bing181

Only 4 Players listed as injured. Joel Smith is a Test, plus Lever, Maynard and Hunt. Shortest injury list in the AFL. Credit where it's due. Edit: Might have gone too early (!), seems Stretch could be added to that. Would make us equal lowest, with Brisbane. FWIW ...

Nah, makes too much sense.

Yeah, why give an experienced player the benefit of the doubt when you can indulge in some speculative negativity.

Nonsense. He saw that Hibberd was leading for the ball, and set himself to receive it. As he should have. Hibberd then mishandled it - understandable in the wet, but under normal circumstances, the ball would have been cleared through Lewis.

The players: "In Darwin it's like wet weather football". First rule of wet weather football: just keep the ball moving forward, by whatever means possible. Includes kicks off the ground.

Lewis won't get dropped. Nor should he be. Don't think there'll be many changes, apart from Tyson (big game today it seems) I'm not even sure who there is at Casey who's pushing for inclusion the way the likes of Stretch were. Perhaps Vince, but then for the whole season, people had been calling for Vince to be dropped so ...

Great to get the win, particularly great to see that we limited them to 7 goals, after we let 18 goals in last week. Against that, some really sloppy ball-in-hand play, (Hogan DE 42%), and inside 50's still leaving a lot to be desired. Also, not sure about J Smith forward, or the reason behind it, why drop Tim Smith or Weideman if we need that third marking target? Thought Stretch showed a bit, continues to develop and mature, a few nice/classy moves. Still, given the opposition and the conditions, hard to take too much out of it, the next week or two will give us a better idea of where we are. Finally, will be surprised if Jones is still (co) captain next year. Slowly easing past his peak.

It's always panic stations for most round here.

This is just hindsight bias. Go back and read the same thread from last week. Plenty had nominated Weideman in on the back of a breakout game at Casey, just as plenty were pleased to see Petty - who'd been doing well in the VFL - coming in for Vince, who many here had been calling for to be dropped all season. Neither Spargo or Garlett did particular well in their last games in the AFL, and neither of them have done particularly well at Casey since. They're in because of the conditions in Darwin, but they've hardly been banging the door down.

Hard to argue with the outs, like for like position-wise, except we've exchanged a tall + small forward for two smalls. Tyson done? Would be a shame, he has some abilities.

You're presuming the coaching box can't see this. I'd suggest that the coaching box see exactly what's going on, and then some. But this idea that we can then suddenly switch to Plan B, and everything will be hunky dory ... if that was even half true, no team would ever loose a match of footy, and every team would win the GF every year. Though as if this whole Plan B idea existed in the first place - it took Paul Roos 2+ years to build a half-way decent Plan A, yet alone developing Plans B, C, D etc. to use as contingencies. Players play/execute well, you give yourself a chance. If they don't, no amount of Plans B, selections, positional changes etc. are going to do much more than minimise the damage.

Not just your view. Would have thought it was obvious to all and sundry, but there you go. Easier to go clamouring to bring in an untried player from the two's who has shown a bit to replace the untried player from the two's who had shown a bit.

Hindsight Bias on steroids.

We kicked 18 goals without one.

Nothing ever changes with its supporters.

In spite of everything, lost in the back line, though that was also because of what was happening further up the field and the way the ball was coming in. We kicked 18 goals which is a winning score - but let them kick more. Lost through some indiscipline and those handful of needless 50 metres that just handed them goals and gave them confidence. Also inexperience (my constant theme), across much of the team but especially Petty who was clearly out of his depth unfortunately. Then throw in those handful of players we have who get the ball but have poor or unpredictable disposal, which leads to turnovers (Tyson, Harmes, ANB the main three). No easy solutions, short of Jake Lever making a miraculous recovery, though I thought Smith played himself back into it, and Hibberd was decent. Thank god for Bailey Fritsch. I'd be looking at Stretch (decent kick) and Vince (experience) back in.

One word: inexperience. Need cooler heads out there. Really missing Lever, and Vince straight back in?

Losing Lever is going to cost us ... well, whatever we might have achieved. Backline inexperienced, both individually and together.

Tiges will be one of the teams in the GF. Who knows for the other, but on tonight's showing, not sure it matters.

Agree with that, maybe Stretch for Tyson or Harmes would be the only other realistic possibility. If it's Tyson, you'd have to start to wonder about his longer term future. Frost though ... these selections put him a long way down the pecking order, even though he was written up as the standout in the Casey backline last weekend, so ??

More THAN anything else ... (not sure why I can't edit/correct my own post, but there you god ...)

Not just one. A lot of this under-performing under pressure WILL sort itself out ... but not overnight. We still have the majority of our list and most of our key players under 100 games (including even Gawn), and it's just not enough, on so many levels. What we need, more anything else, is time, and with it, experience.

Petracca's fine. He had more disposals and more marks than his fellow forwards, ANB, Melksham and Hannan, and I don't see too many calling for their heads. People should stop expecting him to be the second coming.

We don't. It fixes itself - with experience. We have 8 players on the list with more than 100 games. Port have 17.

As he nearly always is. Will finish in the top 5 of the Bluey again this year.