Match thread - Rd 12 v Crows

[lwjoyner]

Its seems like it maybe worse than what we see. If you can believe what Milera has said and for which crows have issued an apology to the swans for and he has been reprimanded by the crows. "They were rabble out there, auguring amongst themselves. Brad Johnson the boundary rider for the night has said he heard it himself. Did anyone at the game also hear it. If it's true we have gone backwards years and the Swans mgt should investigate it.

[liz]

Its seems like it maybe worse than what we see. If you can believe what Milera has said and for which crows have issued an apology to the swans for and he has been reprimanded by the crows. "They were rabble out there, auguring amongst themselves. Brad Johnson the boundary rider for the night has said he heard it himself. Did anyone at the game also hear it. If it's true we have gone backwards years and the Swans mgt should investigate it.

I can understand why Crows management would prefer Milera hadn't used that description (particularly as they've spent times since been thrashed in a GF being rabblish, and haven't made the finals at all since then). But I don't think it's that offensive a description, or one that anyone watching the game would take issue with. Arguing with each other isn't great, but maybe it would have been worse had they not been arguing with each other after dishing that out there.

Amongst all our other challenges, we're very thin on the ground for leadership at the moment. I don't think Heeney and Warner are natural leaders in the sense of organising others or geeing them up. They just get on and do what they do (usually better than last night). Papley adds a bit of leadership, though maybe in the "spark them up" style than the organising others style. Rowbottom appears to nominally be our onfield leader in Mills's absence, but he's probably not a dominant enough player (or at the top of his own form) to be barking instructions.

Lloyd must be aware of his own ordinary form. Rampe's probably doing his best to organise the defence but it must be hard to do much from back there, especially when the team is playing poorly.

No doubt yesterday was awful, but it probably wasn't our worst performance in a year. In round 20 last year we were beaten by Port by 112 points with, I think, a marginally stronger line-up (out of that side Parker, Francis, Gulden, Cunningham, Florent, Fox, Mills, Wicks, McDonald; in Bice, Cleary, Hamling, Campbell, Melican, McInerney, Mitchell, Sheldrick, Rampe). The following week we beat the Pies by three points, albeit with a super human last quarter from Heeney.

I'm not willing to predict how long it will take us to pull this around, but it can be done. It was only a fortnight ago that we were handy enough against Carlton, and not much further back that we beat the Giants.

[imuninformedtwo]

I can understand why Crows management would prefer Milera hadn't used that description (particularly as they've spent times since been thrashed in a GF being rabblish, and haven't made the finals at all since then). But I don't think it's that offensive a description, or one that anyone watching the game would take issue with. Arguing with each other isn't great, but maybe it would have been worse had they not been arguing with each other after dishing that out there.

Amongst all our other challenges, we're very thin on the ground for leadership at the moment. I don't think Heeney and Warner are natural leaders in the sense of organising others or geeing them up. They just get on and do what they do (usually better than last night). Papley adds a bit of leadership, though maybe in the "spark them up" style than the organising others style. Rowbottom appears to nominally be our onfield leader in Mills's absence, but he's probably not a dominant enough player (or at the top of his own form) to be barking instructions.

Lloyd must be aware of his own ordinary form. Rampe's probably doing his best to organise the defence but it must be hard to do much from back there, especially when the team is playing poorly.

Yep. McVeigh used to get crap on here for all his pointing and cajoling of teammates, but Hodge did it and Pendlebury does it. In fact, the best leaders do. They’re organising and holding teammates accountable. And good teams can cop it. I’ve heard Jordan Lewis talk about how much his Hawks teammates expected and respected it from Hodge, for example. And they’d all do it to each other.

We could do with a few more like that right now. Of course, it doesn’t help that our captain was so moronic in getting himself suspended last week.

[MattW]

I can understand why Crows management would prefer Milera hadn't used that description (particularly as they've spent times since been thrashed in a GF being rabblish, and haven't made the finals at all since then). But I don't think it's that offensive a description, or one that anyone watching the game would take issue with. Arguing with each other isn't great, but maybe it would have been worse had they not been arguing with each other after dishing that out there.

Amongst all our other challenges, we're very thin on the ground for leadership at the moment. I don't think Heeney and Warner are natural leaders in the sense of organising others or geeing them up. They just get on and do what they do (usually better than last night). Papley adds a bit of leadership, though maybe in the "spark them up" style than the organising others style. Rowbottom appears to nominally be our onfield leader in Mills's absence, but he's probably not a dominant enough player (or at the top of his own form) to be barking instructions.

