal kicking) if come gameday you're too stuffed to execute them.

The reason Tom's playing as a defender is that he was struggling to get a game as a forward. Not the answer, that ship has sailed. The last season Tom was really effective as a forward was in 2018 I believe. He had a few cameos in 2021, but leading into the grand final he'd managed 4 goals in 6 games.

Good luck with that.

Perhaps not as fixable as one might imagine? Also missing from the analysis was any recognition that these things can be as much between the ears. As Goodwin pointed out in the press conference, it's contagious. I can't imagine how much Xavier Lindsay must be dreading shots on goal given that he's missed every one he's taken so far.

Harley Reid putting on a bit of a clinic ... should help to add a few acres to the farm down on the Bellarine.

Not that I want to get into the loading debate here either, but you're also missing the key part which is the rest/unloading prior to the loading phase, without which you don't have the freshness to cope with the excess loads. You can't just add extra load onto footballers knocking themselves out every weekend and where the main focus is recovery, recovery and then more recovery.

Max's point in his interview as well. That you can't give a team a 6-goal start. And then botch any chance of a comeback by not being able to change the look of the game through scoreboard pressure. (per Goodwin)

That's not how it works. There's no meaningful benefit for knocking the players around for a week in-season, quite the reverse. If you want them to be cherry-ripe you give them LESS training, not more.

We're not loading. And were never loading outside of pre-season. A few extra running drills around the bye isn't loading, it's maintenance.

Why do you think they brought in players like Windsor and Lindsay? The shift to prioritising skills and smarts is pretty flagrant. it's also not just horrible goal-kicking, it's horrible kicking period.

Bingo.

One of the reasons is that a reasonable percentage of those weren't simple shots - because of the way the ball was coming in and where we were having to kick from. Quick snaps from 40m are always going to be iffy, as are attempts from marks on the 50m line. (Though some of those players aren't good kicks either, which is never going to change.)

Laughable. I was referring specifically to the younger (1st and 2nd year) players. In that context what happened years ago is an irrelevance.

For the young'uns the issue isn't skills per se, it's execution under pressure. Only way round that is time and experience.

Not sure where we find one, but we've got to get a decent key position forward. AJ and Petty are NOT the answer. If we had that pillar to build a forward line structure and game plan around it would make all the difference. AJ brings very little (sorry to say), and Petty just isn't a one-on-one forward (or back for that matter). I suspect we'll see Jeffo and perhaps JVR next week.

Amongst all that, good to see McVee back to something like his best. Turner really consolidating himself as a first-tier key defender. Probably a few other positives - but perhaps not the time.