deejammin'

Thanks for the reply, its good to be able to engage in a healthy friendly dialogue with a fellow supporter of this great club, especially when we differ in opinion. 2. Last year we didn't have Jurrah or numerous other players who were injured at that time of the season, certainly last season our injury list was longer than it is now. I don't think 3 players should define a football club, especially 2 younger unproven players.. I understand your point but I really think we should have done better in this case. 3. Perhaps I should have worded it differently, All teams find Travel a challenge would have been closer to what I meant. Obviously what I was infering was that it is a challenge for all clubs, but very few come out and get comprehensively flogged by middle to lower ladder teams. I think it is worrying that we identified this as a challenge, set ourselves up for it with comments to the media and on our site and by arriving early, then played pathetically right at the start of the game. Not a good trend whether we are young or not. 4. Your point about byes is interesting, as I am a lakers fan I'm not talking about Kobe right now pathetic effort so far this finals... Anyway, I would note the only bye we've had in AFL the last few years has been the week off in the finals and almost every year teh team coming off the week off has won the prelim. Worth pointing out, certainly I think the Jury is out on the effect of the bye and teams are finding ways to use it most effictiently, I'm not sure it gives any reason for our performance tho... 5. No we are not a good team, but we need to be looking to become one and I don't think that excusing poor performances by saying it was because we played a poor team prior to the game is any way to aid our development. You are entitled to your opinion and I bloody hope we win on the weekend, but I won't be accepting what happened on Thursday as in any way excusable.

I understand, but also the point that I was making was that a team of premiership players don't always beat a non-premier side. There will always be premiership players playing for other clubs, we need to be able to beat them otherwise we will never win one ourselves, especially when this team has been down for awhile and is definately beatable.

Good post, but I'm not sure how relevent 'premiership players' are in this context, look how many premiership players Brisbane had playing round one versus Freo, yet they still lost, despite a higher average age and at least 4 premiership players to Freo's none. All those players listed above played last year (albeit missing some rounds through injury) yet they finished last, effort gameplan and desire have a lot to do with it.

I find this an interesting post for a number of reasons and thought I might just offer my response to your points: 1. You state you saw this loss coming, yet you only found the new stats retrospectively, which leads me to believe you saw it coming purely on the back of last years loss and being bad at travel, surely if you only were aware of these two points by themselves you couldn't have thought we would get smashed this badly, travel and a bad performance last year do not equate to one of the worst first quarter performances in the league. 2. The Eagles didn't smash us nearly this badly last year, we were equal at halftime and the general feeling was we would run over them... The second half wasn't particularly inspiring from either side, we lost badly, but not like this... 3. All teams travel badly, its a fact of football, its never nice to fly or have an interrupted preparation. Some teams have plans to deal with it or simply deal with it better than others. Most try to be revved up in order to get the crowd out of it early, we were trying to do this and failed worse than any other team all year with the inside 50s reflecting this. Also we got there 2 days early in an attempt to negate the travel factor, yet failed anyway. There was a clear focus on beating travel, equal if not more thorough to any other clubs prep, there were no excuses, the problem was identified and we failed to fix it, that is a shocking indictment on the club, not an excuse. 4. The fact about stats is they are retrospective, before the season started experts were predicting players coming off the bye would win more often as they would be 'fresher' we haven't seen enough of the bye to have an honest assesment, the reality is that this is a moot point. If teams had won after having the bye you could have been lamenting that West Coast also had the bye otherwise we would have smashed them with our 'fresh legs'. These retrospective analysis' do not provide excuses or explanations, the fact is both teams had the same time off, and we did extremely badly. 5. Good teams, with discpline and strong leadship do not lose simply because they played an ordinary team the previous week, if we accept this as an explanation then we will continue to be a weak willed team. Playing ordinary teams does not excuse playing like an ordinary team the next week! Also the draw has a lot to do with why this stat for teams playing GC then losing exists. Carlton played Collingwood after playing GC, it didn't matter who they played the week before odds on, they were losing this one, and that being said they equitted themselves pretty well. The Bulldogs lost to Freo, who should be a very strong side and were playing at home, also they lost by 7 points in a tight contest, hardly the pathetic workshop we put on! Port is a terrible team and should lose to everyone, I don't think they lost to NM coz of GC! So in summary of your sample group, of 4 teams, 2 have lost to top four sides in close games after GC, Port will lose to everyone and Melbourne played pathetically in an inexcusable performance. I don't think this is conclusive evidence for teams losing after playing GC. Certainly not enough to excuse Melbourne's performance, which was the worst of the group! As you can see I disagree with your points, yes we had some challenges like travel and some smaller bodies, but these were identified before the game by the club with players and admin stating how they were fixing them and going to show something in this contest. The sad facts are, we put in an inexcusable performance, the whole club should be under the blowtorch, how we respond is important, not just this week, but for the rest of the year. Finally its not an overreaction to get worried about one of the most insipid performances of the year by any club!

