Lucifers Hero

You don't rate Bedford, Lauire and Chandler? Not sure who is around that is better than at least one of them. Wondering who would a new 'pressure small' displace from our starting 22?

Fox is reporting that Ess has made a play for De Goey. Imagine the nightmare for a new coach of trying to manage him and another high maintenance 'bad boy' in Stringer. Ess sorely need a big bodied midfielder but they would be wise to adopt a NDH policy.

Sydney has always beaten us at post clearance possessions, especially at the G where there is room to take those possessions them move into space. It was far more obvious in the days we played 'bees to the honey pot' with numbers. Now we hold our positions better. But we still fall for it. In the words of recent jargon: 'we are being beaten by what we know'. But it is more than that. We back in our system. For good reason; it has worked well for us in the past and against lesser teams and lesser coaches. With a few exceptions I don't see many tactics to 'take away the opps strengths' until we have to make some moves, in game. Sydney however went in with a plan to take out our play makers: tagged Salem, sat a player on Langdon, put Mills on Oliver at stoppages and not sure what they did to Lever after quarter time to take him out of the game. Right there is the disruption of our defensive wall and disruption of our ball movement coming from our defensive half. The resulting pressure on the ball carrier forced us to over hand ball or pass into congestion resulting in turnovers. What was it 11 goals from turnovers (not sure how many we scored that way). Last time it was 7 goals from turnovers to our zip! That is their MO against us. Again I'm not sure why we were 'beaten by what we know'. If we play them in the GF we need to be a lot smarter. We can't just 'back in our system'; Sydney have shown multiple times they can dismantle it. And if we play Geelong in a PF we can't just back in our system as they have also learnt to dismantled it. Longmire and Scott are the two canniest coaches in the league. But, lets not be beaten by what we know.

In a way we have a de facto conference system where newbie teams play each other rather frequently than the better teams hardly at all. As a result, I wouldn't be surprised to see a newbie team or two in the finals. Just hope it isn't at the expense of a top team as happened in the 'conference' system year. Or worse keep a top team out of the top 4. Hopefully, the cream rises to the top.

Salem was tagged on Friday night by Ryan Clarke. Longmire did his homework on our playmakers and concocted a plan to minimise their impact. Often he used his less lights in these roles freeing his playmakers. Another example McInerney on Langdon and neither had a big impact, albeit Langdon was involved in a bit of the play.

I wonder what has happened to Freo this year. From PF to being beaten by WCE and thrashed by Geelong where they scored just one point for the whole game. Mentioning Geelong, I noticed they are on top then saw that we don't play them this year. Question: have we played them at all since they entered the competition in 2019? Even allowing for the 'conference' system, covid interruption and the fixture not pitting newbie teams vs established teams, it would be really weird if we haven't played them. I wonder if there are other teams (exlc this year's new teams) that we haven't played?

Anyone know how Charlie got the throat injury. Going to hospital with it sounds similar to the injury that Dangerfield got when Toby Green charged him and got several weeks suspension for it.

What makes you so confident of that; just asking?

Is there any vision of the incident? And of the incident where he got the corky/contusion Was it truly an accidental or was there an element of the Selwood 'accidental' kick to Oliver's hand about it. Buddy also whacked Petty which brought him to his knees for a while. It was a sniper 'drive-by' hit to the mid riff so not sure if he was winded or it hurt his ribs. It looks like if Buddy can't get a kick he will make his presence felt and hurt opp players. Possibly more damaging than on the scoreboard!

From Foxfooty: The Herald Sun reports both the Bombers and Kangaroos have the cash to lure 2021 Coleman medallist McKay from the Blues, who have a potential cap-squeeze in the coming years with plenty of young talent needing new contracts. McKay is due to become a free agent at the end of the 2023 season, as was teammate Charlie Curnow before he recommitted on a six-year deal ahead of Round 23. Carlton believe they will be able to convince McKay to stay - both on financial grounds, and because of how he feels about the club - but a massive rival offer could make things interesting I'd rather use the Jackson picks and $ to get McKay THIS YEAR in his pre FA year. If he goes as an FA next year and Carlton improve the best they will get is a mid teens compo pick. We took Steven May and Hawks took Brian Lake in their pre FA year. Forget Grundy. We need to fix our forward line, pronto! Get a lesser ruck support and McKay then Max can do what he does best: 6 x AA ruckman. Getting McKay this year would give us a much better balanced team. Let's not wait!

