Lucifers Hero

Gil Apologises “I’m sorry they are feeling intimidated," he said. "If people are feeling threatened we obviously will listen ... I’m appalled." “It hurts me to hear our administration is not looking after the fans.’’ Love it how Gil deflects this on to the administration! Of course he is squeaky clean on this! It hurts him? Is that the sympathy card he is playing? Please. Gils 'hurt'=crocodile tears.

Goodwin has been saying similar: the goals will come. Macca seems to be saying set shot kicking accuracy will come when players stop thinking about it. Rather than wait till things sort themselves out I wonder what are we doing to make them happen? I'm keeping the faith but those comments do not fill me with confidence. The yips for goal has little to do with our fitness or injury problems. We've had all year to solve the goal kicking yips be they physical, technique or head related. I see little progress after 12 games. At the end of the day actions speak louder than words.

Excellent report! Yes this was interesting: they are spooked on setshots but no we have done all that technique stuff, it will only turn around when they stop thinking about it. By which I think he means to stop thinking about the mechanics of it all because that is self defeating. I'm with DeeSpencer. Not thinking about it comes from confidence and confidence comes from something being second nature and instinctive. The only way to do that is practice. This is true in any sport. Did Macca say how he intends to get the players to 'stop thinking about it'? As an aside, does anyone know if we have sports psychologists on staff. I know it sounds a bit corny but mindfulness and visualisation are very good techniques to still the mind and follow a set routine. Richmond and Dusty in particular had great success with it. I recall Tammy Roos did a bit of this with the team and players found it beneficial. I doubt we now have anyone on the coaching panel that goes in for the 'soft stuff'. Edit: Just checked club website - no sports psychologists listed.

Draw to round 23: Freo, Lions, Blues, Bulldogs, Eagles, Saints, Tigers, Pies, Swans, Roos. (Bold=In top 8). Ironically, this was supposed to be the 'easy' part of our draw with Freo, Lions, Blues, Bulldogs, Saints the bottom 5 on the ladder last year... We may improve tremendously with injured players back but so will other clubs. And each team has ladder position/coaching reasons to win/thrash opponents. Even the Blues will be desperate to win - they want to get as close as possible to the Crows to max the value of their 1st draft pick swaps. How many definite wins can folks count? Can't see us beating any of the top 8 teams. Swans are back to their best. Saints will have some of their best players back from injury as will we. Roos are playing ferocious football and the game is at Bludstone.. Obviously, we will win some games but I can't find a single definite win. Best chances are Blues, Bulldogs, Saints. Very outside chance of beating Lions and Roos. We might beat one of the better teams in an upset. So no chance of making the 8. I don't think we need to worry about putting the cue in the rack - it will be done for us. We will be lucky to end up better than 7W, 15L and most likely in the bottom 3.?

The quotes I made are from the Fox website article which I linked. I didn't hear the interview nor aware of other transcripts. So I haven't been selective if that is what you are implying. I would have thought my closing sentence made it clear that I'm not happy with Kennett's comments.

Kennett has poured petrol on the fire: jeff-kennett-says-new-arrivals-cant-police-afl-crowds “I’m not being racist when I say this, but when I saw some of the footage, the people who are making judgments while they wear these authoritative coats are not people who appear to have a great knowledge of our game,” “I don’t accept that the Marvel Stadium did it on their own. It is an asset owned by the AFL.” “All I’m saying is the sporting arena is where people relax, where they support their tribe and what is happening now is unacceptable.” Sometimes, Kennett should let things be rather than inflame what is already a very emotion filled topic.

By standing by and laughing when Stratton harassed Charlie Cameron, the umpires gave him the ok to pinch. The MRO furthered that license by not acting on that incident. Knowing he is a serial offender, Channel 7 must have had a camera following Stratton (a good thing) and his dirty work was there for all to see. As was his smugness thinking he was getting away with it. Apparently, his pinching of a player's side and abdomen are worse than Fantasia's arm. But umpires/MRO should have stopped it a few weeks ago. Hope he gets suspended.

