The heart beats true

Are you serious? I literally thought the only upside of this was that it would put an end to the rumours. So what now, our head of fitness is essentially acting out a pantomime for the press, with our star player, to throw people off the scent? He can’t execute what our fitness department need. That’s literally what you can see first hand. He’s frustrated and heartbroken. That people turn it into anything else is a sad indictment on the state of social media.

I took from that Presser that JVR is a few weeks away.

I was making a more broad observation about the state of football media. Im not sure what your last 2 paragraphs mean (which is not unusual). Feel free to whip yourself into your usual post loss frenzy though. You’re really good at it. 👍

The issue that I have with all football commentary is the consistent desire to focus on the last game, and not the game plan. Just like players are focused on game plan as opposed to recent result, the media is purely focused on the last game. I wish someone would fill the gap in between - where they tried to convey the nuances of how teams structure and play a certain way. Garry is doing his job, but for mine the brief for him is wrong, or should at least be more balanced.

I know nobody wants to hear this, but this is a huge part of our strategy going into the forward line. It’s designed to create either a mark, or a stoppage. Worst case scenario we get a stoppage and get set up behind the ball for multiple entries. We’ve been doing this for at least 3 seasons. The problem is that for the last 2 seasons every defensive coach whose watched 3 minutes of opposition intel knows we are going to do it. It also means we get a lot of repeat entries forward from stoppages. Sadly there is literally 30 players in our 50, making attempts at goal statistically a lot less likely. We play a very defence first game plan. We are literally defending the ground by kicking to 2 tall players in our forward 50. It’s infuriating, but it’s part of the reason we don’t get blown away in games either.

Everything is an opportunity. JVR, and Brown will be well served by Marvel. You’d also think we might back Tomlinson in and play Petty forward if needed too. Oddly it’s a good time for us to be playing on a guaranteed dry deck. Get some confidence back in our skills.

Fritta 7-8 weeks according to club. TMac 4-6. That’s our 2 best forwards from the last 5 years. Time to get inventive.

He’s not my type, but to each their own.

Harmes. Can’t have Sparrow, Harmes and ANB in the same side. One of them has to make way for someone who hits targets. ANB’s job is to cause stoppages with his tackling, which he does. Sparrow is more versatile in the middle. Charlie in for Harmes.

Huge effort to pull that together by the DA given the late notice on Harmes and the travel.

I find this bemusing too. We clearly value defence over attack, but for the last 12 months it’s become our Achilles heel. Our appetite for risk means Petty stays back even though the forward line is screaming out for a contested marking player, even when Tomlinson has proven to be at least 80% as effective as Petty down back. We can’t keep teams to 50 points and expect to win. I would have thought last year proved that.

I saw Faith No More twice in the mid 90’s. Both times Mike Patton was like Steven May after an opposition goal. A lot of finger pointing and angry looks at band mates.

I get the disappointment, but saying things like ‘I give up’ and ‘I don’t care’ simply isn’t true. It’s after 10 on a Sunday night and you’re on Demonland. I’ve got some bad news for you. You care a lot.

Tracc running at one goal per every 8 attempts. 🤯

That is so horrifying that heads have to roll. The Eagles just suffered the 4th biggest loss in AFL history, and they’ve still scored more goals than us over the last 6 weeks. Please let the media come after us hard over this. That is pathetic.

That is a horrible indictment on our coaching staff. I hope someone tells the CEO and the President those stats. I would imagine some of our line coaches are very, very nervous. We win everywhere but where it counts too often, and even when we do win it’s far too much effort for far too little reward. Today was a stark example, but it was also very similar to our problems circa 17-18. The balance is off. I think this is why neutral commentary around us seems biased against. We do all the hard, boring things so well, and the polished, eye catching things terribly.

90 minutes ago I swore off football forever. 5 minutes ago I brought a $60 seat for this match. [censored] off Demons. I love you.

I’m so bored by our media interviews this year. Everyone says ‘we knew this is what we were going to get. Club X are a good team and this kind of game is what we expected from them.’ Goodwin does it every week, which I can understand to an extent, but Gus said the exact same thing today at half time. I feel like this isn’t actually learning to deal with expectation. It’s being reductive of the talent, maturity and experience of our list. It reeks of expecting an opponent to bring something, and doesn’t speak to what we should bring. I can understand it as a strategy to cope with adversity, but does it actually create an adversity bias, where we see greater challenges than those actually in front of us? I’m not a sports psychologist, but I feel like we are assuming every game is going to be 12 rounds - when we are very capable of killing it with a knockout blow. Take the punch. Make it hurt when you can. Stop underselling the potential.

Love this. GWS would feel like they snatched that one. The problem for us supporters is that those kind of losses are super common over the last 5 seasons. We have to put in so much effort and still come up short. It’s heartbreaking for the players like Viney, who literally couldn’t do any more.

I don’t understand what people want from posters who have historically been optimistic and used statistics to maintain their optimism? Would you like everyone to agree that everything is awful and there’s no point supporting the club? What does that achieve? It’s not anyone’s fault on this forum that the club lost. It’s super weird when people come for others because they had an opinion. The opinion didn’t miss shots for goals. That attitude just creates a boring monoculture.

Supporting the club feels really futile when we produce the spectacular own goal of selling that game to the NT government, making it a 50/50 contest, and then losing it.

I think he was having a joke Layz. I didn’t think it was serious 👍

Yep because I reckon it stinks. We have 65k members and a recent flag. If a club can’t turn that into a replacement sponsor then I’d be asking very hard questions of the sponsorship department. It made sense circa 2011-20. That we still do it with so much to play for is frankly a disgrace.

Bowser! And listen to the crowd go wild. 60, maybe 70 people applaud as one. how long we be going there for? What do we get for it again?

Isn’t everyone thrilled that we sell this game so that 800 people can see it in Alice Springs? It sucks.