This team with this game plan and this skill set will not beat the Hawks in the near future, nor will we win a GF.
This team with this game plan and this skill set will not beat the Hawks in the near future, nor will we win a GF.
Only thing worse than a loss, is the commentary from BT & Darcy.
Goodes best game this year - particularly the first half.
Goodes was very good tonight against top opposition. Next week no Richards Jetta Tippett Bird. Will give a few ressie players a game in the wild west!
I certainly agree with the general sentiment, but those things had very little to do with the way are playing at the moment.
The score and performance tonight is a fair reflection of where we are at. It was obvious to number of us after some of our recent performances, but we had to play Hawthorn to see just how bad we really are. Now the veil is off and the realization that we are team in rebuilding mode is clear to see. We have problems are over the ground, although our midfield runs deep with young talent, which should help in what I hope is a rejuvenation over the coming years. I hope our coaching staff can make the right assessment and start to work on getting games into our younger players and come up with a more attacking game plan. The future starts now.
There's no easy solution. Our skills are generally poor. We need a complete revamp of our defence which will talk some time to accomplish. It's doubtful that we even have the personnel capable to play at AFL level, but we have to try something. Except for Buddy, we really don't have a forward line (I'm excluding Goodes for this analysis, due to his age).
Given the new bidding system, a lower ladder position works in our favour. There's no point in trying to finish in a high position. We all know who the premiers are.
My new mantra: 'Rebuilding is Fun"
And here's one for our head coach:
Oh well at least the last 20 years has been fun. Time to play the kids.
Disappointing would be the understatement of the year.
Didn't think we would ever serve up something as bad as the GF again, let alone worse.
Too many players appear not willing to do the hard things and our backline is almost laughable.
Jetta should be dropped for the tory alone.
On a positive Zak Jones looks good.
Finally what the hell was Longmire doing putting Shaw at FF in the final quarter? Really......
Any chance of a frank analysis on where we sit from Longmire in the presser?
My expected quote:
"We were disappointing tonight, but the great thing about football is that we get another opportunity to test ourselves against West Coast in 8 days"
We lost tonight for the two usual reasons where Hawthorn are concerned. The first is that they position themselves so well, whether in attack or defence, so that there is nearly always someone ready to receive the ball. The second is that they are the best attacking team in the comp by a fair margin, and have been for the last three seasons. So much is this the case that even their defence is attack oriented: numbers round the ball, attack on the ball carrier, determination to wrest the ball from any opposition player, players out by themselves ready to receive and attack. You can add individual brilliance e.g. Cyril, Mitchell,Roughead and one or two others, but the basic item is their relentless running and positioning, something on which we used to pride ourselves.
Our structure by comparison is muddled and stuttering, unable to maintain any flow, often ending in kicks to marked players and very rarely to someone clear on a lead. Even our defence, one of the best in the comp, is picked apart by the Hawks' precision and speed of ball movement, which is not the same as speed of foot - but they have a fair bit of that too. It frustrates me to see Hawks sitting on our players when defending while we zone off and give them the space to do their thing.
We can beat them on our day, but we have to (1) maintain pressure for a full four quarters and (2) create room to move when we have the ball. We have the players, but we need to improve our accuracy and learn to work with a more open structure in attack to complement our tightness in defence.
He reminds him of the guys, close-set, slow, and never rattled, who were play-makers on the team. (John Updike, seeing Josh Kennedy in a crystal ball)
I hope we play them in a prelim final. I'd hate to sit through another GF like last year.
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