Gil said this week AFL policy is unchanged but fans will decide what is acceptable ie if someone complains about bad behaviour, security will react. From that video and other emerging stories that is clearly not so eg. Channel 7 and AFL Media reporter and broadcaster Nat Edwards: "I was on level 3 and it was very awkward. Security was staring down anyone who became animated and several fans were warned for just barracking. It was like we were being spied on". Barracking, or not, at the Footy. As usual AFL speak with 'forked tongue: Unchanged policy doesn't mean unchanged enforcement and control in the implementation of said policy. Crickey, they would have to evict everyone at 'Boo' Stadium when WCE play! Or is this just a Victorian crackdown! The AFL will be, if it already isn't, a laughing stock!

Freo were merciless today. Reminded me of how we played the finals. Can't see us winning next week. But I hope we bring some of the ferocity of our finals series. If we don't Freo will smash us and not just on the scoreboard. ?

Tasmanian Demons Devils ?

Agreed. Ollie Wines has spent a few weeks in the twos, moreso to get his touch and fitness back. But if is good enough for him as captain (and Hawks ex captain Roughy) it is good enough for TMac, our co-captains and every other player who is not performing over a few weeks or lacking fitness. Season is lost. There should be no exceptions.

What I've noticed about our set shots: Players don't calm themselves often players don't pace out their run-up or even have a regular run-up style. few take the 30 sec before the run up they don't 'line up' the ball with a target. they lean back when taking the kick The best set shot goal-kickers have a rigid set up routine: pacing, target, # of steps before kicking etc regardless of the state of the game. eg Kennedy, Brown, Gunston... For mine our problem is not in the kicking or even the ball drop, it is in the set up routine. The routines generally looks rushed and haphazard. That may be a byproduct of the manic, play on at all costs mind set our players have been indoctrinated in. Maybe they should be told to take the 30 sec. Train the set up routine (without even kicking the ball). As the routine becomes second nature the set shot kicking will improve.

Some comments: Huge game from Max. A tragedy that our team did little with his great work. And he had to do a lot of the work himself: 10 clearances. 9 from stoppages. What were our inside players doing at the stoppages? Wish he would learn to kick for goal. Not a decider but that last kick went left, again! Didn't like Buckley diminishing Max's game by saying Grundy played unfit. Now most reviewers are qualifying Max's achievement by quoting Buckley. Pumping up Grundy for AA ahead of Max but poor sportsmanship in my book. They won. He should have left it at that. It is an immense credit to Max that week after week he puts in champion level performances, sees his great work wasted but soldiers on. Our team are letting him down very badly.

And AFL undercover spotters claims the Richmond Cheer Squad. Surely the AFL has better things do than spend energy and money on stopping fans from cheering or cheering loudly. If these stories are even half accurate the AFL has lost the plot big time.

Correct we must use a first round pick but it need not be the original one based on ladder position. It can be traded for one or more lower first round picks or lower 1st round pick + player. For example if our final ladder position is around 4 pick and the players in that range are promising midfielders which we have plenty of so we are happy to trade it down. We could trade that pick for one in the 8-10 range plus a high second round pick. This would give us 4 picks in the top 25 instead of 2.

Our defenders were good yesterday but I feel there are structural/game plan problems there. We seem to be the only team that plays a few meters off opp and allows them to stay goal side. This is Goodwin's structural set up to attack when there is a t/o in our defensive 50. Problem is that t/o rarely happens as shown by the high opp goal to behind ratio and high goal to i50. Our defenders don't even have a chance to rush behinds or get back to the goal square. I would like to see us revert to less attacking defensive structures. At least until we can reduce the opp goals to i50 ratio.

A gaulling result as Coll were a long way from their best, Grundy played injured and they didn't get out of third gear. The narrative has changed from preseason/injuries being our problem to skill/efficiency being our problem. All true but are they the real problem?. Elephant in the room: Game Plan. Based on last night's comments by Goodwin and Jones everyone knows it but them. Opposition mantra: 'match them on the inside and we will beat them on the outside'. Translated as: let them 'win' the clearances, contested possessions and i50 stats because we know they will turn it over and they can't catch us going fwd to get easy goals!! That is why I no longer have faith in us winning those statistics. The opp are happy to 'lose' in those areas knowing they will belt us elsewhere. Akin to 'lose the battle but win the war' tactics. I don't want to lose faith in our leaders but I need to hear something from the club to say they understand the real problem and prepared to address what everyone else knows!!

