Pates

Because May is an effing legend and is keeping the boys on the straight and narrow. He also basically said we take the wins and get on with the next job. I don’t take any win for granted whether it’s a 1pt win or a 100pt win, and May knows that things can turn quickly if we’re not switched on. He also knows we’re capable of better, so he expects better of them. Remember the feeling of losing by 70+ points and thinking the other team barely tried? Well the Eagles get to feel that, and that makes me happy.

The only way Brown doesn’t play this week is if he’s injured. He must be priming himself and I would love nothing more than to see him kick a massive bag against North. Just a thought could we bring JVR in for Harmes? Sure whoever comes in must know they are more than likely to only be in for one week.

I don’t know what to think when I’m hearing fans of a team that watched us go through seasons of winning 2 games for the entire year complain about a 74 win that was just about stitched up by quarter time. Could we have played better? Absolutely. But I actually do buy the theory that our club ethos right now is do what we need but don’t over exert. I laugh about the fact that this time last season there were complaints that we weren’t putting teams to the sword. Now we do but it’s not enough? Far out we are spoilt right now. We know the level these guys can go to, I trust the coach and the players to bring it when required. By the way, TMac getting a little bit better touch is only a good thing. I actually like the fact our forward line gets a spread of goal kickers rather than one guy getting bags of 5-7 and the others bobbing up for one or two.

I think he will be suspended and I don’t think it’s right but the MRO is about results and having the perception of protection players (despite several questionable decisions to the contrary). It looked bad on the day, I know Simpson and the medico’s are saying he doesn’t appear to have concussion but he looked pretty out of it in the immediate aftermath. I can’t imagine how that doesn’t translate into concussion. Did Chandler do much wrong? No, the only thing he did, not so much wrong but a contributing factor, is he came at such pace and pinned the arms thus making Foley helpless. For me I feel what Zack Jones did to Langdon was far more dangerous and deliberate, but I feel this is something the MRO is targeting. Might come out of it with a fine.

I’m not saying this was a danger game but last year around the same time we lost to a plucky Adelaide team that was getting smashed by all comers. I only saw the 2nd and 3rd quarter, and bits of the last, I saw the eagles physically have a dip but our class shine through. I saw us miss very getable shots and opportunities, I also saw the blazing away that Lewis spoke of. We won by 74 points against a team that just under 4 years ago embarrassed us on the Preliminary Finals stage. I’m happy to move on from this and work on two parts of our game that most weeks have been a bit of an issue: kicking for goal and forward/midfield connection.

Part of me feels sorry for Underwood but really I put her in the same bracket as BT, Dwayne, and Brayshaw. Their voices alone drive me nuts, but their insistence to keep adding in puns to the calling is what really grates me.

There’s still time but dropping games like this can derail the season, we know that better than some. Much the same that Saints dropping the Cairns game to Port, this could be the start of a dip for Freo.

I’m not sure that you say calling out racist comments as throwing someone under the bus. The bizarre thing about all of this is that it sounds like the Pies PR team asked him to speak without first asking what his position was. If they did and he said he stood with Eddie, then “went rogue” I could understand it being considered as throwing Eddie under the bus. I do think it’s not a great look in releasing only snippets to the public, and battling it out over twitter is so cringey. Even if he released the full recordings to the media for them to sift through it would provide more balance. I doubt your average footy fan will have the patience to go through the hours of audio he has.

Still don’t know if he was worth the Jesse Hogan pick… Just kidding the guy is a bloody legend and one of my favourite players, as the guys said on the show he’s a great person to have interviewed as he’s not a robot with his responses. He gives honest answers and is such awesome ambassador for our club. Loved hearing him say he gave Trac a spray with 3min to go in the Grand Final with us 60+ points up!

That’s it, the only possible way a fixture is fair is to play them at home and away. But that would make too many games to fit into the entire year unless they were to go down the round ball path and make the team on top of the ladder wins the premiership.

It’s funny my memory had them put on three for the third quarter, but yeah I’m not sure what point the AFL website are trying to make. We lost one quarter to them, the third, by one goal. If that’s a win for the saints then good luck to them.

We’ve supposedly been given an easy fixture up to this point, it’s something I noticed some interstate fans complain about, but I bet you most if given our fixture preseason would’ve said it’s a tricky draw. It’s hard to know these things in advance and it’s one of the biggest issues with the AFL fixturing process. It’s never even, and in some years it’s downright cheating by the AFL. Best example is certain *cough* “big teams” never travel down the highway to KP. It’s BS, either every home game is there, or each team gets sent there on a rotational basis.

Interesting take from the AFL website, winning a second half by two goals is hardly convincing. Particularly as it was mainly done in the 3rd quarter and really at no stage were they truly in with a sniff. Seems like they’re trying to find a positive out of a loss that shows they are still fairly off the pace.

Give the bloke a rest, bring in Daw.

