Dockers matchday thread

[Nich]

I never said it was a good thing? I completely agree with you!

[Melbournehammer]

Benny Mac flew in!!

But why exactly is that a good thing ? There were about ten swans players in there and about four freo players. it was in our defensive half. They kept their composure and their focus on the ball. The next five minutes we went from nine points down to game over. Fyfe did exactly the right thing and he summed it up well he looked at it saw no benefit from getting involved and followed the ball.

i mean its one thing if you are going to effect the melee.

if you're not stay the hell away and win the footy. the next contest had a sea of purple and stuff all swans there.

[Nich]

Ryan and especially Dan's post match interviews clearly refer to the disappointment in the teams performance. Dan in particular looked absolutely GUTTED. What's concerning for me is that they CONSTANTLY talk about 4 qtr performances but rarely back it up. Are we just not fit enough to run out 4 quarters of footy? 3rd quarter is known as the premiership quarter for good reason and it's often our worst quarter against key opposition. So is it more mental than physical? All I know is is if these boys keep talking themselves up for a big match but fail to follow through on that then i have great concerns about the playing group, especially the leaders. Macca has come out again today to vow they will respond so i'm looking forward to see what the group pulls out on Saturday.

They should have blown Freo off the park yesterday. I'm sure poor umpiring decisions can break your back and stop momentum but had we had similar intensity in the first 3 quarters as the last we wouldn't have had to make up close to 40 points. Incredibly crucial game yesterday which needed intensity matching the last qtr right from the time the siren went. Didn't see it.

"We probably weren't up to it. You can say what a comeback, but where were we when it really counted in the second and third quarters," he said.

"With our season on the line, where were we?

- McVeigh

[Nich]

Benny Mac flew in!!

[ABloodsMan]

Here's Parkers tackle and the dirty bastard Lowers retaliation.



Had to lol as right before the high tackle free kick to freo White was tackled high by Fyfe. Just one of those days.

[Sauce]

What makes me really angry is that the media/press will not mention the umpiring in their reports. Surely the umpiring should be assessed. Personally I vow never to watch another AFL game where Ray Chamberlain is officiating.

Thats because of a directive sent out in the past 6 weeks, which i have had the privy to read, informing all MEDIA outlets that the constant negativity towards umpires and that dept is not on.

Hence why we have seen a lot of media people not even mention umpiring in the past few months, most just sit on the fence and dont make a comment.

What we need is free press for the AFL..but @@@@ it it's only a sport at the end of the day.

[Mr Magoo]

Umpiring was disgraceful and did infuence the match at critical times in a very critical way. Not what umpires are there to do. As others have said that because there are soo many technical rules now , each viewed in isolation will be viewed as perfectly acceptable.

Some of the more important ones :
1. Teddy holding ball - was dragged back in by mayne but if viewed in normal motion looked like he dragged it back in. Terrible rule that punishes the person who goes in for the ball.
2. Mayne jumper punch - will probably show up as correct but unbelievable that the ump can see how this played out and pay it the way he did. That one was truly disgraceful and turned the whole third quarter.
3. Kennelly fifty/seventy - What kennelly did happens ten times a week. Even worse players run off and play on down field and still dont get pinged. It looked to me that Kennelly didnt know who to throw it to as there were a heap of freo players in that spot and if he threw to the wrong one he still gets fifty anyway.
4. Grundy throw - was the case in that it happens ten times a game especially in the wet and doesnt get called.

That said , our problem is what it has been all year . Terrible second and third quarters where we barely trouble the scoreboard and a forward line that doesnt seem to function correctly. The bigger problem in those quarters is the middle though , not the forward line, where we seem to lose contest after contest and when we do win , we just bang it forward in hope. That doesnt make it easy for any forward let alone a forward line thats not top class. Like the eagles of 2005/2006 you can be a force with a not so good forward line if your midfield knows how to deliver but ours goes missing in the second and third quarter of pretty much every game.

I think there may need to be some hard calls made in the coming weeks .
1. Malceski is back to the crappy form he was in last time he came back quickly from the knee op.
2. Okeefe needs to go back to the forward line. He has been good in the midfield but there comes a time when the games starts to move to fast for you and I think that time has come. What I mean by that is that Okeefe never seems to have time and space and his delivery is rubbish because he is always rushed. He actually used to be a very nice kick of the ball but he has lost that because the games too fast for him.
3. Kennelly is not playing well and seems to me to be then trying too hard to make up for it. Maybe the okeefe problem.
4. Kennedy and McVeigh went missing when the chips were down. These guys need to show some leadership. I cant recall the swans ever being sucked into a melee like they were yesterday under kirks leadership.
5. Mumford has actually played pretty ordinary over the past month when he has played. Seaby is almost a better option at the moment.
6. Jacks obviously not playing at 100 percent fitness.
Its disgraceful when you have to point to Hanneberry, Parker, Jetta, Bird, reid etc as the shining lights in the midfield and you have to hope in vain that goodes can pull you back into the game every time the chips are down.

[caj23]

Let's all acknowledge that the umpiring was amongst the worst I have ever seen watching afl. It was poor, and although I do not for one moment believe it to be deliberately biased it affected the game to such an extent that it could be said to have decided the result.

