Preview Round 12: Bulldogs vs Cats, Sat 3 June @ 7:25pm - Superhero Stadium

[Vdubs]

This will be over by Qtr time

The first quarter will be, anyway..
I'm anticipating a ferocious hunting version of our team this week

 

[CHAWKTS]

I'm not saying to bottom out... and as some people have mentioned we are probs a few more loses away from really thinking about next year, but I'm just mentioning it now.

I'm saying when the time comes, I won't be disappointed if we subtly put the cue in the rack and make some moves that could be slightly helpful to what I'd think would be a final tilt next year with guys like Hawkins, Duncan, Smith, Rohan etc.

Just things like not flogging the guts out of Blitz every week... Giving him a game off here and there (it may help next year). Giving Dempsey some full games on the wing so maybe he is fast tracked to play that role like he did in the VFL last week in the AFL next season. We are obviously playing kids now, but that's because of injuries. Maybe try some different tactics out. Just anything that would help out for next season.

We haven't really been in this position for a long time... I'm just saying I'm happy to do a few of these things that will likely have us lose an extra game or two later in the season to possibly give us a little improvement next season.

Losing isn't the norm for us but I'm ok with it if I understand why it's happening and continuing to get games into kids with our aging list isn't a bad thing IMO... and yes it'll likely have us miss the 8, not go B2B and get a decent draft pick... I'm can handle that.

You gotta know when to hold them and know when to fold them.

It's just an opinion... We may get some guys back after the bye and just go all in for every game of the year or the old "until it's mathematically impossible to make finals" line.

Time will tell... Maybe if we get smoked really badly tomorrow night and to Port after the bye some others will start to think "what can we do to propel us into next year" like I am a bit more.... But yes it's still earlyish for sure.

Interesting analysis which maybe adds to your perspective

 

[BlakeyNoFlakey]

Interesting analysis which maybe adds to your perspective

View attachment 1702426

I was just about to post this tweet. This is why I think our season is done. If we had a full-strength side playing well, we'd be in the top 4. But players who have missed weeks & months due to injury don't come back into the side in peak form. They'll need a few weeks to get match fit again. So the way it might work out is the Cats will have a bit of a winning run later in the season as team cohesion and form develop, but it'll probably be too late. That's just my opinion, and I hope they prove me wrong.

 

[standupand]

Interesting analysis which maybe adds to your perspective

View attachment 1702426

This is good news. Easiest way to climb the ladder is to beat the teams above you.

 

[Romeoh1]

This will be over by Qtr time

Why? Are the dogs that good? Haven’t we been in every game till the last quarter? I’m expecting us to put up a good fight this week. Comon cats.

 

[STPer18]

Chris Scott

Chris Scott

Age

47

Ht

182cm

Wt

89kg

Pos.

Fwd

Career

Season

Last 5

D

16.6

4star

K

11.2

4star

HB

5.4

4star

M

5.1

5star

T

1.6

4star

G

0.4

3star

No current season stats available

D

13.2

4star

K

10.2

4star

HB

3.0

3star

M

2.2

3star

T

2.8

5star

G

0.4

3star

said it well just then in his presser, they've got some nice names in the middle of the ground, but we're rolling out effectively our premiership-winning forward line. We aren't without a chance, get around us.

 

[you pick one]

Any idea who?

Blits

 

[Kobe Gryant]

Oh i am stoked with no clark no questions there. But do i think the difference between say him and hollands is worth trying to move onto next year early? Not really
I will concede that the fact that we have only missed finals once under scott means its hard to know what the club would do as we dont have much data to go off. Although that year beyond giving a bunch of players a send off in round 23 we didnt really change selection. Apart from the same thing happening ie a fair few older guys deciding to retire and getting a farewell game i doubt we change much.

The reality is that most of the young guys you would want to 'promote' in this scenario (if you write 2023 off) are either injured (clark, neale, conway, kroeger etc) or not ready (foster, riccardi, whyte etc). Most of our really blue chip young guys are already best 23 or injured (see holmes, sdk etc). So theres not much point changing selection or not. Bar say playing mullin more (to prevent homesickness), picking bruhn every week (but realistically with guthrie out for the year and parfitt out of favour thats probably going to happen anyway), and dropping an older guy for simpson (which is the one call i could support because its his 7th year and we need to make a call on delisting him or not so giving him the last 6 games if we cant play finals makes sense), i honestly cant see what other changes we could make that would fit.

Agree, and it's a better draft as well.

