Match Day Rnd.10 Sydney V Hawthorn. 19.50 pm. SCG.

[Markwebbos]

The worst part about that call was that the roles were reversed in the GF last year and Jack was still penalised, with a 50m penalty to boot! Clearly the rule makers need to sort the interpretation out.

I thought Towers slid in head first and his head made contact with his opponents legs, so I think head high contact cancels out contact below the knees and should have been play on.

[mcs]

Players simply don't want it enough. Contrast to giants against pies a few weeks back. Similar 2 players out but hunger got them over the line.

When will we gave that hunger again?

I don't buy its hunger. I do think bad tactics, and a lack of someone on the field to really drag us over the line in tight circumstances is hurting us though. We have no brilliant Goodesy to pop up with an inspirational 5 minutes. We have no Jude Bolton/Kirk like player in the clutches to show the leadership to make the boys go and go and go again. The mix isn't quite right - we've lost far too many games since the 2012 gf in a similar ilk to tonight. This year in particular, we stink in them. Win 2 of the 3 against the Dogs/Pies/Hawks and we'd still be well in contention for a finals berth even with the mixed start to the season. Instead we've now lost 7 of the first 10.

[waswan]

If you are playing Rohan leave him forward, he is good for the occasional mark, a goal or 2 and his pressure is elite

If they want him to play as a back leave him out and play Alir

@@@@ sake how do 5 expert football people sit around a selection table and not come to that conclusion

[Nico]

Mark McClure got it right there is something wrong in Sydney

He said we made too many fundamental errors in general play. There isn't anything wrong in Sydney, we are just not making good decisions in general play. We were very tentative tonight in going for the footy. Hawthorn just made a beeline for the ball and we sat off and watched. Can't blame the coach for that rubbish.

By the way Rampe looked really short on match fitness. Well off his best. Having said that the backline played really well to only concede 12 goals.

[DA_Swan]

But why would he kick to a small player who was point post side. We do this crap too often. Hanners kicked to Florent one on two in the same play. I don't get why he wouldn't have a ping at the goals so late in the game. If there was an obvious player by himself then yes go there. Just brain fades under pressure.

No awareness under pressure there was no one near him he could have bounced and run in - was obviously stuffed like our season !! he has second year blues big time which is costing us - other sides have worked out he can be rattled with the niggly stuff and performance like tonight give them more ammo - we had had our chance like when Jones missed running into open goal at vital stage - hawks again picked us apart on the rebound

[Merdo5555]

I think a 3-7 records says there is a problem

[Nico]

If you are playing Rohan leave him forward, he is good for the occasional mark, a goal or 2 and his pressure is elite

If they want him to play as a back leave him out and play Alir

@@@@ sake how do 5 expert football people sit around a selection table and not come to that conclusion

Completely agree. Rohan is as loose granny's teeth. How many chances can he get?

[Foreign Legion]

If you are playing Rohan leave him forward, he is good for the occasional mark, a goal or 2 and his pressure is elite

If they want him to play as a back leave him out and play Alir

@@@@ sake how do 5 expert football people sit around a selection table and not come to that conclusion

Yep you are pretty much right here. Rohan will never be a backman and Aliir might be one of our best.

Not that Rohan cost us the game - we had the army but just not the impetus.

[mcs]

Completely agree. Rohan is as loose granny's teeth. How many chances can he get?

As I said in the other thread, his mistakes will be so costly if played down back - as it was on the occasion he decided to take them on 30 out from his own goal (just after Hewitt should have got pinged for doing the same thing) and then got pinged for HTB. He also dropped a couple of very much regulation marks as well. You can get away with it up forward to some degree, but down back doing that week in, week out will be catastrophic.

Of course there are reasons for it, but by gee we aren't even close to getting what we would have hoped for out of Rohan over his career so far - and frankly I don't think he'll ever get anywhere near the level we all hoped he would. Its most certainly not for lack of effort, but its never truly clicked at AFL level for him.

[Ludwig]

We've seen that every club has really bad games, even those sitting atop of the table, so why should we be surprised that we just played really poorly as a team. It's going to happen, especially down a couple of men. But things didn't look good from the start. We fumbled and bumbled our way through the game. We could have won, but it would have been a steal if we did.

No point blaming particular players; way too many were poor and the list would be too long. I don't think Longmire asked the players to let them take mark after mark, but the players were just not up to the task.

It was too much to ask coming back from 0-6 and think we could make the finals. There are reasons it hasn't been done before. So let's sit back and enjoy the rest of the season, see our players develop and pick up some good players in the draft.

[bodgie]

[QUOTE=mcs;726287]I don't buy its hunger. I do think bad tactics, and a lack of someone on the field to really drag us over the line in tight circumstances is hurting us though. We have no brilliant Goodesy to pop up with an inspirational 5 minutes. We have no Jude Bolton/Kirk like player in the clutches to show the leadership to make the boys go and go and go again.

Was thinking a similar thing. Now raw will and determination and beastly negativity doesn't do it anymore. You need players that can make cool decisions and execute them well under pressure.

[Nico]

I thought Towers slid in head first and his head made contact with his opponents legs, so I think head high contact cancels out contact below the knees and should have been play on.

He looked to go in with his hands and did make contact with the legs. I thought it was the right decision.

[mcs]

He looked to go in with his hands and did make contact with the legs. I thought it was the right decision.

By the way the rule is written, it was probably the right call. But as I said earlier, the rule stinks and should be changed. Just like the way they are pushing rules in other parts of the game, all it will do in time is discourage players having the courage to go for the ball and take possession, and that will be bad for the game.

Ignoring how the rule is drafted at the moment, I just don't understand what they want a player in Tower's situation to do. Surely they want players going hard to win the footy, as he did.

[Swanny40519]

Agree there is a problem at Sydney.

One is that Horse cannot change his tactics to beat the Hawks and Clarko constantly out coaches him. Why in the hell did we stay 10 mtrs off all the Hawks (all night as well) and give them control of the ball and possession. We were slaughtered in the first half and we did nothing to stop it.

They have beaten us consistently over the past 7-8 years and if Horse is coaching in the future they will still beat us.

Really really unhappy with this loss - season gone now.

[waswan]

when you stop winning the close ones you know your not a good side

weak as piss year with that list