Earl Hood

With Fritsch out injured surely Smith should have kept his spot ahead of Melk. Smith played well in the Pies game, then had 2 games in the wet where he struggled with all the other forwards but kept tackling and competing in the air and on the ground. Pity he doesn’t get to play in dry conditions under the roof. Selections again puzzling.

Are we trying to throw this test? Green bowling medium paced, half pitch tripe to Stokes and has played him into form. Cummins doing the same but quicker.

Our delivery into our forward 50 has been laser like in its precision, the only problem is it’s nearly always to a Giant standing on his own. It’s doing my head in. Our field kicking has been abysmal, even taking into account the wet conditions. Goal kicking worse.

But to add insult to injury just prior to that the Geelong defender grabs the contested ball 20m out from our goal throws out a don’t argue but gets tackled to the ground holding the ball. Definite free kick but nup not from these Nuppties!

Yes Grundy being manhandled in the ball ups, before the ball is even bounced and for once decides to put an arm out to keep some distance to contest the ball and gets pinged for a “straight arm” by the umpire. What are you supposed to do when you get no protection from the umps? And add in Petracca who is being obviously held at stoppages by his tagger, often in front of the umpire but gets nothing. Tracc is getting frustrated for obvious reasons.

How many clear centre bounce tap outs can we win but still not win the clearance?

He did some smart work near me on the Members wing. I still wonder why we haven’t played him as a wing/half forward more. OK not that he has been fit for too many games. However when fit & available he can cover ground, has great hands and according to Alan Richardson, a few years ago, he has an elite endurance engine. He should be able to run quickly all day but guess we will never know. But I hope he gets a good, injury free run as an athletic, defensive forward who takes the odd spekie!

Surely they are instructing him to stay down for the crumbs. And I would be giving him more midfield time. But then quite often the ball goes high into our forward 25m zone with Kozzie up against one or two bigger forwards so he feels he has to contest in the air. Get our forward set up right and he will click.

6 Viney 5 Hunter 4 Tomlinson 3 Salem 2 May 1 Tracc special mention to Fritsch and Smith up forward.

What happened to Choco’s goal kicking academy? It’s a shambles!

Yes I am about ready to metaphorically of course, shove a whistle down an umpires throat! It’s ridiculous, they paying just about any contact as a free!

6 Petracca 5 May 4 Gawn 3 Salem 2 Brayshaw 1 McVee

From memory played round 1 down back and had a very serviceable game against the Dogs. Then was the fall guy for our shocker against Brisbane in Round 2 where the midfield went missing and the backline crumbled under pressure with May putting in a shocker along with many others. Tommo was then banished to Casey where he has played very well.

Interesting. If you look at our heat map in the AFL map it clearly shows a concentration of play to one side for 3 quarters. Assuming the map is oriented so north is up then the majority of play is on the south side. But I could be reading the map wrong.

Umpires have turned this game on its head!

Which wing? If you were on the Southern wing, you would have seen a lot of footy close up. If you were on the members wing with me you spent most of the day looking at the f**king big screen to work out what was happening.

Yes agree with this. Watching Collingwood on the rampage, the thing that stands out is their quick lateral movement of the ball and use of the whole ground from half back to stretch opposition defenders. So what are we doing replicating our 2022 one dimensional, predictable ball movement, playing the southern wing all day? We had opportunities to switch but rarely did. Not sure about the training issue but we do look slow and so the midfield is incapable of running the ball into the forward 50 and spotting up a short lead, instead booting the ball long from outside 50m hoping for a pack mark. It’s the 2022 failed game plan revisited, very disappointing. And our fabulous set shot goal kicking accuracy has gone missing as well. We need Petty and Oliver back asap but this just highlights the lack of depth on our list.

What is going on with Viney? We are playing a man down.

And to me that’s a key question. Why can’t we reproduce that midfield pressure intensity that we displayed in the second half of 2021 that took us all the way? What has changed in terms of personnel, not a lot I think. And it’s not just the followers, it’s the wings, the half forwards and half backs. Watching the Pies do over Carlton today, their pressure on the ball carrier is what we were doing and this allowed Darcy Moore to sit back and intercept at will. Very reminiscent of our once impregnable defence with Lever & May picking off hurried disposals into the opposition’s forward line. That was us in 2021, harassing, chasing, intercepting and going back the other way so quickly, the lack of resistance allowed our midfield to pick out a forward at their leisure. And suddenly our poor forward connection problems evaporated and we dominated the finals series. That defensive, offensive running dominance has gone against better sides anyway. Without being fully competitive between the arcs our weaknesses up forward get exposed. The personnel are still there but the intensity seems to be missing.

Who is doing the camera work on the coverage, it’s hard to focus?

Great on paper but not performing but the good news is it should be easy to get it working in the second half of the season but the bad news might be I am not confident that will happen. No idea what the problems are when you have 2 dominant rucks tapping to the likes of Oliver, Tracc and Viney.

Technically it was there like about 80 others not paid this match in the rain. Rivers holding on didn’t actually impede the player who was going no where in that scrimmage but you know give the umps half a chance.

TMac form is the least of our problems. He is trying and breaking packs, it would be working if we were dominating inside 50 deliveries. But we can’t get our hands on the [censored] ball! That’s the problem.

Midfield has gone MIA. Zero clearances that quarter. WTF is going on? Ruck dominance means nothing if you can’t win clearances and we are seeing nothing much in aerial dominance around the ground. If our mids don’t pressure the ball carrier they won’t be kicking long down the line.

6 Tracc 5 Viney 4 Oliver 3 Hibberd 2 Rivers 1 Gawn