Fact of the matter EVERY GAME is a danger game, teams know they need to be switched on against us and of course they all want to knock us off our perch. West Coast away while east on paper (I mean the tigers slaughtered them by 100+ the other week) has the potential for us to get into lazy Hollywood style habits. The Eagles weren’t great against the Lions but did put in a competitive effort. They also have players that while in their twilight, still have the potential to hurt you. The simple answer is if we play our way and our best they won’t get close. If we go in with poor attitudes it could be Adelaide 2021 all over again. Hopefully lessons have been learned from that night.

I thought we maybe got a bit of the rub of the green from the men in yellow but did anybody else think that the saints were incredibly undisciplined and attempting to “rough us” at times? The Zac Jones is an obvious one but there felt like there were several examples of them taking players out after they got rid of the ball and tried to tackle “hard”. All for a team playing hard but I felt like they were overstepping it in an attempt to rattle us. Obviously didn’t work.

Just my 2c on the whole Zac Jones/Langdon/Clarry incident. Firstly Jones should be reported for tunnelling, it’s an incredibly dangerous action as the victim has no control over himself so he could’ve landed on his neck/shoulder/or anything and done real damaged. The umpire should have got in straight away and awarded 50 as well. The Clarry side of things, I love the bloke and I’ve defended him in the past for “flopping” but it’s becoming way to ingrained in the way he plays. Jones got him below the neck, stay up and fly the flag, don’t go down. As for Jones, as I said he should be suspended for his tunnelling. Dangerous and stupid.

After the first quarter they never got within three goals, we cruised it for most of and broke their backs in the second quarter (bit unusual for us of late). They were a sniff in the third quarter and perhaps that’s the only slight downer is that our usual best quarter was actually our flattest. I think it was Membry who had a shot from outside 50 on a slight angle to bring it back to under 3 goals and felt that was their chance, he kicks that and game on. But he missed and we never really looked all that uncomfortable afterwards. Brayshaw was absolutely incredible. His game has gone to another level, I don’t think the umpires will agree but personally I think he’s having a better season than 2018 when he finishes third in the Brownlow. Likewise Langdon was awesome and given total freedom as opposed to last week. I thought our entire defensive unit were on their game today, no easy avenues to goal. For me our biggest issue is still forward connection with the midfield. It was better today and in the 2nd quarter so much of what we did turned to gold but all too often today the forward 50 seemed congested and our forwards weren’t able to get clear runs at marks.

I was thinking that looking at their results this season, even their win comes with a huge asterisk as they were basically playing against a WAFL team and really WC had chance after chance they butchered. I don’t he’s Neeld v2, but he could be his own monster that sends an entire supporter base to therapy.

Hopefully first shot on goal, directly in front it gets shanked and the rest follow suit! That said, beating a team when they’ve had more scoring shots is a tiny bit less satisfying for me (even if it is funny), I like us winning when on the day we are the best team in all areas, not because we were lucky.

Hard to argue with this decision, thoroughly deserved from Goody and look forward to more years of the Goodwin system! 😁

I’ve been looking forward to this game since they started playing some good footy, don’t ask me why but I love the idea of a genuine rivalry building between us. Saints vs Demons, heaven & hell and all that. I also think the Saints when they’ve played their best have a really good “brand” of footy. King is a star in the making, so it will be interesting to see who we play in him. The obvious choice is May but I think it’ll end up being Petty. We’ve had a few frustrating weeks of poor connectivity in the HF/Forward part of the ground. We’ve got more than a few capable players who can kick bags, and while I love that Brown got himself 4 last week he got a couple of soft free kicks and he didn’t seem to attack the contest to mark the ball as much as he has in the past. Fritta is always capable of breaking a game open but just seems to be travelling along at the moment. Then comes the conundrum of Weid vs TMac, who gets the spot and will be see the best of them? I’m happy with the way we’re going at 7-0 but I just wait for that day that the players don’t go at their full potential and expect the game to go their way. I think the Saints will go as hard as they can early on and potentially tire at the end, so if we’re in from the 3qtr time I could see us cantering away. But totally respect them and their best is capable of knocking anyone off.

Typically I wouldn’t bother responding to such a silly comment but his stats from the Grand Final, the most highly pressured game of the year, were: 22 kicks, 5 handballs at 96% disposal efficiency. I’m not sure who you think you’re watching that isn’t a good kick, but it ain’t Salem.

Love the idea of Salem up forward but as someone said earlier to shift him mid year could be a tricky proposition. He’s not quick but his tackling is excellent, when he tackles someone they go down hard! Hypothetically if he was to return during a time where we lack some class up forward it could be worth a crack.

Yep end of the day we can shift to a ground that’s smaller than the G. We’d have the exact same problem as them. Unless we’d have a better plan of shifting the stand without demolishing it and still being able to create it as our own training facility it’s not the solution to our home base problems. Would love to get an update on our facility though, feels like this has been dragging forever.