However it's time to move on from this - and look both at where we are going to find another four wins this season (because I think we may just need 12 wins because of the strange nature of the season with three sides that simply are uncompetitive meaning that everyone gets wins against them) and more importantly why our selection committee has been continuously experimenting with a forward line but is still no closer now to having one than it was earlier in the season, and why we constantly seem to be playing one tall too many week in week out.

I have reluctantly concluded that we will probably miss the eight this year. Although it's still in our hands I just can't see where we can get enough wins, as the sides we will be playing are going better than us. I think the failure to get there will occur despite doing reasonably well in the first half of the season. but preseason I always thought we'd go well first half of the year. It's the back half which I thought looked tough and it looks even tougher when we have no forward line.

And I think this is a major embarrassment for the club. Perhaps we have overachieved last year but this season should have been one of improvement for the club. Instead the failure to work out and settle on a forward line pre-season when Bradshaw was not playing has meant that the revolving door of white, everitt, seaby, lrt, Johnston, tdl has demonstrated a constant tinkering without any real idea of what is to be done. Perhaps none of them can do the job. But the bring in for one game get dropped after one game has been counterproductive.

The team has I think been unbalanced from the beginning of the season. We have lacked outside runners with pace all year and the failure of jetta to cement a position and Rohan to play has been devastating for us. goodes clearly remains our best midfielder but is played forward to cover our structural weakness. Rok is clearly our best lead up player but is indulged by running on the ball as a tagged and left in the wake of the really classy midfielders. And in any case is extracting the ball and kicking it to ? The aforementioned unstructured and unbalanced forward line...

But most of all has been our failure to adapt to the conditions by picking a side which would kick goals off the ground in wet conditions. How many times yesterday did freo clear the ball from the swans goal line without a single crumbed getting near it in the first three quarters ? When you play three talls in the corward line in wet conditions what the he'll are you thinking. It didn't even work against Carlton in th dry and and we do it time and time again. It's simply poor selections.

Finally and it's just a bugbear of mine - can someone please tell bird not to kick the ball as high as he kicks it long. He may have all the evasive skills in close but his disposal vote by hand and foot is truly mediocre.

Great post MH

Perfectly sums up all of our frustrations and is an indictment on the match committee

[SPC]

It was certainly a throw, however its not the decision there that riles me, its the 1,365 instances of exactly the same thing happening in a game that don't get pulled up that annoy me. Every 2nd player throws the ball in tight contested footy like that, and imo it either should be pinged every time, or not at all (I prefer the second for the reason that at least the players would decide the result not the umpires). Tadgh was stupid to give away the 50, but it was a ridiculously harsh call , and as everyone has said it was more like an '80'. The other call that really riled me amongst others was the Teddy dragging the ball in free. Sure by the letter of the law it was a free kick- but what else is Teddy suppose to do but try and gain possession. There was no way he could kick it out in that pack or get a legal handball away, and if he had of left it there was a good possibility of a freo goal from it- so what exactly is Teddy suppose to do. Very harsh call and to a point a stupid rule.

Spot on! And this is the point that will be missed when Geishen comes out and defends the individual 'contentious' decisions like he does every week. Its the plucking a technically correct decision out when they have been let go all day that sends everyone to the brink on days like yesterday. One thing that should be taken up is Rays offer to the Swans players to point out the ones he got wrong. It was in commentary while BT was praising Ray for giving it back to the players (BTW he has to be the biggest Muppet of any commentator, of any code of footy I have every seen, but I digress) and made us listen to how Ray was asking the Swans players who were blowing up about another one of his decisions. The Swans should not let the opportunity pass, because its one of the few times you get invited to give feedback on umpire performance. You would need to put in some work & go thru the whole game to highlight every decision that was technical but didnt get paid, then compare to the ones he paid. And the 12 point goal for holding the angry ant at bay while he was swinging like a dunny door, please!!! How many frees should be paid every week if that was one?

[liz]

I thought Jetta played really well when he came on, had a bit of mongrel and passion too him which I haven't seen at all really, layer a few tackles that stuck and got into a few of the freo boys. He contributed more in the qtr or so he was on for than white did in his time.

This. And Hanners, Parker, Reid, Jack, Johnson.

In fact, I thought most of our better players in terms of intensity were the younger ones. Reid might not have had much of the ball but he kept on presenting and making a contest.

O'Keefe has been pretty decent all season (notwithstanding complaints about his disposal at times - at least he's been in winning the contested ball) but I thought he was relatively ordinary yesterday. Goodes was poor. Mumford is just going (decent enough in the contests but not giving us the ground level stuff he did last year). McGlynn seems to have gone completely off the ball. Kennelly has been ordinary for the last month, after some good games up to that point. Malceski is not finding the ball, space or anything much. Umpiring aside, it is hard to win games when so many of your better players are not playing well.

[Melbournehammer]

Let's all acknowledge that the umpiring was amongst the worst I have ever seen watching afl. It was poor, and although I do not for one moment believe it to be deliberately biased it affected the game to such an extent that it could be said to have decided the result.

