Earl Hood

It’s a given, we can’t afford to sack him early but is there anything in his contract that stipulates that he has to be the main man who calls the shots? In any other workplace he would be moved on, the same failures occurring for 3 seasons with hardly a recognition they should be rectified. I suspect he just doesn’t really believe that the game has moved on, that far. By that I mean I believe Simon begrudgingly accepts changes are needed but believes his basic 2021 formula will still work, that is backline presses up, win contested ball, bang it forward, get a stoppage, hold it in, conjure a score, rinse & repeat over and over. However yes this season ball movement has definitely sped up and we are sharing the ball around more until we get to the F60+ but then it’s often just bang it forward. To us outsiders there seems to be zero emphasis on goal kicking accuracy, no demand that we develop a forward line strategy where forwards lead toward the ball carrier, forwards that try to get separation from their opponents, just some fr**king movement, FFS ahead of a ball carrier. Particularly that there are No penalties applied to the old guard when they repeatedly just bang the ball mindlessly forward, burning team mates in better positions. Oliver, Viney and Tracc are repeat offenders. During our run of wins (5 out of 6) recently, Oliver was almost exclusively handballing to a player on the outside, not kicking, ball carriers were looking for short targets in the F50. For some reason in the last 2 weeks, Oliver is dump kicking and ball carriers are dumping long kicks into the F50? A restructure and some new faces might be a possible answer to get a fresh approach. Some new assistant coaches and maybe the football operations manager actually calls the shots on game strategy and has a greater say in selection.

Very punchable face

6 Gawn 5 Bowey 4 Kozzie 3 Fritsch 2 Turner 1 Howes

Do we need to practice chest marking now?

Yep no movement in the F50 so ball carriers are just kicking long to defenders and it looks like we are really missing a defensive small to stop them cleaning the loose ball up so easily in our full forward line.

Familiar trend forming, good ball movement until we enter the F50, then it’s long bombs to defenders or inaccurate snaps at goal.

That last insufficient attempt free was ludicrous and set up the winning goal. Another umpire decided result.

Yes I saw that and went ape****! It’s hard to reconcile this rubbish with so called semi professional umpires. And then we had the phenomenon of the distant whistle. Several times it came from one extreme end of the ground, calling a holding free amongst a pack of players grappling for the ball around the centre of the ground. You know what would the 2 closest umpires know?

Yet another UmPies goal to Cox! These ruck infringement frees are ridiculous!

Did Campbell go past the demarcation line between the ruckman before the bounce? Hard to tell from the telecast. If he didn’t it was his free not the Pies ruck. The umpiring has been appalling!

The umpires well played there for a Pies goal.

First goal to UmPies after 2 consecutive rubbish free kicks.

Gee our kicking for goal isn’t that bad maybe after watching Brisbane kick 8 behinds and 2 out of bounds in the last! That last 5 minutes was crazy dumb footy, the Lions dominating with the last 11 inside 50’s but just kicking points and the Crows just kept kicking it back out long to contests and watching it come straight back.

“We believe that we’ve done the work to get the skill set” And yet nearly everyone here has noted the obvious flaws in the techniques of the 2 serial offenders, Max and Tracc? There are zero signs that there has been improvements to technique/skill. A poor technique will always struggle under pressure, no matter what sport you are playing. And a poor technique soon affects the mindset, they are both linked.

I can remember going out to watch training at Casey (from outside the fence) a couple of times several years ago and noticed on both occasions that Ben Brown just repeatedly taking set shots at goal from about 40m out. With his long run up that meant he was starting from behind the centre line. He must have been in rehab or something because everyone else was doing ball movement stuff. So if players do have so called voluntary training sessions, some of them should be just practicing set shots and under the supervision of someone who knows about kicking technique.

Bizarre!

Things are getting bizarre. Fracture a hand in a training run!

I am sure the spinning of the ball is to do with some advice he must have got about not tightening up and clutching at the ball that would affect the ball drop. So it makes some sense. So the ball drop might be ok but the rest of his action is flawed. The long run up, the late shuffle to the right, the kicking leg comes across the body and does he lean back on the kick, not following through properly? It looks like it and he nearly always fades it to the left, like a left handed golfer with a slice swing. Golfers have swing coaches who know their swing and are employed to detect flaws, if there are any but importantly to flag any changes. We need someone similar at the club, desperately.

Footy Classified just discussed this. They showed Goodwin Press Conferences where he repeatedly talks about the problem and they are working on it, then they showed about 5 of Max’s set shot misses. As I suspected, every miss is the same, the ball trajectory starts straight then veers off to the left. Why hasn’t this been addressed, seriously? It’s like having a golf swing that always veers off in the same direction, it’s more fixable than if you just always spray balls randomly. Matthew Lloyd was of a similar opinion and wondered why Max hasn’t changed how he holds the ball. He also was critical of Petracca’s high ball drop. Demonlanders have been screaming about these things for ages but nothing has been done. And the FC panel said this chronic inaccuracy keeps costing us games and finals. It is just another one of those mind boggling, reoccurring problems (like the poor midfield to forward connection) that seem to be fixable but keeps costing us games, year after year!

A fair cop but a week early.

Maybe best to forfeit the game now so we can complete the loading regime at training and avoid a major injury to one of our marquee players or a long suspension for some minor interaction with a Filth player, like Moore for example.

The stats say the midfield went missing in action, Petracca and Gawn excepted. Oliver, Langdon, Rivers, Kossie, Langford, Sparrow all struggled to have any impact. That meant all our great running and ball movement through the corridor, breaking defensive lines from previous weeks went missing. The result was too many long bombs and too many predictable entries allowing Wilkie to take 15 defensive marks FFS! So the issues start there in the midfield. This was a replay of our slow, predictable ball movement in games 1 to 5. Even then if we kicked straight, who knows we might have won. The heroics of May, Turner and McVee kept us within range. And the predictable F50 entries made our forwards look very average and the Saints interceptors look like champions. I hope Viney is cherry ripe for next week to bolster the midfield and TMac might need a run. But in the end the vibes were there early that the team wasn’t switched on. Unforgivable.

Zak Jones seemed to be tagging and harassing the entire midfield, while also getting his fair share of the ball.

6 May 5 Turner 4 Petracca 3 Gawn 2 McVee 1 Chandler

The midfield has been given a bath, looking at the stats at 3/4 time.