Changes Round 14 v Carlton

[hot potato]

To label Armstrong so derisively is a bit rich, he went and got more ball than many others. There are going to be plenty of mistakes made in those conditions and with the 'nothing to lose' mentality of PP, which happened to come off on this occasion .
They will dine out on it for a fair while.
HP

[Melbourne_Blood]

In: ferocious attack, immense pressure, executing skills, spread from contests, sticking tackles . Out: Piss poor attitude, playing like millionaires, showing no fight. And Armstrong.

[Captain]

Armstrong was not a total dud. He was beaten. But so was smith who never looked like he wanted the ball. Who is the better player - the experienced player or the inexperienced one.

Smith is not soft. Smith doesn't turn the ball over most of the time. The comparison is laughable.

[dimelb]

Armstrong is noted for his accurate field kicking. I watched drop-jawed as he lined up a kick with minimum pressure on him and put it straight on the chest of a Port player.

[707]

Folks, we aint got anyone to come in so nobody is going to get dropped.

As a previous poster noted, from the Greatness 2012 side we are missing AJ, Mattner, Shaw, LRT, Mumford, Reid, Jetta and also the much improved Everitt. That's a fair chunk of a side missing, eight it total.

We have only added this year Mitchell, Tippett and Rampe so we are at least five down, nearly a quarter of a side so in an even competition we will get exposed by teams like Poor Power. We desperately need a couple more to step up to AFL standard and at this point in time I don't believe any are,

The worry is whether we can get back sufficient of the missing to make it deep into September again. So let's not get hysterical about yesterday's loss, it was always on the cards when the injury list grew again in the last fortnight.

[Melbournehammer]

Smith is not soft. Smith doesn't turn the ball over most of the time. The comparison is laughable.

what is soft is coming on a website anonymously and labelling players duds. The game should be noted for what it was. Armstrong was willing to take the ball and turned it over. smith didnt want it, but was just as fumbly as anyone on the day.

i am not saying smith is soft. he is a very very good defender. but he doesnt often want the ball and his delivery at times is awful. but he gets it less than others so it isnt as obvious as reg.

i am just sick of people bagging players, particularly in the games where people would struggle to find ANY winners on the day. To then turn around and bag individuals I have come to realise is pathetic.

The bigger question is what went wrong and what can you do about this ? We can always blame jesse white and armstrong and whoever the last on first off is that we want.

but longmire was right i think - the problem was downfield and it was the midfield which was absolutely putrid. we couldnt clear the ball all day, lobbe beat pyke comprehensively on the day, and we were beaten on both the inside and outside. there was very little run other than from jack.

lest it be thought it was only our midfielders the forwards and coaches got beaten. the half forward line of white, mcglynn and bolton was terrible and as we were chasing the game in the last quarter the stupid structural system of tippett and white on the wing with the half forwards back inside fifty meant that we kicked it long and the ball rebounded so quickly. so coaching deserves some criticism for the strategy when we were in trouble.

equally, none of the defenders deserves a pat on the back. they trailed their men, dropped marks, fell off tackles, kept handpassing backwards to persons in worse positions and failed to shepherd at all effectively when doing so. we couldnt clear it, couldnt kick it couldnt hand pass it and couldnt mark it. And it was across the board. we looked slow, and port looked like from the second quarter onwards that they thought they really could win it and we ceased looking like we thought we would win in the third quarter - and we didnt really have anyone step into the breach.

it reminded me of the north loss when we conceded was it ten goals in the final quarter. we stopped looking like we knew how to win and knew how to use the ball or even to get it. we would have been out of the game at three quarter time if we hadnt been kicking with the breeze and each port player missed from 40 metres out having marked inside fifty.

it was a bad game all round. stop bagging the weaker players.

[Ludwig]

I have an American friend that I have introduced Aussie Rules to. He has commented many times what a totally different game wet weather footy is to dry weather footy. We tried to play dry weather footy yesterday. You can't have a game plan where you expect to let the ball constantly come into your defensive end and explode out of there with a string of possessions and score at the other end. Ain't gunna happen.

It was like we were playing against the 2005 Swans. They wouldn't give up. And they killed us off in the last 15 minutes of the game. I hate wet weather footy. It generally favours the weaker team. It becomes a bit of a crap shoot. You just have to put yourself in a position to score as often as possible by the luck of the bounce of the ball. We need to have another game plan for wet conditions if we expect to win those sort of games. We became intoxicated with how well were executing our game plan in the previous weeks and didn't adjust to the change of conditions.

I don't blame the loss on injuries.Our best players didn't play well. Port were missing Travis Boak in conditions that would have suited him.

We should learn something from this game. I think we will smash Carlton regardless of personnel.

[Jeynez]

Hopefully this game is simply a one-off. It honestly looked like to me our players went into this game thinking Port were another bye-week. I don't think we should single out players when our entire team played poorly. Not sure what changes we could make given all the injuries. I guess (if fit) the obvious ones would be:

In: Reid, Everitt, Jetta
Out: Goodes, Armstrong, Lamb

However, I still believe we can easily account for Carlton regardless of our players, just need bring back the run and tackling pressure.

[GongSwan]

I hate games this wet, it'sa lottery and just too hard to judge individual performaces

[stellation]

I hate games this wet, it'sa lottery and just too hard to judge individual performaces

It's funny, isn't it. Apart from it just being wet, the ground really looked to be holding a lot of water on the surface and not draining at all well that compounded things and then the wind seemed to be just completely crazy.

[ernie koala]

It's funny, isn't it. Apart from it just being wet, the ground really looked to be holding a lot of water on the surface and not draining at all well that compounded things and then the wind seemed to be just completely crazy.

Maybe they watered the ground overnight.....And plugged up the drains.....I wouldn't put it past them.

[RogueSwan]

Again, everyone is looking at the last one in as though that is the reason we lost. The reason we, IMO, lost is that about half the team were just not good enough yesterday, not because Armstrong/ latest culprit played.

[Bloodthirsty]

Armstrong has to come out. However, if Goodes doesn't pull up, who the $#&% is going to come in if no one has recovered from the injury??

You would hope Everitt pulls up if Reid and Jetta don't. But if Goodes misses, this solves nothing.

[Dosser]

Armstrong has to come out. However, if Goodes doesn't pull up, who the $#&% is going to come in if no one has recovered from the injury??

You would hope Everitt pulls up if Reid and Jetta don't. But if Goodes misses, this solves nothing.

Rohan has started running again...

[Doctor]

Yes we were outenthused but you can't read too much into the game because of he playing surface. In the dry we'd have been 6 goals up at half time and cruised to victory. This was not "playing in the wet". This was playing in a swimming pool.