binman

Agree Clint. I reckon Oliver will too. Not convinced about gus

Tracc a lock for AA

Great pressure inside our 50

That is all on weed. Terrible intensity to allow frost of all players to gather and run off him

Im not sure that holds true on demonland old dee. And I certainly wouldn't put you in the over rating players camp. Some might argue that 2018 was an aberration. We'll get a better idea after thus season about that. But that argument diminshes the fact that it is impossible to fluke making a preliminary final. That team had good players and we have improved the list since. So we plenty of good players. Good enough to won a flag? Im not sure, but in our best 22 thete are no poor players.

Agree with both points. A frustration for me in the first three games is that we played so far below what i know we are capable off. Were a good side. Certainly beter than Geelong in my opinion. As i have noted many times our key weakness is not having enough above average and elite kicks and too many poor kicks (watching the suns yesterday i have to say i was impressed with how many really good kicks they have). But that is as it is. And Harley, Kozzie (who has the modern skill of weighting kicks to space) and even Hannan (who hit a couple of perfect kicks last week) all help improve our kicks inside 50. As others have noted, almost as big an issue is decision making but that has much more scope for improvement, as we saw last week. Good coaching last week from goody who brought in good decision makers and got the team to slow things down (apparently our lowest percentage of play ons from marks since 2015). But with decision making i really believe a big part of it relates to confidence: in the game plan, each other and individually. With the game plan, they had to adjust last year as the massive up and down the ground flooding of other sides (and our lack of fitness) that became the norm severely disrupted our preferred game plan. And this is an even bigger factor this year with 16 minute quarters and teams not tiring meaning they can keep their flood up till the siren. We tried to to beat this through playing on at all costs, but except for the first quarter against the blues it hasn't worked. Personally i think a combination of the two styles we have employed this year is the go. The key is knowing when to implement each style. Which is where confidence is so important. Goody has to get them into a head space where they are not worrying about losing, which feels to me they have been for 18 months. Which has meant they often seem to have a passive, defensive mind set married to an aggressive game plan. In the second half of 2018 they played without fear of losing and collectively and individually played much more freely. The game has changed in a short time so they need to adjust but they can still find that same mojo - and there is still a place for their contest out, high pressure game. That style is built for finals as comprehensively shown last year by the tigers. Goody should encourage them to go for it. Trust in each other and themselves. Take that kick to the corridor on. Be aggressive when it is called for. But smart and patient when it isn't (which is where defence can become attack). A funny thing about this year is teams seem to scoring goals in clumps and whilst momentum has always been important in footy it feels like it is eve more important this year., perhaps as function of the scores being lower. Having two speeds and the skill and on field chemistry to implement them at the right time is really important now and that is the challenge for this coaching staff and team. A fascinating element of the game will be the tactical battle. A good chance for goody to silence some critics. Won't be surprised if the hawks go against script early and attack. If so we need to be ready. If they jump us we need to stop their momentum with tempo footy. If they don't and we get on top early we need to put our foot down and put score board pressure on them. Get four goals up and they can chip, hold and flood all they like. With their uber flood we need to make sure we risk turnovers and go for our angle kicks, take on the corridor and cross to the fat side when needed. Be patient. I can't see Clarkson giving us so many kicks inside 50 to a free man in the corridor like the Suns did (i thought Goody out coached dew with this) but we need to keep looking for them and try to engineer them. And i have feeling the hub environment will help all of these elements come together. As Whispering Jack notes in the first post in this thread this is very important game. And as you note josh we are a four goal better than the Hawks and we need to show that today.

Sadly also sums up our recruitment strategy. For the last 7 years.

Are you a life coach by profession?

I hope frosty does fire up. More likely we will see some frost ball.

It makes those concerns clear. But what I was responding to was this comment: Garbage selection again Simon, why go with undersized Forwards Our forwards are taller than their defenders so I'm confused

A brilliant doco. At my work we all watched together during reconciliation week. It is clearly shows what racism exists but more pertinately for the discussion in this thread what systemic racism is (and the distinction between the two) and it's pernicious impact.

Gold fork em. Ta. Can you do me a favour and find the clips for his other hits: It's all right, I'm all white For Chan, and my crew Triggered Woman, know your place Don't put your QAnon in the rack I won't mail it in. Don't you Fake news The boogaloo boys shuffle Don't oppress me Cancel this

Frawley likely to take weed (assuming he plays deep) so is 3cm shorter. Frost takes LJ (I hope Sicily does - but won't) and is 5cms shorter. Just to clarify picket - what are you talking about?

Under sized forwards? Witch's talkin' about Lewis? Weed and jackson are 195 and 199 cms respectively. How tall is frost and frawley?

