Review Round 8, 2015 - Essendon vs Brisbane Lions

[TaylorMade]

I felt this loss was a bit more acceptable than the others because we kept with them until half time and it was clear that a lot of players were having a fair crack at it. Was still disappointing to see the score blow out in the 2nd half.

I've noticed Gardiner has a habit of getting into a bit of a scrap with his opponents early on these days. Doesn't look great when they end up out playing you. Would prefer he showed his toughness through his attack on the footy like he was last year instead of getting into fisty cuffs before the first bounce.

Merrett would have made a huge difference whether it was forward or back today. These kids in the backline have been thrown into the deep end.

Much the same with the forwards. Worrying to hear some of the comments on McStay's workrate.

 

[Shaq attack]

I think the effort was there but entry into the forward was average. The biggest problem was our defensive structures. So man times when Essendon was attacking out entire backline was 3 or 4 meters in front of their opponent, it was a case of kick it long to the goal square and get an easy mark. Clarke, Gardiner and Andrews although inexperienced, need to be much better in terms of their awareness and body position as this was hopeless all game.

All in all not a horrible game and some positive signs for next week.

 

[John_Proctor]

Re mcstay I was saying to my brother leuenberger (and merritt last year) are frustrating because they get to a lot of contests and don't mark it where as mcstay is frustrating because he gets to so few contests but when he does get to a contest he can actually mark.

Leuenberger's hands are bricks... Just puts his hands there and often doesn't even appear to try and close his hands around the ball. Absolutely bizarre and frustrating that someone 203cm can't take a mark. And then when he went into the ruck in the last quarter he was so easily pushed out of the ruck contest.

Mcstay is no Jeremy cameron but given his experience he isn't doing a bad job with this his first goalless game for the year 10 from 8) Comparable to Carlisle this season (10 form 7) who has played 60 more games, is much more hyped, and 4 more years in the system.

He definitely needs to play in front more and lead a bit more rather than just constantly working back to the goal square and then getting caught behind. Of course today he was playing against a qualityoppponent with height, weight and fitness against him.

 

[scoman]

In regards to the HTB issues, I think we need to get a bit smarter. The umps are red hot on guys taking possession and then making no obvious attempt to get rid of it even if he had next to no opportunity. They play this quite a bit and unfortunately for us many of our players get caught out this way especially when we are under pressure and don't want the ball spilling out. Also as I tend to say quite often many of our players are not strong enough to get the arms free to dispose of the ball.
What doesn't get paid often is incorrect disposal which is really what we keep calling for a number of times every game when our players tackle and the opposition just drops the ball. Now we can winge and whine all we like (believe me I do too) but the umps just don't pay incorrect disposal much any more.
Hopefully as our team gets older and let's hope physically stronger we will find the imbalance of HTB and incorrect disposal will be restored.

 

[carnthemlions]

In other news, my Lions supporting uncle was physically assaulted by Essendon supporters leaving the game.

Where is that guy? Essendon games aren't the same without him.

I think he's probably the best special comments commentator going around, aside from Lethal.

I'm not looking to be rational right now, * all those campaigners in the commentary box! But you are right- he clearly knows his stuff.

McStay was fairly awful and has been for the last couple of weeks (8 touches in two games).

Most of the time he refuses to lead and even worse, he deliberately stands a few metres behind his opponent continually trying to get a spectacular mark over the top.

I think we should have tried Paparone forward and McStay down back in the second half. God if we had anyone to replace him with, I would actually be dropping McStay for the s**t he served up to day. And don't get me wrong - it was always going to be extremely difficult. But how about trying to get in front, trying to lead, trying to crash a few packs???

[Edit - just saw the news about McStay being injured very late in the game which is very unfortunate for him, although doesn't change my assessment of his game. We probably now have to play Paparone forward along with Bewick]

Unfortunately Leuy was hardly any better and went back to the soft ways he sometimes plays.

We tend to be a bit bi-polar re: McStay on here. I wasn't convinced that he had a future as a forward at all early in the season. I'm cautiously optimistic about his prospects now though- he's clearly got what it takes. 2nd year KPFs(McStay is in his 1st year as a permanent fwd) will always be extremely inconsistent. Tom Boyd had an absolute shocker today, was subbed out with a total of one handball to his name. It's not easy as a key forward at the moment- defenders just keep getting better at zoning off, blocking space and intercept marking.
I thought Browny's comments on McStay last week during the game were interesting- the club thought he'd be a bit of a late developer, but he's coming along much faster than expected. Good enough for me. Besides, we have no choice but to persist with him anyway. Paparone isn't an alternative by any stretch of the imagination.
He wasn't in the game at all early(was being held/scragged a lot as other have said). He did get into the game a bit towards the end tough. Took a couple of marks, but I liked the way he got involved in link up play and ran past for a couple of handball receives- looked a bit Roughead-esque there. He's learning. No certainty to get there, but there's a lot to look forward to if he gets it right.

