Remove this Banner Ad

Review R9: The Good, Bad and the Ugly vs. Port Adelaide

🥰 Love BigFooty? Join now for free.

A wins a win, but we almost handed that to Port on a platter.

The good: Thilthorpe and Fogarty in the 1st half. Butts and Keane in the last quarter. The burst of Rankine in the last. O’Brien.

The bad: The dumb way we implement “tempo” football. Cumming was twice guilty - losing an opportunity to get a goal just before 3/4 time and he again put the hands up when there was ages to go in the last. With 8 minutes to go we were 1 goal away from winning and we stopped and gave them a chance.

The ugly: Those bloody surrender signs the guy on the boundary kept on holding up for the last 10 minutes.
 

Log in to remove this Banner Ad

Really good post. I loved this:
Ugly:
Port kicking goal after goal from either a free kick or some perfect bounce (that SPP goal, horses ars*), that torpedo scrubber kick from Finlayson (bullsh*t), that JHF goal off the hardest angle after the ball (get stuffed).
Hell-funny.
The supporters on here desperately trying to convince themselves Nicks is a horrible, blundering idiot after a showdown win. Was he losing contested possession by 14 and -27 in clearances? Did he give away 4 x 50M penalties, 2 of which resulted in goals? Thats on the players.
Yeah/nah.
Discipline and composure-under-pressure can be Coached.
Also, Nicks has the final word on who plays and where eg where does Rankine do most damage?
FORWARD. So, play him forward more often.
Rozee needed to be corralled-if-not-tagged from the opening bounce; another Nicks failure.

25 points up with 15 minutes to play and what does Nicks do? Shut up shop. The Crows didn't get ahead by crappy, defensive slowdown play.
Right at the end with the game on the line and Port within a kick, where does Nicks put Thilthorpe, who is a solid presence and our best mark? In our F50, ffs.
I am happy for the win. I LOVE beating PA best of all.
But Nicks is a horrible, blundering idiot whose last-quarter stuff-ups nearly cost us the win.
Bottling the game up worked as they were dominating us.
No. We were dominating them. 25 points up, with 15 to play!!
We ground it out. Nobody knows what would have happened if we kept attacking, they could have loaded up the backline and gotten easy entry on rebound.
This is true. That might have happened, but what is the better COACHING option at that stage of the game?
PLAY ON and attack to increase the lead,
OR
close up shop?
Attack, I say --- it's how we got 25 points up in the first place.
 
Btw,
Good:
The absolutely amazing defensive effort, repelling 62 inside 50s. Worrell and Keane amazing, especially that Keane mark. Thats the good you take with the bad, if thats the good I am happy.
Yes, terrific defence.
I am happy with the win, for sure.
Worrell 21 kicks and 714M gained, what a find.
Yet all we heard was the Commentators raving about Rozee and his (fewer metres gained) contribution to a side which lost the game.
Any one of Thilthorpe or Rankine or Worrell deserved the SHOWDOWN Medal more.
 
As he should be. Ridiculous overreach from the umpire.

I thought the report was fair, the kicking action was there. Let the MRP look at it and decide whether it warrants any further action, which it probably didn't.

I'm just glad he'll be available to play his former side! I remember quite a few of them complaining about Keane being a little too physical in training, haha
 
Btw,

Yes, terrific defence.
I am happy with the win, for sure.

Yet all we heard was the Commentators raving about Rozee and his (fewer metres gained) contribution to a side which lost the game.
Any one of Thilthorpe or Rankine or Worrell deserved the SHOWDOWN Medal more.
He's starting to play like peak Jeremy McGovern.
 
The other thing that the coach 'could' have done was to then send Dawson to butters say to tag him meaning port would either then have 2 guys going with Dawson and soligo runs free then or it would shake the bergman tag. But no, he left him tagged
I'm pretty sure that i was happened. I recall the commentators commenting on it. Obviously, to little effect though.
 
A more interesting part of the 'did we go too defensive' side of things is why were we so poor at it. No clock control, no possession, seemingly no system designed to milk out the game.

Didn't feel like a team that knows what to do in that situation.
Hopefully next time we win
 
Really good post. I loved this:

Hell-funny.

Yeah/nah.
Discipline and composure-under-pressure can be Coached.
Also, Nicks has the final word on who plays and where eg where does Rankine do most damage?
FORWARD. So, play him forward more often.
Rozee needed to be corralled-if-not-tagged from the opening bounce; another Nicks failure.

25 points up with 15 minutes to play and what does Nicks do? Shut up shop. The Crows didn't get ahead by crappy, defensive slowdown play.
Right at the end with the game on the line and Port within a kick, where does Nicks put Thilthorpe, who is a solid presence and our best mark? In our F50, ffs.
I am happy for the win. I LOVE beating PA best of all.
But Nicks is a horrible, blundering idiot whose last-quarter stuff-ups nearly cost us the win.

No. We were dominating them. 25 points up, with 15 to play!!

This is true. That might have happened, but what is the better COACHING option at that stage of the game?
PLAY ON and attack to increase the lead,
OR
close up shop?
Attack, I say --- it's how we got 25 points up in the first place.
This. Closing up shop to protect a lead has cost us multiple games since Nicks took over. He is a blundering, stubborn idiot and a poor excuse for a coach.
 

Remove this Banner Ad

As he should be. Ridiculous overreach from the umpire.
Umpires are only meant to report the blatant thuggery.

How embarrassing that it's thrown out.

Umpires need to become full-time & go back to 3, as current system has never been worse.
 
Tilthorpe didn't have any brain farts in the showdown.

I only remember Tilthorpe taking lots of marks, both contested and uncontested.
He did have one... he should have placed himself in our backline late in the game when we needed to save it, rather than being wasted up forward.
 
That little push Laird gave to push the player back from the mark is done many times in every game. Dumb umpiring.
Dumb by Laird too... as just don't give the umpires an opportunity to pay a free.
 

🥰 Love BigFooty? Join now for free.

The other thing that the coach 'could' have done was to then send Dawson to butters say to tag him meaning port would either then have 2 guys going with Dawson and soligo runs free then or it would shake the bergman tag. But no, he left him tagged
Dawson did go to Butters for a while in the 2nd half.
 
That’s on the Harvard graduate
Yes, should have been better coaching instruction... but Tex or ANB should have told Thilthorpe to park himself in Port's defence.

Its this type of poor decision making which will usually cost us close games. Need better match awareness as a group.
 
Yes, should have been better coaching instruction... but Tex or ANB should have told Thilthorpe to park himself in Port's defence.

Its this type of poor decision making which will usually cost us close games. Need better match awareness as a group.
They should take it out of Nick’s hands has no idea at reading games
 
Last edited:

Remove this Banner Ad

Review R9: The Good, Bad and the Ugly vs. Port Adelaide

🥰 Love BigFooty? Join now for free.

Back
Top