Lloyd must be aware of his own ordinary form. Rampe's probably doing his best to organise the defence but it must be hard to do much from back there, especially when the team is playing poorly.

No doubt yesterday was awful, but it probably wasn't our worst performance in a year. In round 20 last year we were beaten by Port by 112 points with, I think, a marginally stronger line-up (out of that side Parker, Francis, Gulden, Cunningham, Florent, Fox, Mills, Wicks, McDonald; in Bice, Cleary, Hamling, Campbell, Melican, McInerney, Mitchell, Sheldrick, Rampe). The following week we beat the Pies by three points, albeit with a super human last quarter from Heeney.

I'm not willing to predict how long it will take us to pull this around, but it can be done. It was only a fortnight ago that we were handy enough against Carlton, and not much further back that we beat the Giants.

I agree re the dearth in leadership and I think we most miss Gulden in that regard.

[Roadrunner]

I agree re the dearth in leadership and I think we most miss Gulden in that regard.

+1

[UUaswan]

Yep. McVeigh used to get crap on here for all his pointing and cajoling of teammates, but Hodge did it and Pendlebury does it. In fact, the best leaders do. They’re organising and holding teammates accountable. And good teams can cop it. I’ve heard Jordan Lewis talk about how much his Hawks teammates expected and respected it from Hodge, for example. And they’d all do it to each other.

We could do with a few more like that right now. Of course, it doesn’t help that our captain was so moronic in getting himself suspended last week.

I suppose the difference is Hodge was barking out instructions to a game plan that netted 3 Flags.

I'm not yet convinced we have that right first before we start talking about whether or not guys are following instructions

Defence is under siege and a shambles as we consistently turn it over at bad parts of the ground or only by luck get it into our fwd 50.

Sort a decent game plan or setup before we worry about demeanour

[liz]

I suppose the difference is Hodge was barking out instructions to a game plan that netted 3 Flags.

I'm not yet convinced we have that right first before we start talking about whether or not guys are following instructions

Defence is under siege and a shambles as we consistently turn it over at bad parts of the ground or only by luck get it into our fwd 50.

Sort a decent game plan or setup before we worry about demeanour

Why not both?

(I don't think either works without the other.)

[UUaswan]

Why not both?

(I don't think either works without the other.)

Fair call

But not hard to see while they are frustrated when we can't go fwd.

The Essendon game was worse, dominated territory, all ball and no score

[liz]

Fair call

But not hard to see while they are frustrated when we can't go fwd.

The Essendon game was worse, dominated territory, all ball and no score

We had 23 scoring shots against Essendon. Going forward, per se, wasn't an issue. Nor was generating shots. In contrast we had just 16 against Adelaide, and a fair portion of those were in the final quarter once Adelaide had maybe relaxed their pressure a little.

We played one mediocre quarter, one dreadful quarter and two decent quarters (goal conversion aside) against Essendon. We played OK for about five minutes against the Crows. And that's a five minutes you need to compile from a moment here, a moment there. It wasn't a solid block of five minutes.

[UUaswan]

We had 23 scoring shots against Essendon. Going forward, per se, wasn't an issue. Nor was generating shots. In contrast we had just 16 against Adelaide, and a fair portion of those were in the final quarter once Adelaide had maybe relaxed their pressure a little.

We played one mediocre quarter, one dreadful quarter and two decent quarters (goal conversion aside) against Essendon. We played OK for about five minutes against the Crows. And that's a five minutes you need to compile from a moment here, a moment there. It wasn't a solid block of five minutes.

We should have had 40 shots against Essendon
They marked 10+ uncontested turnover marks in the 1st qtr alone

[Roadrunner]

I suppose the difference is Hodge was barking out instructions to a game plan that netted 3 Flags.

I'm not yet convinced we have that right first before we start talking about whether or not guys are following instructions

Defence is under siege and a shambles as we consistently turn it over at bad parts of the ground or only by luck get it into our fwd 50.

Sort a decent game plan or setup before we worry about demeanour

Of course we need a decent game plan, but you need to have both the skills and the teamwork to implement it. Do enough of our players have the skills required? When your confidence is down, it looks like your skills have vanished- look at Lloyd for example. Maybe Father Time has caught up with him but his form lately has been awful- we’re a man short already when he’s on the field. There are at least another 6 or more playing without confidence and this means that we’re not playing like a team, not confident in our ability to outplay our opponents.