Sorry abou that Rogue, wrong person, I have edited the post. No offence meant.

I don't think Jimmy would be lying, however I'll be on the Fence until after the North game, if we perform badly against both Adelaide and North I think there will be no more excuses...

I don't think pre-season hype is the reason people around here are so dissappointed. I think if any expectation pre-season was to blame it was the general expectation that the Weagles would be down the bottom again. Even though a lot of people on here are now talking them up at the beginning of the season a lot of people pencilled this one in as a win (including myself) very early as we, like most of the footy world, thought the Eagles had been so terrible last year and so little had changed that they would be terrible again... Yes they have improved, but they are not a top 4 side yet, and to get flogged in such an insipid pathetic way was a fair step backwards from every game last year except the Hawthorn round 1. Even in the pathetic effort against the Weagles last year we were all square at half time! So while I think you are not accepting last nights performance Cudi, I think by placing this thread at this time you are implying that this win was expected, therefore not nescessarily as terrible, disgusting, insipid, tragic and pathetic as it actually was. Regardless of where we were to finish this year in anyone's mind, losing to last years Spooners so badly is never a good look, especially for a team that should be improving!

I'm going to respectfully disagree, I think many teams have different game plans and options (Perhaps Game Plan is too broad a term). All I mean by this is whereas other teams may try other things when plan A isn't working whereas we seem to do nothing. West Coast in their premiership era would restructure their backline and through Hunter forward in a crisis, Bulldogs did the same with Lake. Another example is Geelong against Hawthorn on Tuesday, after a first quarter in which Geelong defenders were getting dragged out of the backline and Hawthorn players beating them back to great effect either Geelong's coaching panel or players decided that Scarlett, or one or two other defenders would stay back deep and were able to stem the flow and we saw the result... There were many changes in this game alone, and these are two of the best teams in the comp. Maybe these changes aren't nescessarily to the whole 'game plan', but they are certainly changes in structure and strategy which changed the result. Also, on another note, if putting three players behind the ball could have produced a more competetive result, or at least stemmed the flow while we were getting caned I wouldn't mind trying it. Obviously that is meant to be an extreme example and it wouldn't nescessarily work but I think we certainly could have tried something. Grimes to midfield? Davey to Half Back? Davey deep forward? Obviously part of this loss was the players playing badly, the skils were horrible, but it has been a trend with Bailey that there is no plan B. Do you really think we gained anything long term from sticking to the plan A against West Coast?

