bing181

Oh for the days when Tom Mac used to knock off an easy 4 or 5 goals a game.

Well, cracked record here: confidence (lack thereof)

This is a team with no confidence - either in themselves or their teammates. Survival mode kicks in, as does the "I've got to do something" mentality, and then it's all down hill.

Confidence shot, skills nowhere. If you can't get simple 2 metre handballs to reach their target ...

Apart from anything else, this thread just shows how out of touch many here are with the realities of professional sport.

Congrats to both of you. Just to clarify, if I may, if this was on the cards yesterday, why was Smith named in the side in the first place?

Not so much. Anything to help get Fritsch back up the ground where he belongs is a step in the right direction IMV. Also, Fritsch forward frees up Petracca to do some of the on-ball heavy lifting. Of course, best laid plans ...

Smart selections: O Mac allows Tom (our best KPF) to go forward, as does J Wagner for Fritsch.

That's right, because an untested player who's never played a single game at AFL level and is playing OK/consistent footy at VFL level is our saviour. And because we have inside mids and KPF's just queuing up to get a game.

I expect the effort will be there, but we have too many key players injured/down on form. Between our cobbled-together backline and misfiring forward line, hard to see us getting a win here. But heh, go dees.

In 10 days? It'll take a season.

Mods should delete if a duplicate. I put it up because I couldn't see any reference to it anywhere, but if it's already been discussed ...

"In his presentation, Misson showed that the Demons had 39 players complete a total of 33 training sessions each in the pre-season prior to the successful 2018 season. This year, in Misson’s telling, there were just 25 players completing a total of 22 sessions each – a massive drop partly explained by high number of players who had post-season surgery." https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/demons-early-warning-on-poor-start-to-2019-20190430-p51isa.html

Apart from anything else, what's happening shows how highly tuned successful teams are. It doesn't take much for the wheels to come off big time. Consequences have causes, but not all major consequences have major causes.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Nailed it - it's a season of NAB.

I can see us making the finals as much as anything because the comp is becoming so even. On the other hand, even if we start winning matches, it will be tight, and the issue we'd have isn't just that we've lost 5 games, but that we have a garbage percentage. That 600 points against is just massive, and will be hard to pull back or balance.

Mature response.

It's Fritsch's second season. Calmness under pressure will come.

We never had the chance to step up in 2019. You just can not have massive slabs of your list unavailable for full training till mid-January and expect the team - or what's left of it - to be ready by Round 1. You then spend the rest of the season playing catch-up, while being booted from pillar to post.

There's so much in this. Confidence drops, you start to second guess yourself, not take chances, not put yourself out there, you even lose confidence in those around you. What got us through much of last year was real high-pressure, exuberant, risk-taking football - and a game plan to support it. But so much of that is in the head, and without it, we just look error-prone and pedestrian. And there are no answers to any of that, not in the short term. We badly need May and Lever, at least.

Not just going forward. It's been the key characteristic of the whole year. The other defining characteristic is that the players' confidence is completely shot, and coming up against an in-form, confident side like Richmond, only rubs their faces in it.

Tom Mac showing us why he's so much more effective up forward where, with the sticks in front of him, he doesn't have to worry about his disposal.

At least we've shown we CAN play, even if it's only for a quarter. Something there to build on going forward.

Coaching 101 is also not to start throwing players around because the whole team is under-performing, or to start shuffling players who are down on form. (Though with May, Lever and O'Mac out, and the next generation not ready, the rule book could be ripped up.)