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Autopsy Overrun by GWS

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No Roberts was hitting targets last season from HB its sadly been a dramatic downfall in that area perhaps he feels more pressure this season?
He's a diabolically bad decision maker with the ball.

Look around ........................ slow play down ................................................ kick to a contest.
 
I fluctuate between thinking the mental scars are real, change the list up . Keep the core but change the best 22 make up with some swaps and mini reset, versus write 2025 off everything that could go wrong has and just tweak and back list growth for next year. I think somewhere in the middle. Maybe

Problem is under pressure the core folds as well so what do you do?
 

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Apologies!
I said an 80 point turnaround coming up.
It was only a 79 point turnaround so I need to quit being so negative with this lot.
We forgot to carry the one with the maths. Story of our year
 
He's a diabolically bad decision maker with the ball.

Look around ........................ slow play down ................................................ kick to a contest.
Had an incredible 6 turnovers in the 3rd quarter. Just completely panicked every time he got the ball.
 
Teams have big key defenders, flankers that rebound AND can defend, mids who win the ball, and key forwards that you can rely on.

We have none of that right now.

A bottom 6 back 6, a bottom 4 front 6, and a front running mid group with no size, hardness or ability to accumulate, but all hit career best form last year to paper over our list cracks (3x AAs in the centre combining for 80+ goals).

Now it doesn't help our 4 of our starting talls from last year didn't play (the forwards combined for 100 goals in 2024), and hamling went down, but gees we cant even hit targets, lower the eyes and apply pressure for more than 1-2 quarters.
 
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As bad a watch as the 2018 final in 2nd half just vomit all over ouselves! Wow still in shock at how bad we were, concerning
 
It's no one players fault, but wowee is Roberts a terrible disposal.

Can't get too annoyed because at least he found the ball, and most of our team couldn't even do that much, but it he was not good tonight, not good.
 
Is there any other club in the comp that are as jekyll and hyde as us within a game? Seem to go decently all right for periods, then at the drop of a hat we go unbelievably crap with long periods without scoring a goal.
 
Honestly I think a decent kpf changes everything for us next year.. to be competitive for a half with Francis and Buller as our two kpfs is good enough.. no wonder we couldn’t score after half time against the best backline in the league.

Make that fwd line Amartey/McDonald/JUH and it’s far more dynamic.. would make a huge difference.
We never once tried to target them the right way. Buller led on several occasions but was ignored. The problem with sending a long bomb to Buller was that he had two opponents on every occasion. Why was this the case? I think that too many of our forwards were not actually active. They were not even reactivate. I think they were pathetic.
 

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That first half was the best half of football we have played this season.

Hard at the ball, contested, won our one on ones, brilliant skill execution and our pressure was through the roof.

Unfortunately a few things happened afterwards.

First of all, credit where credits due to the Giants, that 3rd quarter of football would have been the greatest quarter of football in the history of their football club, they could have been against any team in the competition and gotten an absolute run on.

Secondly losing Hamling (after losing McLean early game), finished us off, not because his the greatest player out there (he was probably BOG for us in the first half admittedly), but because it just fried our structures, we were on the back foot and has to put Blakey into a key tall (Hogan) in defence.

Thirdly, their run started with rebound from our forward 50, we panicked a little too much going forward, and they got their heads and skills up, when you do that to the Giants, you aren't going to win many games of footy, I would be interested to see what would happen if we had a proper forward line there (Amartey, McDonald and McLean would make a difference).

Lastly I think we got a little shocked at what the giants threw at us, then finally we were completely spent, many of our players have had injury interrupted years that were playing tonight (Papley, Gulden, Cunningham, McInerney, Mills, Wicks, Rampe, Melican) it's hard coming back from an injury and your fitness levels are affected, so when the giants went up gears we didn't have the fitness level to go with them.

These aren't an excuse for the loss (you shouldn't concede 9 fricken goals in a quarter...) but they would all contribute.

I do think we should have a great team next year and be up there though.

  • Longer Pre-season, more time to get things right and players in shape.
  • Softer draw from a lower ladder finish
  • Returning players
  • Ideally fresh minds after this season (new views in the coaches box) and a fresh perspective from our playing group
  • Lastly maybe a new player or two (JUH?)
 
Everyone except for a few stupid people knew we were gone but now they know we are. We are effing ordinary. Because our so called best players don't stand up when the going gets tough. They just fold like a a bad gambler.
I don't know, i'd consider a comeback against this very team in a final less than 12 months ago and then winning 4/5 to keep our season alive after a horror start, much of it off the back of our "so called best players" to be "standing up" but maybe I'm just stupid.
 
GWS far too good in the second half , once they got the momentum they killed us. Hamling going off didn't help he played well in the first half.
Got smashed in the clearances in the second half and let them run wild. To be honest it's probably a reflection of where we stand this year around tenth or eleventh. Never really looked like beating the better teams even with Mills and Gulden back.
Grundy , Mills and Wicks kept on having a crack. Not sure if Gulden has really been fit since his comeback doesn't look quite there.
Potentially we could have Hamling , McLean , Gulden and Papley out next week so surely we have to throw some of the youngsters in.
Roberts shouldn't play again this year has had enough chances.
 

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There are some fundamentally unbalanced aspects to this team - I’ve watched this same match repeatedly over the past few years. Inability to score for quarters barely able to score for halves and an inability to score more than 70 points.

Absolutely coupled with a complete inability to win the ball when under pressure. The whole thing in many ways starts with the injury to Sam Reid in the prelim final. From that po8nt onwards a complete inability to compete in the air forward of the ball. We kick it forward to anyone other than heeney and it is marked by the opposition tall defenders.

There’s a reason mccartin was tried forward at the beginning of the year. We are so poor forward of the ball and it’s compounded really really badly by the loss of McLean who is a statue but at least will compete if it’s kicked to his advantage, amartey and McDonald. Grundy is less reliable than Tom hickey as a mark and that reduces our marking power (no matter how much he is doing around the ground)

Behind the ball we have relied on Blakey being third man up to protect the weakness of our one on one defending but now he’s been forced into an unsuitable role of second tall we lose both his spoiling and it’s compounded with his weakness as a one on one defender

But the real r problem is the midfield. We made a bad decision not trading Warner at the top of the market last season. We might have been able to address some of the tall defenders or forwards and probably could have found another player who runs forward but struggles to win his own ball

The midfield under pressure is a disaster. None can win their own ball other than heeney and mills but heeney is not an accountable defensive midfielder so if he doesn’t get it he has run forward of the ball as well - so we are left with rowbottom who can tackle but can’t be everywhere. The really big mids - Callaghan, Greene, day etc just bounce off our mids and keep going - god knows what Josh Kennedy would have done to this team - he would have got 50 posies a match and fired off to handballs for goals.

We are slow and small across the ground. Campbell is not developing in the graveyard of hff and I’d be inclined to shove him on the wing more stringently or back to back pocket.

Robert’s is a trier but he’s slow of foot and slow decision making and he ends up just punting the ball forwards. He’s a glaring weakness at the moment but only because he doesn’t bring anything special - no hardness, no real tackling pressure and no speed on the outside.

This team has glaring weaknesses and it’s been obvious since the middle of last season that we are just a middle ranking team and I’m ok with that, what mom not ok with is decisions not to try and improve full in the knowledge of the weaknesses that have been so obvious that we thought moving our only defender who can mark forwards was a genuine plan. If that didn’t say something I don’t know what can.
 

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Autopsy Overrun by GWS

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