However it's time to move on from this - and look both at where we are going to find another four wins this season (because I think we may just need 12 wins because of the strange nature of the season with three sides that simply are uncompetitive meaning that everyone gets wins against them) and more importantly why our selection committee has been continuously experimenting with a forward line but is still no closer now to having one than it was earlier in the season, and why we constantly seem to be playing one tall too many week in week out.

I have reluctantly concluded that we will probably miss the eight this year. Although it's still in our hands I just can't see where we can get enough wins, as the sides we will be playing are going better than us. I think the failure to get there will occur despite doing reasonably well in the first half of the season. but preseason I always thought we'd go well first half of the year. It's the back half which I thought looked tough and it looks even tougher when we have no forward line.

And I think this is a major embarrassment for the club. Perhaps we have overachieved last year but this season should have been one of improvement for the club. Instead the failure to work out and settle on a forward line pre-season when Bradshaw was not playing has meant that the revolving door of white, everitt, seaby, lrt, Johnston, tdl has demonstrated a constant tinkering without any real idea of what is to be done. Perhaps none of them can do the job. But the bring in for one game get dropped after one game has been counterproductive.

The team has I think been unbalanced from the beginning of the season. We have lacked outside runners with pace all year and the failure of jetta to cement a position and Rohan to play has been devastating for us. goodes clearly remains our best midfielder but is played forward to cover our structural weakness. Rok is clearly our best lead up player but is indulged by running on the ball as a tagged and left in the wake of the really classy midfielders. And in any case is extracting the ball and kicking it to ? The aforementioned unstructured and unbalanced forward line...

But most of all has been our failure to adapt to the conditions by picking a side which would kick goals off the ground in wet conditions. How many times yesterday did freo clear the ball from the swans goal line without a single crumbed getting near it in the first three quarters ? When you play three talls in the corward line in wet conditions what the he'll are you thinking. It didn't even work against Carlton in th dry and and we do it time and time again. It's simply poor selections.

Finally and it's just a bugbear of mine - can someone please tell bird not to kick the ball as high as he kicks it long. He may have all the evasive skills in close but his disposal vote by hand and foot is truly mediocre.

[Bas]

If an umpire gives a 50 metre penalty then he should go to the spot that the offence took place and then mark out the 50 metres. Not give it whilst standing 30 metres downfield and then running off.

[robamiee]

It was certainly a throw, however its not the decision there that riles me, its the 1,365 instances of exactly the same thing happening in a game that don't get pulled up that annoy me. Every 2nd player throws the ball in tight contested footy like that, and imo it either should be pinged every time, or not at all (I prefer the second for the reason that at least the players would decide the result not the umpires). Tadgh was stupid to give away the 50, but it was a ridiculously harsh call , and as everyone has said it was more like an '80'. The other call that really riled me amongst others was the Teddy dragging the ball in free. Sure by the letter of the law it was a free kick- but what else is Teddy suppose to do but try and gain possession. There was no way he could kick it out in that pack or get a legal handball away, and if he had of left it there was a good possibility of a freo goal from it- so what exactly is Teddy suppose to do. Very harsh call and to a point a stupid rule.

if you actually watch the replay teddy actually gets the ball out, but mayne scoops back into him clear as day....

Then you ballayntyne (angus monfires of freo) taking half a dozen steps gets tackled by smitty and no free.....

[mcs]

Agree totally. The interpretation this year has been diabolical, fans are more confosed than ever. I saw netball passes today which were not pulled up. I much rather see the umpires pay free kicks for all illegal disposals, that way there is no confusion and also it rewards the tacklers (provided that players have prior opportunity to dispose).

Didn't have to have prior opportunity today for the tackler to get rewarded - just ask poor teddy (or was it Grundy) who got done for HTB at the City end in the 2nd quarter when he literally was tackled by 3 freo players at the same time as he got the ball. I would like it cracked down on completely, but whatever is decided, can we please just have some genuine consistency from the umpires. Is that too much to ask for? Apart from Razor being consistently @@@@e that is!

[chalbilto]

It was certainly a throw, however its not the decision there that riles me, its the 1,365 instances of exactly the same thing happening in a game that don't get pulled up that annoy me. Every 2nd player throws the ball in tight contested footy like that, and imo it either should be pinged every time, or not at all (I prefer the second for the reason that at least the players would decide the result not the umpires). Tadgh was stupid to give away the 50, but it was a ridiculously harsh call , and as everyone has said it was more like an '80'. The other call that really riled me amongst others was the Teddy dragging the ball in free. Sure by the letter of the law it was a free kick- but what else is Teddy suppose to do but try and gain possession. There was no way he could kick it out in that pack or get a legal handball away, and if he had of left it there was a good possibility of a freo goal from it- so what exactly is Teddy suppose to do. Very harsh call and to a point a stupid rule.

Agree totally. The interpretation this year has been diabolical, fans are more confosed than ever. I saw netball passes today which were not pulled up. I much rather see the umpires pay free kicks for all illegal disposals, that way there is no confusion and also it rewards the tacklers (provided that players have prior opportunity to dispose).