Heath has been a depth player. He looks good and plays his role because of their system so is apparently in 'AA' form for just two months. Put him in our, very different, system and every chance he becomes another depth player. Walk away.

Viney must be playing injured - only 71% of game time yesterday. This is par for most games this year. Don't think we should carry him any longer. Rest Viney. We played some of our best footy in 2018 when Viney was out Oliver and Brayshaw were reading Max brilliantly and had great support from Harmes. Rest Tom Mc. We have Preuss to step in. Appears to have limitations but must be better value than Tom at this stage. Lack of full fitness is a reality but the time has passed fielding injured players who are clearly a liability. We can't play both Spargo and Garlett because one of them will always be mismatched against a bigger bodied player. Unfortunately, Casey have a bye this week so no chance for others to show their wares. Out: Viney (rested), Tom Mc (rested), Spargo or Garlett In: KK (if ready), Preuss, Lockhart NB. Dunkley looked good on Sat but a bit early for him. His turn will come before EOS

Not sure May should be giving Hore a spray. That is not my idea of good leadership and helping a new player learn. Hore has been here 5 minutes and played really well today. There are less aggressive ways to give him advice.

He will be 28 at the beginning of next year. Ha, ha - the club must think we are in premiership mode!!. We would only chase another tall defender if they were concerned about Lever long term which I doubt. The article talks about May going forward so maybe they are concerned about TMac's foot. If we want a fwd I we should go after a genuine forward rather than turn a key defender into a forward. Adelaide will want our first round pick and they know we will cave in. Walk away.

Very moving to see Brad's two little boys run out with the team. He looked very proud. Undoubtedly, their Mum also was.

This game will give a good idea of where we are at. We are evenly matched: only Jetta and Melksham of our best 22 out; Coll have 3-4. Lever and May will be rusty but so may a few of the Pies players. Pies haves smashed us with the same method in the last two games: Beat us on the inside, get the ball outside and run it fwd. This is partly because they take Viney out of the game as he has no right side. Since this game last year they have adopted more of the WCE 'controlled' kick/mark game, a style which continually brings us undone. Win or lose this will tell us how much our game plan and tactics have evolved in the last 12 months. But we have had plenty of time to prepare for them so really no excuses for not winning today.

Take Yeo out of the middle and Hurn out of defence and Eagles are half the team - they can't get the ball into their fwd line and no-one marshalls the defenders. And McGovern is lazy, he refused to chase Buddy and kept asking teammates to do his job. That 'straight line' drop punt goal form an awkward boundary position by Buddy after the siren was a thing of beauty.

I think it is time to put that 'folklore' to bed. Without checking exact dates, in 2018 key injuriy outs were: Tom Mc out for most of the first half of the season, Viney out for 2/3 of the season, AVB out for 3/4 of the season, Lever for all of the second half, Hogan out on and off. KK and May weren't on our list so they are 'virtual' outs in 2018 when compared to this year's 'missing' players. Undoubtedly, injuries and interrupted preseasons have have hurt us this year. But I believe that card has been overplayed and a review of 2018 injuries/outs shows it was also a bad year. Certainly the 2019 injuries/preseason have caused us to lose games but it alone cannot be the reason we have lost so many and why we have an appalling %age. And, our game plan is no longer the same as last year. The 'brand' Goodwin talks about is still contested footy and still manic/chaos but our structures changed from a attack to defence focus after the St Kilda game when to quote Goodwin: we are too easy to score against. In the next, Richmond game we went all out defence to stop the bleeding ala Roos style when he first arrived. Since then we have been refining that defence focused game. If we believe that all our 2019 woes are solely because of a poor preseason/injuries we run the risk of papering over other issues that lie beneath.