I think the issue with our FD is that we seem to keep saying that things will get better with experience without actually thinking about the quality of experience we are gaining. If we are playing a high risk high reward style and its not working due to inexperience or the way the opposition are playing then we should be flexible enough to change to something that is working to our strengths or shutting down the opposition. The reality is that good teams should be, and are capable of playing to different plans and changing their plan for each team, from game to game, or even within games. We have a talented list and should be capable of finding ways to play that enable us to be competitive. yes we are inexperienced, but the reality is that even inexperienced teams can be effective if they play a style that they feel they can implement and are confident with, or if they are clear about how they will react to oppoisition's plans. The problem I have with some of the 'we are too inexperienced to play our game plan well' arguments is that it dwells on the premise that we couldn't change our gameplan for different situations, or keep plans that we seem to be unable to acheive on the backburner while we focus on plans that enable us to be competitive and confident. If we are a young inexperienced side I don't see why we would try to play a high risk gameplan, it wuold be far more sensible to play a basic style. Games like Thursday night do not enable development, development only comes about when players feel they are improving on something, or learning something, not taking 500 steps back when we should be moving forward!

Classic!!!!!!

Pretty damning to note that we have only won two (against a depleted adelaide and a poor brisbane) games after losing the first quarter, especially seeing as we lose them so often! I was a big believer in this rebuild and maintain optimism in the face of rationality that somehow we will turn it around this year, but I really don't know about Bailey as a coach and the culture at our footy club. I think the idea of a bottom up no.1 draft pick rebuild taking a looong time to build up a list of boys whilst getting flogged approach is yet to be proven, the saints and the closest in recent years and they have only really pushed for premierships after they instituted a well-drilled thoroughly thought out game plan, before then they struggled when they should have done better... Carlton also tried the complete rebuild approach and found themselves out of contention for a very long time, really the only thing that turned it around was Judd and that was more trading and finding money than some kind of rebuild strategy. The Blues still don't perform consistantly if Judd doesn't play. I think it is interesting to note that the most recent power teams didn't bottom out in the way we have, the cats sat around the middle and Collingwood was 14th in one season... Both these clubs have had an uncompromising culture and strong leadership with clear gameplans. I think that too much belief was been placed in the we build it and they(premierships) will come approach, the reality is we have to go out and get them! We need to make big changes to our approach to football and develop a hard at the ball/ball-carrier uncompromising never say die attitude regardless of where our "window" is at. That is what both Essendon and West Coast have done without any no.1 draft picks or tanking and it seems to be working...

Unbelievably its only 4 goals... feels a bit like the Hawks tho, should be much further behind than we are... I hope a new team comes out in the 2nd half.

This is far too reminiscent of those 2008 games where we played from behind all the time... sigh...

Development year... Young Kids.... Stop being negative... Not in the window... Just a preview of this week on demonland

Neither at this stage

How can we still lack intensity at the start of a game? Surely when you know what the problem is, state it, and then fail to rectify it time and time again its a bit worrying!

Great start yet again...

Damn thats a good team for VFL!!!!!

I really hate this aspect of the GWS and GC formation. I think it is sad that clubs fans, even those of Carlton who lets face it, we aren't too fond of, have to deal with a year of speculation and underhanded dealings only to find one of their stars is gone. While Carlton have gotten more service from Murphy than we have from Scully so far I would really feel for Carlton if they lost him as he was one of their first draft picks earnt during one of the darkest periods for their club. I will be siding with any club that is poached by GWS as I think the formation of a new club is fine only if we aren't hindering the original clubs to ensure their success and that the way concessions have been implemented causes pain for the clubs, players and fans involved...

One thing that was nice about the bye this week was not going through the agonising decision of whether to tip the dees out of loyalty or whether to pick based on who I honestly think will win. I know that every time I tip I have this horrible decision to make so to have a week off was nice. I almost always end up going with my heart, as I tend to think that supporting my team is a bit more important than winning a small amount of dosh. However I have no problem with those who do, as they probably do far better in tipping competitions than I, especially the last couple of years. Although the worst thing that can happen is to tip against the dees and have them get up, did it once and never again.... So what of my fellow demonlanders? In our week off I thought maybe you all could shed some light on the age old heart or head tipping dilemma...

