Match Day. Round 1 Sydney V Port Adelaide SCG. 4.35pm.

[RogueSwan]

After watching the replay I'm not as concerned as I was at first. The difference in the teams was work rate. We were beaten by weight of numbers at the contest and they were able to keep up the pressure till the end. We simply will have to get back to our usual pressure footy and we should be okay...

this was my feeling too.
Maybe the team forgot that, in every game, you have to bring your best or you will get beaten. This season could be a very even season with no easy games at all.

[Matimbo]

Positives: Buddy tearing it up and how good to see Reid kicking goals again. Those really were about the only 2 positives weren't they.

Buddy and Reid - totally agree. Not much mention in this thread of Zak Jones. I thought he had a good game, seemed to be a bit of a step up for him from last season which was another positive for me.

[barry]

We probably have a post-mitchel adjustment period.

I dont think Mitchel is a super star, but his style of play (a prolific ball getter, dishing out to outsiders) takes some replacing. While we have players who can do that job, they are not specialists like Mitchel. We are probably finding out that we are a bit "outside-mid" heavy at the moment.

[chuckie]

I didn't see or here the game on Saturday but going by what I am reading here I thought I would express my opinion. For years our backline has been good but that has been helped by our players up the ground applying a lot of pressure on the person with the ball not allowing them time to deliver the ball. If you look at the games that we have been beaten easily in recent years it's because our mids and forwards have been down and the ball has come into our defensive area far to easily and our defenders are slow and a bit undersized, so our players up the ground as the coaches often say have to play their role.
A lot of the scribes talk about how dangerous our forward line is but how many times do we hit a target when delivering the ball not often so a lot of the time it is just bomb forward or we kick it to Buddy even if he has three on him. We have won playing like this because our mids have controlled the game and we have had enough of the ball forward to kick 12-14 goals. Another thing that annoys me and nearly every team does it, is that when the ball is in our backline all our players are there so if we get the ball back and run we have nowhere to go this worked well when we played the sling shot footy in 2012 but we haven't played like that since then so we tend to kick it down the line which can result in a deliberate out of bounds if it goes out or to an out numbered forward, why not buck the system and leave a couple of forwards forward maybe a Tippet and a running forward so if it is not marked we have a player at ground level. We will still win our share of games this year but due to our lack of depth if our top players are a little down I think we will struggle against the other top teams.

[Crusty]

We were definitely flat....and sometimes that just happens.

On the other hand, we got those couple of goals early and then once PA got back we seemed to be chasing all day.
Were we getting ahead of ourselves? Thinking "this'll be easy, but the big game is against the Dogs next week"?

The positive I took is that it was the kick up the bum we needed.

Other random thoughts:
Robbo was good until he was injured.
I think Kizza was carrying his hip injury. I saw him rub it a couple of times. I expect he was selected for experience.
At the ground and without watching the replay it seemed to me that Naismith got his hand to the ball in the ruck first, but the PA players read it better.
The biggest indication of not being switched on is that our players were calling for the ball while standing still. Around the ruck the handballs nowadays are so short that it is easy to peel off and pressure the receiver. Teams that are "up" have the receivers moving constantly. I also gained the impression we were too close in, while PA had players moving wide around the contest so once they cleared they had space, which placed all the pressure on our defence.

[waswan]

Perspective
1.Every year for the last 2 if our midfield hasnt ALL shown up we have lost
2. 5 of our 22 are out
3. 2 of those 5 are small fwds (where we got beaten)
4. another 2 of those 5 are part time small fwds
5. Reid and Buddy need to rotate (one oit one home) between FF with the resting Ruck and work to the HBF
6. Tippett has weeks where he looks like its his first game, he needs to het his @@@@ together from Round 1 and stay consistent
7. Alir being out restricts Rampe, we want rampe running off back flank and not locking down a fwd

Week 1 some guys are past it but we cant cover everyone.

[bloodspirit]

It's good to see the comments settling down a bit after the initial hysteria.