Unless things go truly terribly over the next few weeks, I'd rather fight the year out trying to win the flag and get pick 12-18, than shut up shop and try for 7-10.

The difference isn't so vast that it's worth disrespecting our winning culture for....if it was top 5 vs top 15 you might have the discussion...but even with our injuries I highly doubt that.

 

[CatToTheFuture]

Agree, and it's a better draft as well.

Unless things go truly terribly over the next few weeks, I'd rather fight the year out trying to win the flag and get pick 12-18, than shut up shop and try for 7-10.

The difference isn't so vast that it's worth disrespecting our winning culture for....if it was top 5 vs top 15 you might have the discussion...but even with our injuries I highly doubt that.

Especially in this draft, where finishing 13th versus 8th you're probably still picking up Zane Duursma

 

[Finknottle]

Why? Are the dogs that good? Haven’t we been in every game till the last quarter? I’m expecting us to put up a good fight this week. Comon cats.

True but we've been playing teams that will probably not be playing finals. Could have won last week if Cameron had kicked straight. Need to arrest our poor kicking to have a chance against the Dogs. If the Dogs kick poorly and we kick poorly we'll lose by 5 or 6 goals instead of 15 goals. We need to prevent a shellacking that will destroy our percentage. After the break we can focus on winning games.

 

[Vdubs]

True but we've been playing teams that will probably not be playing finals. Could have won last week if Cameron had kicked straight. Need to arrest our poor kicking to have a chance against the Dogs. If the Dogs kick poorly and we kick poorly we'll lose by 5 or 6 goals instead of 15 goals. We need to prevent a shellacking that will destroy our percentage. After the break we can focus on winning games.

A shellacking with a shell of our best team

 

[Kobe Gryant]

I'm not saying to bottom out... and as some people have mentioned we are probs a few more loses away from really thinking about next year, but I'm just mentioning it now.

I'm saying when the time comes, I won't be disappointed if we subtly put the cue in the rack and make some moves that could be slightly helpful to what I'd think would be a final tilt next year with guys like Hawkins, Duncan, Smith, Rohan etc.

Just things like not flogging the guts out of Blitz every week... Giving him a game off here and there (it may help next year). Giving Dempsey some full games on the wing so maybe he is fast tracked to play that role like he did in the VFL last week in the AFL next season. We are obviously playing kids now, but that's because of injuries. Maybe try some different tactics out. Just anything that would help out for next season.

We haven't really been in this position for a long time... I'm just saying I'm happy to do a few of these things that will likely have us lose an extra game or two later in the season to possibly give us a little improvement next season.

Losing isn't the norm for us but I'm ok with it if I understand why it's happening and continuing to get games into kids with our aging list isn't a bad thing IMO... and yes it'll likely have us miss the 8, not go B2B and get a decent draft pick... I'm can handle that.

You gotta know when to hold them and know when to fold them.

It's just an opinion... We may get some guys back after the bye and just go all in for every game of the year or the old "until it's mathematically impossible to make finals" line.

Time will tell... Maybe if we get smoked really badly tomorrow night and to Port after the bye some others will start to think "what can we do to propel us into next year" like I am a bit more.... But yes it's still earlyish for sure.

To add to what CatToTheFuture said: If you didn't follow footy closely and just looked at our current youth stocks, both in and around the side...you'd argue we're already rebuilding.

Bruhn, O Henry, Bowes*, Sav*, SDK and Holmes have all been given extended runs in the senior side. All best 22 to varying degrees.

*New to us, new position etc

Clark, Mullin, Whyte, Dempsey and Knevitt have all tasted senior footy to different extents at the halfway mark of the season...with Conway, Willis and Neale highly likely to have joined them if not for injury.

Then there's the guys who are not 'young'...but young enough to be around for our next premiership assault if we were to fall away: Close, Stengle, Miers, J Henry, Zuthrie, and MOC.

*Arguable: Atkins, Kolo, Parfitt and SOS...depending on both age and form.

The only further moves we could make would be moronic mistakes that pitiful clubs like Carlton and Melbourne have made...like leaving out Hawkins for Foster, or Smith for Riccardi while they're both still performing at the level required.

It throws away the culture that Geelong have built for 20+ years. The culture that turned this club from a laughing stock to an Australian sporting powerhouse.

I suspect that as the year goes on your Dempsey hope will come true. If he continues to dominate games on the wing they'll play him there no doubt.... but we don't gift games here, or go into games purposely not at our best. It's not the GFC way.

