- Banned
- #151
I wasn't expecting much and yet this playing group was even worse than I thought yesterday, yes we were missing some players but that's no excuse when the Eagles were missing more and playing away from home.
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I wasn't expecting much and yet this playing group was even worse than I thought yesterday, yes we were missing some players but that's no excuse when the Eagles were missing more and playing away from home.
It underlines just how bad the current game-plan and midfield is. There’s very few match-winners in the best 22. What’s also frustrating is that it seems like most of our highly skilled players are all stuffed in the backline.
This is just a really silly comment.I wasn't expecting much and yet this playing group was even worse than I thought yesterday, yes we were missing some players but that's no excuse when the Eagles were missing more and playing away from home.
Regardless of what you think our game plan was in years past, why do we have players running past for handball received and having Cj, impey, and frost all take off after a mark if the game plan is simply chip kick up the field and bomb it long onto the forwards head?We haven’t had a leading forward in a long time so let’s call it honestly
our game style for years has been about slow ball movement grind and slog and then bomb it on a players head. For a couple of years that player was a 5ft 6 Poppy.
This is just a really silly comment.
You’ve been saying for quite some time that our list is bottom 4, and that we don’t have enough stars.
So how is the Eagles, a top 4 list missing players, the same as Hawthorn missing players?
It’s not. Not even close. They still have class on every line, and a midfield to envy, even with injuries. Hawthorn need every single player of calibre out on the park to succeed against the best sides.
I’m sure that had nothing to do with our inexperienced forward line401 touches for 35 inside 50s LOL.
And they still had far more stars out there leading, because they have a much better list.Eagles had 10 players sub 50 games and playing away from home... the margin was 38 points which heavily flattered us.
Regardless of what you think our game plan was in years past, why do we have players running past for handball received and having Cj, impey, and frost all take off after a mark if the game plan is simply chip kick up the field and bomb it long onto the forwards head?
Are you seriously still not willing to accept that our list is in horrendous shape? And that it was probably even worse last year?Exactly the point. We had them all last year and were still crap because the Hubs combined with our fixture cooked us.
Good points.I'm gonna try to take some positives out of what was a genuinely bad game, and say only conceding a 38 point loss and 98 points against in a game where you've conceded 68 inside 50s to 35 shows that our defensive structures are fine.
Our midfield on the other hand is a few players short, particularly when it's missing the best centre clearance player in the comp and our best midfielder in Jaegs and having lost three above average running wings over the one off-season. We definitely need more depth in that area, because we cannot cover its deficiencies when you combine it with the fact we're missing two of our better and more creative users out of the backline in Day and Sicily.
To those saying "Oh West Coast, more injuries, away from home" - fine. They still had almost a full cohort in the middle and up forward, which was all they really needed because the ball barely got down our end and when it did their defense had some trouble. The amount of players missing needs to be considered with where they're missing from.
It underlines just how bad the current game-plan and midfield is. There’s very few match-winners in the best 22. What’s also frustrating is that it seems like most of our highly skilled players are all stuffed in the backline.
I’m not pretending anything.There is one over-arching reason to our failures over the past two years: our side wasn’t good enough to meet the challenges. That’s the end of the story.
The fact you’re pretending we’ve been dealt insurmountable misfortune is just making excuses.
Lewis and Scrimshaw the positives out of yesterday for mine.I'm ignoring our results for the remainder of the year and focusing on who is showing promise and under 25:
Mitch Lewis had a solid game. I reckon he can become an A-grade forward-ruck
Impey is back and could be anything
Worpel was allowed to play his ideal position and showed that he can become an A-grade midfielder
Scrimshaw took yet another step. Going to be great for us.
Jiath still learning and showing heaps. Gets a lot more defensive attention now.
Hanrahan had a good one. Continues to develop his composure.
Hardwick didn't have his best game but we know we have a great player here. I'm still hopeful of seeing him become our best small forward one day. Might not happen as he's one of the competitions best small defenders!
Kosi and Jeka - not the game to make a judgement on them, hope we keep playing them.
Morrison's lack of pace worries me, will be a reliable B-grader for us. Showed his versatility vs WCE, played just about everywhere.
Richmond won the GF last year with 7 elite players. We have a fair way to go and I'm reasonably encouraged by our young talent.
You think if we had a forward free on a lead we wouldn’t kick to him by directive? During the game I commented on this. Kosi in particular was getting caught behind his man every time we went forward. He made it hard to kick to him. He wasn’t alone among our forwards. Jeka was also very slow to react to the play so routinely out of position and impossible to kick to. Our forwards were making it very hard to go forward quickly. Not surprising given their level of experience.I just watched the first 45 minutes again and put myself through the misery.
Go back and have a look at the amount of times we have the ball at HB when a quick kick gets us free at centre wing and we stop still and hold the whole game up and then go backwards and sideways. Infuriating game style.
if this is not a coaching directive we have a group of players clearly not listening to the coach or understand any system we are trying to implement .
And they still had far more stars out there leading, because they have a much better list.
How do you overlook this, yet bang on about how bad our list is every other minute of the day?
You think if we had a forward free on a lead we wouldn’t kick to him by directive? During the game I commented on this. Kosi in particular was getting caught behind his man every time we went forward. He made it hard to kick to him. He wasn’t alone among our forwards. Jeka was also very slow to react to the play so routinely out of position and impossible to kick to. Our forwards were making it very hard to go forward quickly. Not surprising given their level of experience.
We have no depth. You just replace those bottom 6 players with 6 worse players that we all lose patience with after a couple of weeks. Our deficiencies are at the top end. We are probably fielding one of the worst top 6 of any teams and it shows. Get that elite talent in and the bottom 6 looks after itself. Unfortunately that might take a few years.
I watched both Box Hill and yesterday's game and our depth in non existence and potentially the worst in the league. There is hope but we need to nail the draft this year and hopefully bring in some good players via trades
How many more weeks of losses are going to end in a discussion about what we did in 2017?Our list is terrible but its the reason why which upsets most supporters. We chose to top up and ....
not referring to the times we kicked to Kosi on the wing and he was playing Behind and soundly beaten.
I am referring to the amount of times Howe, Phillips Mitchell Hardwick had the ball at HB from a switch or a kick in from FB and then completely stopped when we had another midfielder 30 metres away with a quick kick and some quick ball movement ..
instead we stop, hold, hold, hold and then go backwards or sideways and end up on the other side of the ground with the whole ground blocked up.
I am saying this for all those that don’t want to listen or argue that we don’t have the cattle or the eagles are too good for us and we are hopeless rah rah rah go back and watch the game closely.
I counted 6 times we didn’t pull the trigger on a kick to someone by themselves and instead stopped and completely blocked any momentum we had by getting it to that position of the ground.
the game style, cohesion, and any sense of flare to me is non existent.
If it’s the players that can’t hit a kick 30 metres away get rid of them.
If it’s the coaching that has us playing this terrible brand of football then change it fast.
I'm curious how you can see this in the replay, i thought its more the thing you can kinda only see at the ground because of all the closeups in the camerwork
i tried to look out for this too but just assumed there weren't free players fwd of the ball because I couldn't see them and the players would LOOK, then stop, then look again
The behind the goal shots that fox show clearly display the down the ground options I am talking about.