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Melican was at his best three or four seasons ago when he seemed to be taking up the Marty Mattner-type role, often as a spare and a run-off player as much as a man-on-man defender. Our back half set-up has changed considerably over the past couple of seasons, and has not settled into the kind of cohesive whole-more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts units to which we have been accustomed.
I was concerned that we went into the GC game considerably undermanned in defence—McCartin and Campbell out, and only Brand in—which meant that we had no designated defence rotation (I didn't see the warm-ups where you usually get a a sense of how the lines are being set up). This lead me to wonder whether Mills was going to move back, but that didn't seem to happen.
So we were already down a defender going in: Melican, Brand, Hewitt, Lloyd, Cunningham, and Dawson. Hewitt is not really a key defender, as we know: more a mid/tagger. Cunningham offers run, Dawson kicking accuracy, and Lloyd distributing strengths. Once Hewitt went out, we were down to two larger bodies (Melican and Brand), neither of whom have had much match time in recent years, and four smaller bodies, some of whom were having bad days. No wonder they looked in disarray.
Once the 45 inside kick was denied (by a mixture of GC filling space, as Essendon and Giants had done and the subsequent unforced errors), the team seemed to stop moving: nothing from behind the ball to set anything up by hand or running through the corridor, and nothing ahead of the ball in the way of leads or decoys. Handball chains ran out of receivers, or handballs were going to static players in worse positions that those dishing it off. Reid was having an off-day, so our Plan B options along the line (where he has been clunking them recently) were limited. We ended up with no controlled transition at all: just bombs into attacking 50. To blame the lack of forward defence pressure as the ball came back out so quickly I think misses the point that the entries were so terrible, with very few kicks to advantage. And GC were a bit harder at it, for sure.
I liked Kennedy's game, a lot of Warner, and thought Florent found the ball, space, and at least changed the angles a bit. Sinclair really struggled, and while Parker was tireless, he was either getting little voice from his team-mates, or has lost a half metre in pace, and seemed to get caught holding the ball a little bit too often. Rowbottom looked underdone, and Heeney probably shouldn't have played. Gulden was pretty much unsighted.
I was concerned that we went into the GC game considerably undermanned in defence—McCartin and Campbell out, and only Brand in—which meant that we had no designated defence rotation (I didn't see the warm-ups where you usually get a a sense of how the lines are being set up). This lead me to wonder whether Mills was going to move back, but that didn't seem to happen.
So we were already down a defender going in: Melican, Brand, Hewitt, Lloyd, Cunningham, and Dawson. Hewitt is not really a key defender, as we know: more a mid/tagger. Cunningham offers run, Dawson kicking accuracy, and Lloyd distributing strengths. Once Hewitt went out, we were down to two larger bodies (Melican and Brand), neither of whom have had much match time in recent years, and four smaller bodies, some of whom were having bad days. No wonder they looked in disarray.
Once the 45 inside kick was denied (by a mixture of GC filling space, as Essendon and Giants had done and the subsequent unforced errors), the team seemed to stop moving: nothing from behind the ball to set anything up by hand or running through the corridor, and nothing ahead of the ball in the way of leads or decoys. Handball chains ran out of receivers, or handballs were going to static players in worse positions that those dishing it off. Reid was having an off-day, so our Plan B options along the line (where he has been clunking them recently) were limited. We ended up with no controlled transition at all: just bombs into attacking 50. To blame the lack of forward defence pressure as the ball came back out so quickly I think misses the point that the entries were so terrible, with very few kicks to advantage. And GC were a bit harder at it, for sure.
I liked Kennedy's game, a lot of Warner, and thought Florent found the ball, space, and at least changed the angles a bit. Sinclair really struggled, and while Parker was tireless, he was either getting little voice from his team-mates, or has lost a half metre in pace, and seemed to get caught holding the ball a little bit too often. Rowbottom looked underdone, and Heeney probably shouldn't have played. Gulden was pretty much unsighted.
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