There has been a lot of whinging and hand wringing in this thread and a mass of overreaction. Okay the game was very ordinary to watch but it would be a mistake not to take some positives out of the game.
I thought out defense was excellent even with Merrett up forward. Patfull had a great game on Pav and Drummond controlled things from the back nicely. There was a bit of overemphasis on getting him the ball but overall he slotted in nicely into the unit. He pulled up short a little fitness wise but that should improve as things progress.
We showed the ability to control the ball for long periods and hit up short to intermediate targets. Our midfielders did not run forward enough and looks laterally or backwards way too much but when we tried to control the ball we did pretty well. There needs to be more balance in the approach but it was good to see that we could control the ball as much as we did and this is not something which has been pretty evident up until now.
Longer in the ruck was hammered by Sandi but when he rucked against Clarke he was clearly the better ruck option. That was a very nice hit out for our first year ruck and one that encourages me a great deal. The fact that his kicking was solid was also a big positive for me.
Merrett up forward was very good in limited opportunities. He competed very well and given the backs held in his absence I think throwing him forward is a legitimate option during games and one that might pay dividends.
Harwood was strong in the middle and gave us a different look in there and played some time up forward too from memory. He looked composed and got a decent amount of ball together with 7 hard hitting tackles. Polec had a very quiet first three quarters after coming on for Leuey managing only 5 possessions (although he did get a goal with his first). In the last though it looked like Voss green lighted him to chase the ball and he picked up 10 disposals for the quarter to run out the last quarter very strongly. He should take a lot of confidence from that performance and you would have to think Voss will open him up to chase the ball more in coming weeks.
In summary I thought there were quite a few positives to take out of this game. Sure the game plan seemed to be taken to the extreme by the players but they did show a good ability to adopt the game plan albeit only in their back half. If they go with something similar in other games but run harder to get open forward of centre and work on a few moves to free up guys then I think we could win with it. I expect though that this will just be a change of tempo play that is brought out at different times during games from here on in. We tried something different which wasn't pretty but we executed reasonably well within certain parameters. The coaching staff is seeing what this team can do and now they have a bette idea. This was always a game which was going to be very difficult for us to win. I am not going to jump all over the coaching staff for looking at different ways for us to play.
I thought out defense was excellent even with Merrett up forward. Patfull had a great game on Pav and Drummond controlled things from the back nicely. There was a bit of overemphasis on getting him the ball but overall he slotted in nicely into the unit. He pulled up short a little fitness wise but that should improve as things progress.
We showed the ability to control the ball for long periods and hit up short to intermediate targets. Our midfielders did not run forward enough and looks laterally or backwards way too much but when we tried to control the ball we did pretty well. There needs to be more balance in the approach but it was good to see that we could control the ball as much as we did and this is not something which has been pretty evident up until now.
Longer in the ruck was hammered by Sandi but when he rucked against Clarke he was clearly the better ruck option. That was a very nice hit out for our first year ruck and one that encourages me a great deal. The fact that his kicking was solid was also a big positive for me.
Merrett up forward was very good in limited opportunities. He competed very well and given the backs held in his absence I think throwing him forward is a legitimate option during games and one that might pay dividends.
Harwood was strong in the middle and gave us a different look in there and played some time up forward too from memory. He looked composed and got a decent amount of ball together with 7 hard hitting tackles. Polec had a very quiet first three quarters after coming on for Leuey managing only 5 possessions (although he did get a goal with his first). In the last though it looked like Voss green lighted him to chase the ball and he picked up 10 disposals for the quarter to run out the last quarter very strongly. He should take a lot of confidence from that performance and you would have to think Voss will open him up to chase the ball more in coming weeks.
In summary I thought there were quite a few positives to take out of this game. Sure the game plan seemed to be taken to the extreme by the players but they did show a good ability to adopt the game plan albeit only in their back half. If they go with something similar in other games but run harder to get open forward of centre and work on a few moves to free up guys then I think we could win with it. I expect though that this will just be a change of tempo play that is brought out at different times during games from here on in. We tried something different which wasn't pretty but we executed reasonably well within certain parameters. The coaching staff is seeing what this team can do and now they have a bette idea. This was always a game which was going to be very difficult for us to win. I am not going to jump all over the coaching staff for looking at different ways for us to play.
