Semifinal Positives

[sharpie]

Nick Davis.

We won. That's all that matters now.

Thought Fosdike was good actually too. Ben Mathews also good. Only problem with these two was they both had a terrible turnover in the D50.

[timbo]

Crouch and Kenelly's run out of defence and under pressure, especially Crouch. Just couldnt get a kick inside 50 effective enough.

[NMWBloods]

Originally posted by sharpie
Nick Davis.

We won. That's all that matters now.

Thought Fosdike was good actually too. Ben Mathews also good. Only problem with these two was they both had a terrible turnover in the D50.

Exactly. I thought Fosdike was very good early - he and Davis were the only two with clean hands - made a shocking handball at the end.

Mathews was very good on Ablett.

Kirk was solid.

Ball and Jolly were reasonable.

Crouch provided lots of drive and effort - pity his disposal in very average.

[ugg]

We Won . That is all.

[sharpie]

Originally posted by timbo
Crouch and Kenelly's run out of defence and under pressure, especially Crouch. Just couldnt get a kick inside 50 effective enough.

Kennelly's run out of defense was actually almost non-existent I thought. One of the reasons we struggled all night.

[liz]

We won.

We can't possibly play worse next week.

That's it.

[NMWBloods]

Originally posted by liz
We can't possibly play worse next week.

Unortunately that's not a positive - even if we play a bit better we will get hammered. We need to play a lot better.

[Refried Noodle]

Ability to win (somehow) when the free flowing game from half back is shut down.

[Chubby Muffler]

Err....we had alot of kicks at goal. Finsished well in the last quarter. Kept fighting to win the game even after playing 3 and a bit quarters of absolute tripe.

[Sanecow]

Dum Derro Spazmo.

[Mel]

We managed to win a semi final even though we only played reasonable football for only one quarter and very average football for the other three.

[sharpie]

To be honest, I thought we were the better side for most of the 2nd half. We just could not get the ball past half forward effectively, and when we did we inevitably missed the goals.

Both teams were just pathetic with ball in hand for most of the night.

[NMWBloods]

Originally posted by Sanecow
Dum Derro Spazmo.

Unco-ordinated drunk mute?

[liz]

Just finished watching the Fox replay of the second half.

Within the context of a tight, low skilled game, I spotted a couple of other mildly pleasing aspects.

In particular, a couple of the relatively inexperienced players kept their heads at critical times. Dempster, in particular, didn't have a great impact on the game in terms on ball in hand but he almost never game up on a contest and knew how to keep pressure up without giving away a free until support arrived. Maybe a small thing, but shows he is confident as part of a well-drilled outfit.

Buchanan was as important as anyone else out there in the final term. He wasn't able to produce the moments of magic that he did earlier in the year against the Cats, but he kept his legs pumping, chasing right to the end.

LRT made a couple of errors but he too kept his head in a way that we could only have dreamt about 3 months ago.

And while Nog didn't have his best game, he did some really intelligent stuff in the final term, coming over the top in a couple of ruck contests and punching the ball forward to where there was a little more space. And he did very well in the lead up to the final goal to keep the ball in for a little longer, gaining us a boundary throw-in much deeper in our forward 50 than it looked like we'd get.

And watching the game at the ground, I hadn't realised how sensational Kirk was in the final term. Nothing pretty about it but as gutsy an effort as one would hope to witness. Davis provided the class to win the game but it was Kirk's determination that laid the foundations.

[punter257]

yeah spot on liz, lukey ablett was the one who got a kick into the 50 at the end in a confined space. buchanan kept on popping up at various stages too.

but yeah the main positive is winning whilst playing crap for the majority of the game. plus barry hall having no influence whatsoever - he'll be back next week, i wonder who the saints will play on him?

and hopefully we'll catch the saints off guard as they may get complacent after watching us tonight and we all know that we tend to do alright when we are rank underdogs. all the pressure is on them for sure