What does last night mean?

[snajik]

beat brisbane at the gabba

True. Still not overly noteworthy. My jury (all 12 of me) is still out.

[ash3]

Its been said before but this week will tell if Saturday night was just a bump in the road.

[NMWBloods]

whats worrying is that we have to play our two bogey teams in 2 of our remaining games. They will be 8 point games and, reasonably assuming we will lose both (last night proved we have not learnt a thing against the pies so we'll probably get done by the Crows), we will have to win all our games against Hawthorn, Geelong and Bulldogs to get 4th. All this assuming we win our "gimmes" against the Blues, Dockers and Lions.

Hope Im wrong, but last night's performance was so disturbing that I think it is more of a reflection of our true level compared to our 6 previous wins against teams in the bottom half of the ladder.

That's certainly quite a possibility. In a complete volte face to my OP it could quite conceivably be argued that the team is currently at a crossroads and in hindsight the Collingwood game was a turning point. Is the vaunted Bloods culture failing?

On frequent occasions in the past when a premiership team tries to hang on too long (eg: Ess & NM earlier this decade, Haw & Coll early 90s, Rich & NM early to mid 80s) it has ended up dropping back significantly.

We are prime candidates with still a lot of older players in the side from our GF years. They are battling on manfully but it remains to be seen whether they have enough left in them for another go at finals. If not then it could be the beginnings of a down period. I thought that the beginning of the year we would have a down period but the past couple of months suggested perhaps not. At this stage it's really difficult to tell.

[dendol]

Who are you, and what have you done with NMWBloods???

Agree with what you said. Yep, one loss doesn't mean.
We haven't been playing great footy for a while, only better than our opponent, and last night our opponent managed to play better than us, which wasn't hard.
And at finals time, it is a brand new ball game.

After last year's embarrassing KO in the EF, we no longer have that finals aura about us. Its not that difficult to play better than your Richmonds or Essendons this year and we have now shown we just cant match it with the teams above or around us.

Perhaps I've had my expectations raised higher than it should have been this year and instead of focusing on flag chances and top 4, it should be about the solid core of talent we have coming through.

[robamiee]

I think last night, is just a hump in the road..
Geelong had a shocker against the pies and we had a shocker, yet only went down by 5 goals...which is not much in todays game...

Most sides will have a shocker in the year, i think this was ours..
we did show in the fourth what we can do, and i think it is something we need to do against the pies is just throw caution to the wind against them...

Our boys who have knee injuries looked very cautious on that pathetic surface on the night you could see in their approach (maljescki, kennelly).

Bird needs to start being that outside midefielder we desperately need.

That was clear what we lacked on the night a game breaking outside midfielder, plus some better goal kicking, whether the surface had something to do with it, as both sides struggled on the night.

[dendol]

That's certainly quite a possibility. In a complete volte face to my OP it could quite conceivably be argued that the team is currently at a crossroads and in hindsight the Collingwood game was a turning point. Is the vaunted Bloods culture failing?

On frequent occasions in the past when a premiership team tries to hang on too long (eg: Ess & NM earlier this decade, Haw & Coll early 90s, Rich & NM early to mid 80s) it has ended up dropping back significantly.

We are prime candidates with still a lot of older players in the side from our GF years. They are battling on manfully but it remains to be seen whether they have enough left in them for another go at finals. If not then it could be the beginnings of a down period. I thought that the beginning of the year we would have a down period but the past couple of months suggested perhaps not. At this stage it's really difficult to tell.

At this stage, our kids and old blokes are good enough to beat the crap teams by just playing footy, but our coach is not good enough to come up with a plan to get close to the teams equal or better than us.

Our previous games against Hawthorn have mostly been attacking affairs and it will be interesting to see if our players have the confidence to continue with the gameplan that was so successful before the break, or if they have gone back into their shells and revert to the awful tactics we saw against the pies.

[NMWBloods]

Well, today probably means what the worst perspective of last week means. My optimistic outlook of where we are going and last week was an aberration looks wrong. My objective view at the start of the year that we will simply make up numbers in finals and the view during the season that our 'easy' draw has flattered us thus far looks increasingly correct. Most important will be to see how we can progress and plan for next year.

[dendol]

yep, thought that would be the case. We simply aren't good enough against the tops teams. I hope Roos continues to give the kids games and not suddenly bring back Mathews et al in an attempt to try something new.