Accidentally put this in the Game Plan thread. No idea how I got there as I almost never read it. There is a stark difference between rnd 23 vs Lions and last night. In rnd 23 we switched play and centered the ball deep i50. The result was we kicked a high score and were accurate. Reverting to the kick-down-the-line, into- the-pocket didn't look deliberate. It was partly Sydney forcing us to play that way and partly when under pressure players/teams revert to habit. We went back to what was most familiar. It is a miracle Fritsch kicked any goals let alone 3. When we got possession up the ground he was literally sandwiched between two Sydney players. Fritsch's opponent would walk him into a the back of another Sydney player who was pretending to causally walk backwards and they sandwiched him. Even when they separated the front player still stopped Fritsch getting to space. That plus Max and BB not having anywhere to lead left us going to the pockets where the ball came to ground and our lack of pressure allowed Syd to move the ball out. All that aside, what surprised me that we started the last qtr 2 goals down in a low scoring match. Why oh why did we not switch to an attacking game? There was no way we were going to beat Sydney playing our defensive/contested game from 2 goals down. Attack was the only way to win. Take some risks; play the corridor. Hell we may as well lose my 6 goals as 1 point but at least give us some chances.

The noise for the two 2018 finals at the G was out of this world. We roared goals much much more loudly than last night. No logical reason why the difference. It took Sydney fans a long time to get going. Once they hit the lead they didn't stop but until then it was fairly quiet all round. Maybe covid flattened spirits in more ways than we realise.

To me this is the key to getting the crowd roaring be it a large or small crowd. When Hunt, Langford, Rivers, Harmes take a run down the wing, get a handball chain going or Kozzie chases/gets a player or the ball then every time one of them goes near the ball the crowd roars in anticipation. That anticipation gathers a life of its own and the crowd roars at less exciting things so the noise becomes fairly constant. Those little moments to excite were few and far between last night. It was a dour game and the crowd responded accordingly.

There is a stark difference between rnd 23 vs Lions and last night. In rnd 23 we switched play and centered the ball deep i50. The result was we kicked a high score and were accurate. Reverting to the kick-down-the-line, into- the-pocket didn't look deliberate. It was partly Sydney forcing us to play that way and partly when under pressure players/teams revert to habit. We went back to what was most familiar. It is a miracle Fritsch kicked any goals let alone 3. When we got possession up the ground he was literally sandwiched between two Sydney players. Fritsch's opponent would walk him into a the back of another Sydney player who was pretending to causally walk backwards and they sandwiched him. Even when they separated the front player still stopped Fritsch getting to space. That plus Max and BB not having anywhere to lead left us going to the pockets where the ball came to ground and our lack of pressure allowed Syd to move the ball out. All that aside, what surprised me that we started the last qtr 2 goals down in a low scoring match. Why oh why did we not switch to an attacking game? There was no way we were going to beat Sydney playing our defensive/contested game. Attack was the only way to win. Take some risks; play the corridor. Hell we may as well lose my 6 goals as 1 point but at least give us some chances.

Cryptic? More info please. Was just about to head to Hampton station...

I'm very impressed that so many men care about and undoubtedly 'use' their vacuum cleaners!! All for sharing domestic work. Or is it just they are like a 'robot'.

On several levels this doesn't compute😐🤔

Yes, you are correct it was McCarthy, not Bailey.

LOL! Looks a bit rustic for your good self, Bbo. This solves my dilemma as to when to put out the banners etc while not jinxing the team. As we win a final, I will fly scarves from my car window until the next final. If we win a PF I will then put out all the red and blue paraphernalia.

Richmond got a lucky call not long before the goal overrule. Daniher was paid a free against while legitimately going for a mark and it became an 'unrealistic attempt' when the Richmond player bent forward...he looked like he wanted an in the back free. It would most likely have been a goal to Bailey, dead in front if not for the free. The free was very soft at a clutch time in a sudden death final. That is the time the whistles should be put away for soft calls.. I thought Lions deserved to win.

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Thanks. I'll cheer loudly for you at the game tonight. And will the 'modest' one out himself in the quiz?

In the last month we have changed our kickins and occassionally switch. With Salem back we sometimes kick short to him which starts our ball movement chain deeper. Both tactics neutralise the opp talls parked under the ball for May's long kickins to the boundary. Longmire is very smart and he will have noticed those so I doubt he will try and park talls at the drop of the ball so much tonight. We have more strings to 'get out of our d50' bow now which should keep Longmire on his toes a bit.

In the mid year game didn't they kick something like 7+ goals from turnovers to our hand full of points? iirc most of those turnovers were from kickins or around the middle of the ground. They didn't tag Langdon but cut off supply to him from our turnovers and we just couldn't get our overlap ball movement going. Brayshaw in the midfield and roaming between the arcs should help that. When we did get it forward we kicked high and their defenders took a trillion marks. And they had a massive mismatch of Paddy McCartin on Kozzie who just peeled off. Max playing forward will be a big improvement on Mitch Brown forward. That would have been one of our worst game this year. Longmire may have some new tricks up his sleeve but this will be a very different game! Dees by 10 nerve racking points.

Thank you. Very thoughtful of you. It looks like I'm late to the party again. I've been out all day again so I can't access my laptop. Why is the laptop significant? I restrict myself to read DL only on it otherwise I would spend all day here if I used mobile device while out! Need to go and read the Team thread so will try and have a look at the quiz later.