 

[a mayes ing]

I felt this loss was a bit more acceptable than the others because we kept with them until half time and it was clear that a lot of players were having a fair crack at it. Was still disappointing to see the score blow out in the 2nd half.

I've noticed Gardiner has a habit of getting into a bit of a scrap with his opponents early on these days. Doesn't look great when they end up out playing you. Would prefer he showed his toughness through his attack on the footy like he was last year instead of getting into fisty cuffs before the first bounce.

Merrett would have made a huge difference whether it was forward or back today. These kids in the backline have been thrown into the deep end.

Much the same with the forwards. Worrying to hear some of the comments on McStay's workrate.

Pretty sure this was wat Gardiner was doing last year, getting into little melees which causes free's and 50's for us and everyone loved it. Pretty sure we still do, l do. Todays game was the only one that l remember him giving away so many free's.

 

[a mayes ing]

Re mcstay I was saying to my brother leuenberger (and merritt last year) are frustrating because they get to a lot of contests and don't mark it where as mcstay is frustrating because he gets to so few contests but when he does get to a contest he can actually mark.

Leuenberger's hands are bricks... Just puts his hands there and often doesn't even appear to try and close his hands around the ball. Absolutely bizarre and frustrating that someone 203cm can't take a mark. And then when he went into the ruck in the last quarter he was so easily pushed out of the ruck contest.

Mcstay is no Jeremy cameron but given his experience he isn't doing a bad job with this his first goalless game for the year 10 from 8) Comparable to Carlisle this season (10 form 7) who has played 60 more games, is much more hyped, and 4 more years in the system.

He definitely needs to play in front more and lead a bit more rather than just constantly working back to the goal square and then getting caught behind. Of course today he was playing against a qualityoppponent with height, weight and fitness against him.

I thought u meant that Leauenberger was your brother ...

 

[Nuggo]

Other teams know our Plan A. Kick long to a contest, create a stoppage in the forward fifty whereby we can reset and use our smalls to goal. Putting pressure on our smalls such as Green takes the game away from us. No Plan B as we don't have the marking talls. Oh well at least when we have some marking talls we will have a Plan B (which is currently Plan A) finely tuned.

 

[a mayes ing]

Other teams know our Plan A. Kick long to a contest, create a stoppage in the forward fifty whereby we can reset and use our smalls to goal. Putting pressure on our smalls such as Green takes the game away from us. No Plan B as we don't have the marking talls. Oh well at least when we have some marking talls we will have a Plan B (which is currently Plan A) finely tuned.

I don't think that is our plan A. Going down the middle by playing on i think is our plan A. I think. Hard to know what our gameplan is anymore as we have seen so little of it being used correctly.

 

[lukiuslion]

Unlike earlier in the year where I thought the team was showing no ticket or work rate, I felt today we were just out muscled and out classed. Thought the effort was there, they were just simply to good. I was at the ground and I thought we Generally set up well, bar a few horrific passages of play where we got cut up, but these loses will happen. We put in a first half like that againts a lower team and I think we are 4 goals up at half time.. That sort of effort will have us beat the saints by 6 goals.

 

[Zhesty]

We lost our forward structure after the first quarter after Essendon started marking everything down back. This made the rest of the team second guess themselves when going forward which really hurt our ball movement.

I like Mcstay and see his potential, however, his game yesterday started to resemble Mitch Clark's last season with us where he stopped leading and tried to take big marks over the top. Needs to work harder but also undoubtedly needs some help up there.

Essendons tackling pressure was very good. I feel we are very susceptible to teams that bring that high pressure type of footy.

 

[POBT]

(and he has kicked some long balls this year, so don't subscribe to fear/confidence factor).

I have not seen him kick through the footy like we know he can. Any long kicks have been higher and slower. Those searing 60 metre drop punts off a couple of steps have just not been evident. When he's kicking well, the ball doesn't only go long but it is flat and fast. I don't think his range is quite there in terms of distance and I'm positive he's not kicking it as flat or hard. There was an opportunity on the weekend for him to have a crack from outside the 50 arc and he simply wouldn't take it. That has to be either confidence or a physical limitation because I can't possibly imagine we would be instructing him to kick to a contest given our shitty forward structure.

 

[Kevvo]

What struck me watching this game is that we struggle to maintain effort when we're facing some kind of systematic disadvantage. I thought Essendon's ball movement was really not all that flash in the first half, and in the second only looked good when we dropped off. For the first half we were competing well, but they were getting an overwhelming number of marks at either end. I reckon the players became aware that we would have to do a lot more work per goal than they would, and faded psychologically. Then we stop running as hard offensively, so we start turning it over off the HBF, and stop running as hard defensively and concede the corridor too easily.

