Jaded No More

I know I said we will never lose again this week, but I was wrong ? 9-0 is a very good effort. Nobody else achieved that this year. The competition is very close. Even lower teams can win on their day. Freo beat Sydney last night as an example. The issue with the loss last night was the defensive effort just wasn’t there. We let Adelaide score freely, when they’ve been a low scoring team most of the year. And under a lot of pressure from them we fell apart and reverted to poor ball use and ineffective forward 50 entries. It was classic Melbourne and it was not nice to watch because we all have MFCSS and any sign of failure just triggers a very strong “it’s all over here we go again” type of reaction. I think this loss will burn in the players. It will motivate them to come hard next week. It will also start to put selection pressure on a few blokes who have cruised through the season like Fritsch. That is not a bad thing. And another week where we get closer to figuring out our best forward set up. We know now it’s not Tmac, Weideman, Fritsch and Jackson. Flags are not won in May. Richmond lost to some pretty average teams when they won their premiership. This is not the end of the world. If we lose the next 2 games and go 9-3 then I’ll start to panic.

Is Treloar a definite out? I was out for dinner (and drowning my sorrows in much wine) so didn’t see the Dogs game. I know he was subbed off but have they said what the issue was?

Brown has to play. He is a Marvel specialist and the best way to expose the dogs is to stretch their shaky defense. It’s their only downfall. I would drop Fritsch who plays tall and is a defensive liability and bring in Brown. We know it’ll be dry and I still don’t think we have our forward set up right. Weideman on his last chance coz he’s really annoying me with his soft attack of the contest. 19 year old Jackson with one arm was going harder.

May will never want to watch that game again. He was dead set woeful. He actually looked terrible on tv. I’m wondering if he carried something into the game because Jesus he was a non entity today. Normally he is a beast. And yes Walker is not a lightweight but he just lost every contest tonight. The last one that got them the winning goal was just really bad reading of the play. I am going to be positive and say this was a good loss to have. Our defensive efforts have dropped off in recent weeks. We’ve cruised to wins because we were simply a class above. Tonight Adelaide were very good and we didn’t lift. We had maybe a good 10 minute period in the third quarter and that was it. It’s not enough. Too many players did not do enough. We play IMO the best side in the competition next week on their home turf. We go into the game as under dogs and quite a few players would be on notice to perform or lose their spot. I bet the guys at Casey will all play out of their skin on Sunday. So do we take the loss as a wake up call and come out firing and win the next two critical games? or have we been exposed and worked out and is the joy ride over? The next two weeks will tell us if we are contenders or pretenders. If this group is the selfless fiercely competitive team they claim to be, we will win at least one of the next two games and continue to push hard for a top 2 finish.

We played like crap the last 10 minutes. Goodwin knows it and we know it. It’s a good thing to learn. We weren’t ever threatened in last quarters until today and we did not hold up. We learn. We move on. We get on with it.

A bottle of wine later and this was no doubt a disappointing loss. To be honest I never trusted my comfortable ease leading into this match. Should have known better ? We were getting a bit too comfortable. Teams were getting a jump on us and we cruised to a win. This was never going to be sustainable and sometimes a loss like this can really spark another level. We need to make some adjustments and I doubt our backline will ever play a worse game. We now know that we are better with Brown and Jetta is not a Salem replacement. If you told me we would go 9 rounds without a loss I would tell you “where do I sign?” I would rather lose to a non entity in Adelaide than our competition in Bulldogs or Brisbane.

Dropping Brown was a mistake. All those bombs inside 50 would have suited his long arms. How we respond now will define our season.

Some reasons we lost: Gawn dropping regulation marks and palming it into open goals May getting done over by a big eared inbred bogan Trac and Harmes playing like millionaires Jetta is done. Hunt is only good when Salem is covering his [censored]. Weideman and Fritsch actual liabilities JJ nervous with ball in hand Poor defensive effort all over the ground in the first half. Lazy, unaccountable football allowing Adelaide to run down the corridor unaccounted and kick easy goals from clearances Turnovers. Cannot hit the side of a barn. Reasons why we didn’t lose by more: Oliver Lever Langdon Jackson in the ruck

To blame anyone but ourselves for that loss is to wallpaper over the obvious cracks that have been there since we beat Richmond. I hope this is the loss we had to have because boy did we play poorly for large chunks of that game. Oliver kept us in it, but beyond that we had a really embarrassing amount of players who played like selfish millionaires. In footy you get out what you put in. We put in no effort for an hour. We’ve been getting away with it, but eventually your luck runs out. Salem is also basically our most important player. Our backline was exceptionally poor without him. He covers for the mediocrity of Hunt and Hibberd.

Oliver Oliver Oliver Oliver Oliver Oliver

Every day of the week. But we lost because other than Oliver everyone else played like lazy [censored] millionaires.

Well we didn’t deserve to win

Well in the end May is a total liability on Walker. What a joke.

Sadly Crows are playing better than us under pressure. Their ball use going inside 50 is so much better

Awful option from Pickett

May is having a total mare. I’ve never seen him this poor.

Oliver you’re making it impossible for me to love Ed more.

Ed [censored] Langdon I love you!

Hunt that tackle effort is a joke.

May having a game I am sure he would rather forget.

Oliver is next level

Fritsch a total [censored] shocker. Terrible.

Shocking from Rivers

We are very very lucky to have Oliver. He is keeping us in this contest. Need more from McDonald and Trac if we are going to win this.

This is why Oliver is a star. When the pressure is on Oliver gets going. He is a freak.