Don't mind that selection at all. Gutsy. Will be interesting to see if he plays up the ground like tmac was, with weed deep. I assume he will as he is not a FF. One option that it gives us is giving jackson an extended stretch in the ruck and putting maxy forward. Maxy is marking it so well at the moment and he would really stretch their backline (any back line really). Just has to hand the shot at goal off!

Doesn't leave him too many positions then.

Yes and no. If we had gone into that game with Tom as the one key forward and he went down we would have had no key forwards!

Thanks Fork em. And i don't mean that sarcastically. I promise That video clip is literally one of the funniest things i have seen. Watching it i thought this simply has to be a parody. A brilliant one at that. One made even more funny by the fact the fellas name is Tom Macdonald. It is just so pitch perfect the way nails every grievance of disenfranchised white men/babies fearing a future that does not involve them holding all the cards and being in power. Men, who, without irony, see themselves as the real victims, victims that struggle to have a voice in this time of woke, cancel culture gone mad (which reminds me of the irony of Fox news, the most watched news outlet on the planet, railing against so called mainstream media). As i say it simply has to be a parody, I did quick google search and he he names of some of his other tracks include; “Straight White Male” “Everybody Hates Me” and "Coronavirus" - that of course pushes conspiracy theories. You couldn't make this stuff up. Fantastic. Well played Fork em and big props to the comedic genius of Tom Macdonald.

Its all about reducing stoppages. Which is not the job of the umpires. Drives me nuts. Same with ignoring players being pushed in the back and driving them into the ground. Which us made worse when they then get pinged for holding! Just pay the free kicks. And at stoppages just throw the ball straight up.

i thought about that and i reckon Harmes would do a top job shutting down Smith. But i wondered about taking him out of the midfiled where he is really damaging (and can shut down say Mitchell or Omeara). Langdon head to head with Scully would be good watch.

I punt on footy with mate. And we do ok as a rule. But he has banned bets on the dees because i always think we will win. And we don't. With that caution from a punting perspective i reckon the dees are terrific value this weekend. I'm amazed hawks are favorites. They are rubbish. Sure Clarkson is great coach and no doubt will have a good plan to beat us but as you say they simply don't have the cattle. They are a slow so find it hard to cover and spread. They have few weapons up forward and with poppy having slowed done and not in great form can't really exploit the issue we have containing small forwards (and perhaps this will save Jetts this week from the chop - he'll thrash poppy). With Ceglar (i am assuming he is out) and Patton out we have an advantage with our three bigs and that advantage will allow Lever and in particular May to play higher and be more aggressive and damaging. Ceglar out also means Maxy will be more dominant and give us a big edge at stoppages (which we'll have even if Ceglar plays). As george on the outer noted on the demonland podcast Smith is key for them as he generates a lot of their attack and i assume leads their metres gained. We could opt to have a player run with him, but i think that is unlikely. More likely is goody having Langdon go head to head with him and exploit Smiths lack of two way running. I agree that the smaller ground suits us - the evidence is compelling on that front. And conversely does not help the hawks as they can't stretch opposition with their kicking they way they like to. But the smaller ground also negates the impact of Smith a bit because he has less space to run into and his kicks inside 50 are less damaging because it is more crowded - which in turn should help Lever take intercept marks). The other player who is key for them is Sicily and it will be interesting to see if they put a defensive forward on him whose role is to take him away from the corridor to negate his intercept marking. But most of all they have too many poor kicks these days to execute Clarkson's preferred game plan - the tedious kick and mark routine. If opposition teams apply enough pressure and run hard both ways it will break down eventually. It is a game plan that has a weakness in so far as it relies on denying the opposition the ball and therefore the chance to score. Which is all well and good - until the opposition do score and get say a three goal break as chipping it around your own back line might stop opposition scoring does nothing to help your own team score. A good example was the game last night with the cats caught between two games plans and struggling to bridge the 3 goal margin established at quarter time - something they were able to do against the lions the week before (who got 3 goals up half way through the second) but couldn't against the pies tighter, more defensive game plan. On the Hawk's game plan i won't be surprised if they look to attack from the get go to catch us off guard. Prior to their game against the Cats i heard an interview with Clarkson and he was banging on about it being a dour, low scoring game with both teams employing a similar chip and gold model. They then came out and went all out attack, jumped the Cats kicking 6 odd goals. Interestingly it was on the small, narrow Kardina park - a ground with similar dimensions to Giants stadium. Back to punting. For the reasons noted I won't be backing us but i suggest others do. Take the dees line bet (+3.5) and also back us to win over 24.5. Sit back and count the cash.

And he has so much time and space

Weed can give maxy a chop out. I reckon he's actually pretty good in the ruck.

Surely to goodness they won't make more than the one forced change to a winnning side? And I can't see Smith playing back any time soon.