There's probably not a huge amount that can fix that except for physical maturation and game experience in the KPPs and some senior players. Still, all in all I'm not too distressed by the loss. Especially if we could pick up someone like Rance (who has been really impressive again this season), I don't think we're too far from being quite a competitive side.

I was a little surprised we subbed Dawson. In the first half, he was getting spoiled a lot but he wasn't getting marked over and was leading well. We seemed to use him as the target fairly often. That allowed us to set up and pressure at ground level in the F50, which is where we were making headway. I guess he might've been out of juice.

 

[jackess]

Dawson was pretty hopeless when the ball hit ground level and wasn't getting a lot of separation from his opponent. I don't think we can carry him in our forward line and would be the first I'd drop. Plenty to work on in the twos.

 

[Skoob]

I have not seen him kick through the footy like we know he can. Any long kicks have been higher and slower. Those searing 60 metre drop punts off a couple of steps have just not been evident. When he's kicking well, the ball doesn't only go long but it is flat and fast. I don't think his range is quite there in terms of distance and I'm positive he's not kicking it as flat or hard. There was an opportunity on the weekend for him to have a crack from outside the 50 arc and he simply wouldn't take it. That has to be either confidence or a physical limitation because I can't possibly imagine we would be instructing him to kick to a contest given our shitty forward structure.

Fair enough. The physical limitation possibility would certainly make more sense, as this is more likely to explain the hesitation for other physical contact.

 

[Kevvo]

Dawson was pretty hopeless when the ball hit ground level and wasn't getting a lot of separation from his opponent. I don't think we can carry him in our forward line and would be the first I'd drop. Plenty to work on in the twos.

Fair enough, and I don't completely disagree, but:

- you're right that he wasn't great at ground level, but he seemed to me to be playing pretty much as an undersized KPP. I don't think he did worse at ground level than a tall.
- no-one got separation in the F50 all game. To my eye, he seemed to be getting marked over less than the other guys.
- it was his debut and I thought he grew into the game a bit.

He is probably the first guy you would drop, but with McStay now likely to miss he is literally the only marking target left on the senior list as far as I can tell. I thought that within that role he did okay.

Then again, he got subbed, so Leppa's view seems to fit better with your take on it.

 

[Viceregal]

I went to a fish and chip type shop to pick up dinner on Sunday evening.

Sitting outside were a couple of blokes ... one wearing what would be an Essendon clash jumper if it had had any white on it

I mentioned to him about having seen the game ... he proceeded to tell me that the Lions were rubbish, that Essendon had been royally robbed (paraphrased) by the green maggots all game, how awesome it was to have Hird around, how evil WADA was (literally spat on the ground when he mentioned them) and then his mate wanted to know if I wanted to buy any peptides and that they came with special disappearing spreadsheets for keeping track (at which point they high fived each other with big grins and yelled That's our team!) ...

I really wasn't quite sure what to say ...

 

[royboys4eva]

I went to a fish and chip type shop to pick up dinner on Sunday evening.

Sitting outside were a couple of blokes ... one wearing what would be an Essendon clash jumper if it had had any white on it

I mentioned to him about having seen the game ... he proceeded to tell me that the Lions were rubbish, that Essendon had been royally robbed (paraphrased) by the green maggots all game, how awesome it was to have Hird around, how evil WADA was (literally spat on the ground when he mentioned them) and then his mate wanted to know if I wanted to buy any peptides and that they came with special disappearing spreadsheets for keeping track (at which point they high fived each other with big grins and yelled That's our team!) ...

I really wasn't quite sure what to say ...

And that's why the Bomber supporters are so loved by all.

I still remember years ago when we played them in Melbourne and Leppa got stretched off and the clowns in the crowd abused him as he left the ground. Classy lot.

 

[lionbear]

Was a weird feeling for me after the game, we lost, over run in the second half, but after a big 2 weeks we were due a let down.

If I was an Essendon supporter I would be concerned about the importance of Cooney, and Chapman to their success moving forward.

Fletcher is eligable to play 400 games this week, but honestly, they can't play him against top sides. As amazing as an effort it is for him to be still playing, he doesn't look AFL standard anymore to me.

They looked cleaner than us, and they will win more games than us this year, but longer term (Taking away the WADA issues) I am a lot more coy about our future prospects then Essendon's.

 

[WhiteLionFeva]

Out of concern for my own safety there were two grounds where I never wore the colours or barracked - Windy Hill and Victoria Park. Not a lot of humanity at either venue then and sounds like nothing has changed.

 

[lionbear]

Out of concern for my own safety there were two grounds where I never wore the colours or barracked - Windy Hill and Victoria Park. Not a lot of humanity at either venue then and sounds like nothing has changed.

I have always found Essendon supporters to be the blindest watching games of footy.