At the very least, not in early June. Late July, August could still be up for debate....but we'll wait and see.

 

[Baudolino]

Interesting quotes from Scott towards the end of this press conference:

Some of our players are a little bit too passive in the way they go about it. Maybe they do need to play with the confidence that befits their status within the game. They're not rookies anymore. They're not feeling their way into the game. They're really hardened, high-level, A-grade AFL-level footballers. So we want them to show that.

By Scott's circumspect, protect-the-players-at-all-costs standards that's the equivalent of foul-mouthed Ron Barrasi style half-time bake.

 

[Romeoh1]

True but we've been playing teams that will probably not be playing finals. Could have won last week if Cameron had kicked straight. Need to arrest our poor kicking to have a chance against the Dogs. If the Dogs kick poorly and we kick poorly we'll lose by 5 or 6 goals instead of 15 goals. We need to prevent a shellacking that will destroy our percentage. After the break we can focus on winning games.

We have been up against pretty good midfields though. I think we will go ok- muscle memory!
Yes agree- load up for the second half. Let’s give it a good tilt when we have people back after the break.

 

[Kobe Gryant]

Interesting quotes from Scott towards the end of this press conference:



By Scott's circumspect, protect-the-players-at-all-costs standards that's the equivalent of foul-mouthed Ron Barrasi style half-time bake.

I like it.

It's that old mentoring philosophy of 'I'm only being hard on you, because I know you can be better'

If he didn't believe in them, he wouldn't bother....and I suspect he's trying to restore confidence in a group that without Joel, has appeared timid at times.

 

[Jhye Clark 13]

Interesting quotes from Scott towards the end of this press conference:



By Scott's circumspect, protect-the-players-at-all-costs standards that's the equivalent of foul-mouthed Ron Barrasi style half-time bake.

I found that very interesting too.

 

[STPer18]

Yep. We're the REIGNING PREMIERS (love saying/typing that), nothing wrong with a bit of swagger and earned confidence.

 

[Mr Meow]

Interesting quotes from Scott towards the end of this press conference:



By Scott's circumspect, protect-the-players-at-all-costs standards that's the equivalent of foul-mouthed Ron Barrasi style half-time bake.

A rare glimpse into actual Scotty and also the God to honest truth that's been evident since the Richmond game. Yes, there's been a lack of cohesion and quality from the stack up of injuries. But also, there are many good-excellent premiership players who have been playing like a shadow of their '22 selves. Throw in some terrible kicking at goal and three entirely winnable games, even with our squad, have been lost. Would've been nice to pick up one or two.

I still think we can win this if some of these players step up. We know it will be challenging around the stoppages, but our forwards, wingers and defenders need to dominate and we must be clinical.

 

[Lana]

Interesting quotes from Scott towards the end of this press conference:



By Scott's circumspect, protect-the-players-at-all-costs standards that's the equivalent of foul-mouthed Ron Barrasi style half-time bake.

That sounds like coach is starting to feel under the pressure and is throwing the players under the bus

 

[Tackle_happy]

Agreed.
Have not seen yet what the IT is that he has.
I used to think that about Josh Caddy

He got better the more games he played, to the point where just before he injured his calf there was a noticeable and, in my opinion, sizeable, net benefit to the team in what he was able to do (kicking for goal aside on a couple of occasions).

Very bullish on him once he is back in the team and blown out the cob webs.

 

[Mr Meow]

That sounds like coach is starting to feel under the pressure and is throwing the players under the bus

Is he under pressure or starting to feel the pressure? If you feel under the pressure, you've probably avoided it.

Hope the players can recover from being labelled somewhat passive lately. What a roast!

 

[kickazz]

Could have won last week if Cameron had kicked straight.

Very true but geez the Giants missed some easy ones too.

 

[Mr Meow]

Very true but geez the Giants missed some easy ones too.

We won the expected score though, right? Then against Richmond we lost it by 2 points although if we'd kicked straight first half maybe Tigers would've died in the second.

So yeah both were somewhat thrown away.

 

[CatToTheFuture]

We won the expected score though, right? Then against Richmond we lost it by 2 points although if we'd kicked straight first half maybe Tigers would've died in the second.

So yeah both were somewhat thrown away.

I think we actually lost the expected score against gws

 

[DV2000]

If I’m not mistaken, it’s been at least 17 years since we lost 4 games in a row, but unfortunately it feels like that streak might come to an end tomorrow. Was hoping to be significantly closer to our Best 22 this week, but with only Rohan coming in, we’re still so far from it.