I lay the blame more in the laps of our underperforming senior players than our bottom 6. A lot of complaints have been made about our bottom 6. I think more than is warranted. We have 5 of our best 22 out and our depth is no worse than most teams (GWS, Bulldogs and maybe Suns are the notable exceptions) . It's normal that a team's bottom 6 are bottom 6 for a reason. In our case we also have to think about the alternatives that present themselves. Looking at Towers and Harry C, who play predominantly forward, who are they? Fox, Edwards, Dawson, Hayward, Rose and BJ. Do any of them inspire you with confidence they would have done better? I think we should try Edwards ahead of Towers this week but it's a gamble and I can understand giving Towers the first opportunity. Dawson is underdone. Fox was poor in JLT#3. Hayward is not ready yet. Rose and BJ have not really shown themselves to be better than Towers and Harry C. In fact those 4 are quickly closing in on list clogger status (I feel this is a touch harsh on Harry C who is near enough deserving of depth player status). This does not mean there is no hope because not counting Paps and Rohan, there are players who we can legitimately hope will overtake these 4 in the future, if not now. They include Hayward, Dawson, Leonardis and maybe Ronke, Fisher, Murray. Hayward especially has heaps of promise. Fisher and Ronke are two to watch.

Returning however to the senior players, I have no idea why they underperformed. Parker was a bit underdone but, really, there's no excuses that I'm aware of. As someone, probably liz, said, it's not the first time they've had an off day and it won't be the last. However they do need to step up. The less experienced players (with which our team abounds) need the seniors to lead the way and we are entitled to put the responsibility on them. Our whole list strategy of investing in a marquee 8-12 players requires this. And so do their pay packets. What's more, we know they are capable of bearing this responsibility as they have long been doing it.

Interestingly, to me Horse's comments laid the blame at the feet of the players. He does this from time to time. Quite possibly justifiably, especially in this case. However I can rarely recall him taking putting his hand up after a loss (or blaming other coaches - now that would be unedifying!). However, I wish he would occasionally take a bit more ownership when results go against us - beyond the banal "we have to get better" platitudes he routinely trots out. Then again, it is probably also part of his style just not giving anything much specific away when talking to the media.

Flying South - I don't agree playing 3 tall forwards doesn't work defensively, especially not when two of them (Buddy and Sam) are so mobile and great at applying defensive pressure. However, I did think this was a reason that we shouldn't have added Cameron to the forward line as several were suggesting.

I like posts from chrispy2808 (#116 - it is such a welcome relief not to hear all the usual griping about the umps), annew (#120), dejavoodoo (#123 - mostly agree) and chuckie (#169 - great point about team defence helping out the backline).

[Mountain Man]

I noticed that Lloyd and Cunningham were Time on Ground of 93% and 94%. No doubt that was, in part, caused by Robinson's injury, who would have possibly rotated with them if available. They must have been very cooked by the end of each quarter.

That statistic seems to me to sum up a reason why we looked listless

[ScottH]

How to justify this loss.
We've only won 4 of the last 12 Round 1 games.
2 were against GWS when they were crap.
1 against the Pies last year when they were crap and the one against the bombers when we should have lost if they hadn't kicked 7 goals to nothing in the last term.

Feel better???


No neither do I.

[bloodspirit]

Interestingly, to me Horse's comments laid the blame at the feet of the players. He does this from time to time. Quite possibly justifiably, especially in this case. However I can rarely recall him taking putting his hand up after a loss (or blaming other coaches - now that would be unedifying!). However, I wish he would occasionally take a bit more ownership when results go against us - beyond the banal "we have to get better" platitudes he routinely trots out. Then again, it is probably also part of his style just not giving anything much specific away when talking to the media.

This is the sort of thing I would like to see from Horse just occasionally, where he feels it is warranted: Optimistic Lyon cops blame for Freo's failure to stop slick Cats - AFL.com.au. Horse must make mistakes too but I can't ever remember hearing about them.

[Wardy]

How to justify this loss.
We've only won 4 of the last 12 Round 1 games.
2 were against GWS when they were crap.
1 against the Pies last year when they were crap and the one against the bombers when we should have lost if they hadn't kicked 7 goals to nothing in the last term.

Feel better???


No neither do I.

You hit the nail on the head!!!

[dejavoodoo44]

This is the sort of thing I would like to see from Horse just occasionally, where he feels it is warranted: Optimistic Lyon cops blame for Freo's failure to stop slick Cats - AFL.com.au. Horse must make mistakes too but I can't ever remember hearing about them.

Interesting. That's extremely rare: a coach taking a bit of the blame for a loss, by saying there was an area where he could have prepared them better.
Though I'm still waiting for a coach to say something along the lines of, "Really, I'm to blame, the game plan was crap. I don't know what I was thinking? "

[ugg]

Hartlett fined $1500 for striking Foote

[undy]

Was Sweet Caroline dropped ? Or was that just a side effect of my usual memory suppression habit when we lose.

[bloodspirit]

Someone posted that the speaker/audio system at the SCG wasn't working properly.