Straight Sets Simon

Goodwin tries to get too cute at times.

I'm doubtful if my heart can take any more pain. I'm too young to have a heart attack.

You could hear the hurt in @Supermercado's voice, could relate 100%. I'm not even sure I can bring myself to watch the West Coast game this weekend.

Clint Data has us at less than a 10% chance of making the finals.

Bang on. I think I wrote something similar on here recently.

I’m about to listen on my drive to work after avoiding all football media like the plague since Sunday. Hopefully I don’t drive off the road through being blinded by my tears.

Disappointed Gawn was talking whilst being interviewed on the radio.

This. I saw a stat recently (can't find it now) where we score a lot from opposition turnovers. I think this goes to explain a lot as poor opposition teams generally don't have great skills we tend to capitalise on this, but a team like Sydney has good skills so we sat off waiting for a mistake that didn't come.

I'm interested to see what the forward line will be like without him.

In the same way our record against top teams has been woeful, I’d love to know Hogan’s record against top and bottom teams.

That Eddie Betts miss kept us in it, but I think our chances are now less than 10%.

No, we are usually so close to the man on the mark that we kick under pressure and our angle of kicking is changed. By going back further the Sydney player actually could straighten up as the man on the mark had no impact in terms of distance or trajectory.

I’m going to keep bumping this until we actually work out what to do when we take a mark or have a free kick. Petracca is the king of just standing still and not actually getting back behind the mark. I saw a Sydney player go back about 15 metres after he took a mark and wasn’t able to play on quickly. Going back so far actually allowed him to kick the ball further because he could go on a huge arc around the man on the mark and kick under no pressure. Today JKH drifted off his mark (causing umpire to call play on) when he was 45 metres out from goal. He gave up a free kick to instead handball under pressure all because he couldn’t walk back in a straight line.

Our zone doesn’t work there.

Fritsch is wasted in the backline.

I just want to make finals. Sadly, that looks extremely unlikely.

vandenBerg anyone? 6. Harmes 5. vandenBerg 4. Oliver 3. Gawn 2. T. McDonald 1. Brayshaw

But I thought Sydney hadn’t been applying pressure in recent weeks?

Out: Garlett, Hunt, JKH, Spargo In: Melksham, Hibberd, Hannan, Kent

Hogan runs under the ball every single time.

It’s the little things we do poorly again and again that kill us. Dumb decision making from marks and free kicks, bad tackling techniques, poor lead patterns, poor kicking skills, multiple players flying for the same ball. When we play poor teams they go unpunished, when we play good teams they get punished. Also, we don’t know how to manage the clock and momentum, if we can’t play on straight away we go to water.

The same dumb basic mistakes again and again.

No surprise Hogan is great step ladder, he runs under the ball every single time.

We struggle with basics so badly.