Every contest is a free kick for them and really don't appear to understand the game at all.

I know a lot of Essendon supporters who are smart about the game and really switched on, so don't take this generalised view as gospel.

 

[TaylorMade]

Pretty sure this was wat Gardiner was doing last year, getting into little melees which causes free's and 50's for us and everyone loved it. Pretty sure we still do, l do. Todays game was the only one that l remember him giving away so many free's.

Last year I remember him getting into the faces of his opposition after he had done something. Like get in their face after he had just spoiled a mark.

This year he is getting into it before the first bounce. All he did on Sunday was fire his opposition up. They must have enjoyed it after kicking a few goals early on him.

I don't mind the aggression but it needs to be controlled.. Revving up the opposition isn't always a great idea. Especially when you don't back it up and they get on top of you.

 

[Crimso]

one trick pony. Needs to work through these like all good forwards.

In his phantoms it was noted that he wasn't strong 1v1, so this is something he needs to work on a lot more. I don't know that he's a natural / good forward, but he's about all we've had so far this season. I tend to think he may have been drafted to do the job Paps is doing at the moment anyway, so I'm prepared to forgive him his lack of knowledge of the best forward setup & where he fits into this.
Mind you, he had a first gamer beside him too.

 

[lukiuslion]

I went to a fish and chip type shop to pick up dinner on Sunday evening.

Sitting outside were a couple of blokes ... one wearing what would be an Essendon clash jumper if it had had any white on it

I mentioned to him about having seen the game ... he proceeded to tell me that the Lions were rubbish, that Essendon had been royally robbed (paraphrased) by the green maggots all game, how awesome it was to have Hird around, how evil WADA was (literally spat on the ground when he mentioned them) and then his mate wanted to know if I wanted to buy any peptides and that they came with special disappearing spreadsheets for keeping track (at which point they high fived each other with big grins and yelled That's our team!) ...

I really wasn't quite sure what to say ...

I have never liked they way Essendon supporters (speaking generally) go about their football following. Almost impossible to have a conversation with them without them getting the guard up, whether it be about ASADA or more generally.

There were 4-5 younger guys sitting behind us and they were barking insults the entire game (which is not only something Essendon fans do I understand, it can happen anywhere) but it was so constant and so low IQ, it was driving everyone insane. When Dawson took that huge knock they yelled out "get a shovel and bury him, he is dead.. what a sook, get up, is he dead or what?, someone get him a thombstone".. after that, I couldn't help myself, I had to turn around and give him a glare - which of coarse meant I copped it for the rest of the game. Which was fine. All of them around us were whining all day about he umpiring, They did the 'ironic' cheers about 12 times in a row which in it self seems a bit odd - they got it good all day long and were still complaining the entire time.

I banged the chair in front of me at one point, because of the 4-5 holding the ball decision when we had no prior oppotunity, totally new interpretation yesterday but was not afforded in Brisbane's favor all day, one of the young lads started yelling at me "he hatched.. it learn the rules dickhead" to which I kindly turned around and said "mate, its a completely different interpretation to what it has been all year and anyone with half a footy brain can see that".. to which a lady (bombers fan) in front of me turned and said "if it means anything to you, I completely agree, they havent called it that way all year, its been very rough on you guys"..

Anyway.. I got chatting with a few lions fans around me and its fair to say I was ready to flip out at how arrogant and self entitled I found these Bombers supporters to be out on centre wing, a problem I havent had with any other supporters for the last few years at least. At the end of the game as I walked out, the 2 groups gave a smile and a nod, one even high five me and said "good passion buddy" which was fine, still didn't mean I thoroughly enjoyed the day. Ill be back with the Lions supporters behind the goals next game for sure.

 

[Panthera]

Unlike earlier in the year where I thought the team was showing no ticket or work rate, I felt today we were just out muscled and out classed. Thought the effort was there, they were just simply to good. I was at the ground and I thought we Generally set up well, bar a few horrific passages of play where we got cut up, but these loses will happen. We put in a first half like that againts a lower team and I think we are 4 goals up at half time.. That sort of effort will have us beat the saints by 6 goals.

Yep, out muscled, definitely. Not so much outclassed in my opinion.

There was a 15 minute period of holding the ball calls (and non calls of course ) in the 3rd quarter - after that it was as if we lost confidence in playing on and either looked backwards for a player who was under more pressure or aimlessly kicked it long. During that period we conceded 6 goals which was pretty much game over.

The Essendon defence has some very good, experienced players in it and they all have the confidence to go for their marks, compared to our kids:

Hurley 9 marks
Hooker 9 marks
Baguley 9 marks
Hibberd 6 marks

Paparone 6 marks
Clarke 4 marks
Gardiner 4 marks
Andrews 2 marks

When comparing the above, their defenders average 26.5 years, ours only 19.5 years

Our defenders are doing very well for mine