You can have the best game plan in the world, if the players are not capable for whatever reason to implement it, it ain’t worth much. I’m convinced our main problem is a lack of self confidence, and this is hugely due to our key players being out injured for such long spells. Their replacements are simply not good enough at this stage and so deep down they don’t have that self belief. And I honestly don’t think the coaches can do much about that. Sure, you can move players around and play with the magnets and things may improve a bit but it won’t last the whole game as the fundamentals haven’t changed. When Errol, Paps, Mills and Amartey come back fit and 100%, it will be like a new team. The reality is that we don’t have the depth to cover these players, and I can add Logan, Harry and Robbie Fox to that group.

When you take all those players out of your team, what we have witnessed lately is not totally unexpected- we simply don’t have the cattle guys.
Cox won’t blame it on injuries and he will never come out and say that replacements (and some others) are not good enough, but of course that’s the truth. He simply can’t say that without denting their confidence even more!

At present we have Grundy, Heeney, the Chad, the Lizard, Melican, Juzzy, McCartin, Ramps, and Rowy who are ok- the rest are way below the required standard at the moment. And we’re not going to win games with 10 -12 players below par.

[liz]

It’s also about all team mates trusting all other team mates, and that’s not what we have at the moment. Maybe players have some (semi-valid) reasons not to trust team mates (in the sense of trust in their ability). But if you’re a player already down on confidence, either because you’re down on form, or you’re still finding your way at the top level, knowing your team mates don't entirely trust you isn’t exactly going to boost your confidence.

I saw a few occasions on Sat where one of our younger players had run to make themselves an open option for an easy short kick but were ignored by the player with the ball in favour of yet another long, aimless kick to a contest (or, just as likely) the open arms of an unguarded Crows player.

Collingwood players all have total faith in each other at the moment. They know they can release the ball instantaneously and someone will be running past to receive. They can commit themselves fully to winning a ground ball contest, knowing that if they don’t win it, there’ll be a team mate right there to pressure the opponent who does take off with the ball.

We had that this time last year too. We don’t at the moment.

[Roadrunner]

It’s also about all team mates trusting all other team mates, and that’s not what we have at the moment. Maybe players have some (semi-valid) reasons not to trust team mates (in the sense of trust in their ability). But if you’re a player already down on confidence, either because you’re down on form, or you’re still finding your way at the top level, knowing your team mates don't entirely trust you isn’t exactly going to boost your confidence.

I saw a few occasions on Sat where one of our younger players had run to make themselves an open option for an easy short kick but were ignored by the player with the ball in favour of yet another long, aimless kick to a contest (or, just as likely) the open arms of an unguarded Crows player.

Collingwood players all have total faith in each other at the moment. They know they can release the ball instantaneously and someone will be running past to receive. They can commit themselves fully to winning a ground ball contest, knowing that if they don’t win it, there’ll be a team mate right there to pressure the opponent who does take off with the ball.

We had that this time last year too. We don’t at the moment.

It’s a confidence thing Liz- a coach can do a lot to instil it in the players but then they have to find it themselves. Mental toughness is needed now and our senior players to help the likes of Cleary, Corey and Gus and others who are all trying their best I’m sure.

[BRS328]

Yep. McVeigh used to get crap on here for all his pointing and cajoling of teammates, but Hodge did it and Pendlebury does it. In fact, the best leaders do. They’re organising and holding teammates accountable. And good teams can cop it. I’ve heard Jordan Lewis talk about how much his Hawks teammates expected and respected it from Hodge, for example. And they’d all do it to each other.

We could do with a few more like that right now. Of course, it doesn’t help that our captain was so moronic in getting himself suspended last week.

The only thing I will say is that Meek ( Hawks ) and the Freo captain got off recently because the club’s choose to challenge the tribunal decision. There was not much difference in the Mill’s contact other than in the Mill’s case there was no concussion. Why the Swans chose not to challenge the decision is strange. All were similar late contacts

[BRS328]

If we have no one to come in maybe try guys in different positions ?

Put Campbell, Cleary in the middle, ball hunting, Bice on a wing, give the guys the license to chase the God damn ball, be hunters not mitigators

P8ss Lloyd off, even with ball in hand he is short down the line, 30m flour bag
Adams too, he is too fumbly and with his speed that is terminal
Corey in the 2s he has no game sense let alone goal sense.

Hannily has goal sense, Dattolli has goal sense
Ollie over Lloyd.

Anything else on the whole f8cking ground for Blakey, wasting an all time career

That's personnel sorted, now the Coach needs a good look at himself, even when we get the ball we arent dangerous, change his method, if we are turning to ball over fwd of centre consistently that is the coach

Hard to disagree with anything you are saying, but I would add McLean to the same category as Lloyd. He has not taken a genuine contested mark in the past month and is struggling to get to contests. The speed of the game appears to have caught up with both of them