Of course it is rubbish, that was exactly what I was implying. My statement was that I don't think we can draw anything out of the port GC game any more than we can draw anything about Melbourne out of any game played between two other clubs. The reality is that the games Melbourne play are the only indicators for us to draw conclusions on our team. Of course we shouldn't discount other teams endeavour in these games, and sometimes we will simply be outplayed, however the reality is that there were many flaws to Melbourne's game during our win over GC and that most of us here will be hoping to see them corrected in the upcoming weeks, or we may have to start seriously assessing our progress... Regardless of how GC play against other teams. I don't think the suns winning removes any of the worries about our ability at set plays, ability to stop quick transferance of the ball out of our forward line, or our ability to hit targets and work through a zone which we did poorly at many stages in the suns game. I have no intention to 'stick the boots' into any club, especially my own, also for the record I thought GC would win a game this season, as there are some bad teams out there and I am hugely relieved it wasn't us. However I did not have any assumption in mind going in to the suns game that we would [censored] them like Carlton did or anything of the sort, rather I was hoping to see us execute a lot of things better, some of which we did, some of which we didn't, win lose or draw. Ultimately I want to see us win, or at least play to our ability, which means not rolling over at any stage in the gmae. This does not mean that the GC Port game gives any indications for how our games will be played or how our season will pan out.. for better or worse. /edit spelling

I knew there would be a thread like this as soon as I saw the game. I think arguments like this hold no weight, by this logic you could argue Adelaide should roll us in a couple of weeks as they beat Hawthorn and Hawthorn beat us, then that GC should beat adelaide, as Adelaide were beaten by port adelaide who GC beat, then you could argue the suns should have beaten us as Hawthorn beat us! The moral of the story is, our victory over GC was as impressive or unimpressive as we thought it was on the day, regardless of other results, anything can happen week in week out as there are 22 highly trained players going out there to do battle. Retrospectively we could conclude some rosy things from the Port Adelaide GC game, but I really think it will all be for nought in terms of our next performance or rest of the season. The only lesson I'll be taking is that anything can happen in footy...

I am not particularly worried whether we win or lose on the weekend in terms of the future, obviously I'm a rabidly passionate fan and will be going nuts during the game, but in the long run I'm more interested in HOW we play. If we show intensity and appetite for the whole contest, and don't make the characteristic dumb looking turnovers too often, I will be satisfied. I'm looking forward to the game and I think the players will be too, its a chance to show what we're made of in a stiff environment against a team around our level in good form. On the present topic, yes we need to get games into our players, but it is also about HOW these games are played, if young players learn bad habits, play a 'soft' brand of football and fade out of games regularly then this won't help development, rather it hurts it. Working in a performance industry I am aware that 'practice makes permanent' and if we continue to put into practice bad habits they will stick rather than becoming 'perfect' and some type of miraculous development occuring. Obviously there is a learning curve, but the players need to set the bar higher in terms of quality of application for us to honestly think we are developing.. This is one of the many cahnces we will have this year, lets hope we show something.

I would just put this up for discussion: Better than us: Collingwood Geelong Hawthorn Fremantle Carlton WB ? ST Kilda? On a Par: Essendon Sydney Adelaide ? West Coast ? Worse than us (should be): North Melbourne ? Brisbane Gold Coast Port Adelaide Richmond In this list Essendon and North have flipped from where I would think they would be preseason, I have put question marks next to teams that I believe could be in other categories (generally lower with the exeption of NM). Going on this list we should be in the hunt for the 8, however our form to date does not leave me particularly confident of beating many of the on a par sides, or the worse sides. This is where the improvement needs to come at the moment, the reality is we have shown that on our day we can match it with top sides, or at least for patches of games, my problem is the intensity and desire against 50/50 or lesser teams seems to be missing, and this should be where we improve this year... What do you reckon?

Moloney Trengrove Jamar Sylvia Jurrah Wonna