John Crow Batty

That’s what I said straight after the Bulldogs game. We got murdered in defensive 50 stoppages and above all other excuses that’s why we lost the game.

Bulldogs won all their free kick counts in 4 finals including against WC at Perth. 79 frees for to 48 against. In the prelim and GF it was a total of 43 to 21 in their favour.

It puzzled me as well that those dangerous players were not manned up as I would like.

Pickett kicks a goal. We win the following centre clearance and drive the ball deep to one on one marking contest. Marking contest brings the ball to ground and Pickett is not there to crumb. Makes perfect sense. .

Max doesn’t trust our mids work. That why he tries to clearance his own ruck work to much these days.

Trac 35% DE, Oliver 57%. Both ball butchers today.

We got murdered in the back half stoppages. They always looked like scoring from throw ins or ball ups near goal. Soft frees to them didn’t help either.

I’m really disappointed to see all those unmasked protester in Sydney and Melbourne and no doubt spreading the virus. Now looking forward to see a Melbourne VS ???? Grand Final at Optus Oval. Nice sunny day here in Perth and after our recent brief mini( kill it before it grows)lockdown, no masks and everything open.

And his baby was in hospital a few days before the Hawthorn game. Not amongst his best games this season.

Agree. Looked at it several times. Dermie must be puzzled how a skinny guy like Fritsch can do so much damage accidentally. Fritsch is not a wrecking ball. An affront to his macho sensibilities perhaps.

Brereton got his headlines. He’s happy. Who says projection by accusing doesn’t get what you want?

I notice with too many set shots that players use up all their time, fiddle with the ball, over angst and grimace, eyes darting left right and centre and over think the situation. Why not just go back and move forward straight away to kick the goal? Look at old footage, players rarely wasted too much time in lining up for goal unless in a tight part of the ground.

And a keener sense of smell for his own???

You make a good point. Our game is soccer style but more like the defensive style Italians used to play. The Catenaccio style they played translates to chaining the opposition. It worked very well against top ranked teams but often struggled against lower ranked teams. It did have success though. Italy won the 1982 and 2006 World Cups despite struggling against weaker sides in those tournaments as well as other deep finishes. It wasn’t a perfect game as it let the opposition freedom to make the play and move forward more often and left a lot to chance and luck that they didn’t score if the system broke down. At this stage our game plan is still working or else we wouldn’t be on top but the true test is in its resilience as we get towards the finals. That will be the definitive test. As with us the style always kept the supporters in a state of perpetual anxiety.

Or this; infidelium daemones or cant faciunt daemoniis

I do remember that game against Hawthorn in 2004 well. There seemed to be OOT celebrations by the players after the game and our fans as well. I hope we haven’t slid into that trap as well after our top four rivals demolition of recent weeks.

I get the impression by the way he moves and kicks the ball is like he has no toes. His foot injuries have impacted his game for a long time. Still he could have better impact if he made better decisions because he can get a lot of ball in tough situations..

I hope that stunned mullet look on the players faces after last night is poignant. They don’t need a lecture. I hope it shocked them in a positive way.

As the ladder currently stands we have beaten every side in the top 8 including us.

The easy money these days seems to be betting on long shots that pay $4 and over especially if they play us. Sometime I wonder if there is a perverse corrupt relationship between gambling and sport. Nah couldn’t happen…..could it?

That was the dumbest play of the night. We were 5 points up. He declined the chance of getting two straight kicks ahead. If he scored a point it would have still been a goal ahead. It was well within his range but elected to kick to a pack of a dozen players. Very low percentage option.

Like a Freudian slip (an unintentional error revealing subconscious feelings) showing where the players minds are at. Thinking about the big boys and being dismissive of the weaker sides.

Both times when when we had our biggest leads during the game in the the 2nd and 3rd quarters we let them have two 4 goal unanswered run ons. We had similar issues but to a lesser degree against the Crows and Pies. We surrender the initiative to lesser sides rather than go for the kill. They seem to sense that.

For the benefit of posters, this is what Clarkson said ; “The disappointing part is we had over 80 tackles and only three holding-the-balls, didn’t get rewarded for our super effort in that space. Having said that maybe the reward came just because we’re in the game and in the contest and got us to draw. We would have liked to think with the effort we applied in terms of our tackling we would have got more reward on some of the free kicks.”