Autopsy Round 1, 2019: St.Kilda v Gold Coast *Parker, Wilkie & Kent Debut*

[triggering bro]

Young for Kent
Acres would have to be for Mc Kenzie or someone who deserves to stay in and
Hunter for Dunny?

The team felt incredibly unbalanced. We are tinkering with the new rules & it’ll take a few weeks to work out what works best though.

I thought we had too many smalls & need to replace one for a runner. Also think Dunstan, Steele & Ross in the same team didn’t quite work. I’d start by bringing in two runners in Acres & Hunter for Dunstan & Kent.

Pierce was pretty much invisible. But maybe he was just asked to limit Witts’ impact? Dunno. On face value replacing Pierce for Marshall is a no brainer.

Whilst Joyce, Battle & Wilkie did admirably we must bring back Brown immediately. Really missed his aggression & leadership. He’s primed. Would drop Wilkie & use Battle as third defender.

I know we won, & traditionally not many changes occur after a win, but I wouldn’t hesitate making those four changes.

 

[gringo2011]

They need to do it or not. It was all very half arsed.

Do they have one for every player? Maybe just the forwards. But nothing for Long, Gresham or Bruce.

Maybe they couldn’t find the right track on the cassette.

They have Hey Bruce and plenty of others, they are really good but better to put a mic near them than tape them.

 

[Saint Watto]

On a positive note, how long has it been since we've had a debutant have as much impact on a game as Parker?

Been a while I reckon.

I reckon yr right there birdie....was quite exciting to see what he would do every time he went near the ball......couple of expected brain fades but I suspect he'll be a great pick up for us.

 

[gringo2011]

I’d be ok with dropping Sinclair, Savage and Dunstan, but that’s really it frankly. You don’t tend to drop more than two per week unless you’re going for the tank...

Kents copping a bit of flak, but i though he looks dangerous at times, and curbed Harbrow’s influence well. Likewise, the parched together defense worked ok.

More importantly, what we DO have is four blokes with genuine calls for Senior spots in Marshall, Acres, Clark and Young, and ultimately, that’s a positive.

Harbrow was mostly going to Gresh and Parker to mind them, Kent was poo. Looked lost.

 

[Verdun66]

Was just having a quick read on the Bombers board because I am avoiding work and (more importantly) watching their arrogant self righteous fans in pain is fun.

Anyhoo, I just came across this. I know we have some structural issues to address, but when selecting the side I have this sudden urge to stack our team with speed and run


View attachment 641074

We should keep that for perspective when we think some of our players might be phoning it in

We've done a lot of running in pretty hot and humid(?) conditions. Maybe our fitness is as good as we say it is. Suns train in that sort of weather but I reckon that's not too bad. Better for the run as they say in racing.

 

[MOLTEN GANGLANDS]

also it should be noted, winning close games is a skill in itself.

 

[triggering bro]

That is a stat I've never seen before, pretty amazing

I’ve never seen anything like it. Either a protest by the players against the club or match fixing.

 

[Pakenhamsaint]

Poor Damian Barrett will be devastated. He tipped the Suns and predicted we will be wooden spooners.

We’ll be better for the run, but by god we better be. Take it and bank it, then win next week and start the year 2-0.

Clark should play next week. So should Brown. Both will help enormously.

I'm sure he will come up with some crap about us being unconvincing.

 

[Verdun66]

On changes. Reckon we need another target forward. Big Rowan a go? Picked Lewie for Witts, do we have to do the same for the Dons? Kent was ordinary for just over a half but did a couple of good things later on. Setting up a goal and then kicking a beauty. And was it him keeping Harbrow quiet? Long great early, but faded. Still a bit reckless though....

Lonie did enough. Hard to know about Dunstan. Great contest at the end there. Depends on the job given. Gresham's numbers seem good. Just didn't quite have the impact I thought he might. Joyce and Battle did pretty well. Hard to see one of them going out. Wilkie was good. McKenzie pretty good.


Another interesting selection week!

 

[gringo2011]

After reading the last 3 or 4 pages of this thread there’s no doubt that you guys down in VFL land think we are total garbage
If we won I’d have ordered in Uber Eats and had a scotch.

I thought you guys looked good on paper. Getting Swallow into the side and Fiorini in to the midfield along side Touk and Miles makes you look pretty good in the guts. Like Hombsch too and a few guys like Sexton came on last year and added some good players in the off season. I think you'll be more competitive than people think.

 

[BrutThough]

I haven't read the rest of the thread yet, so sorry if any of this has been done to death but some thoughts from todays game:

- We are screwed in the ruck. Pierce was terrible and it cost us in the middle. And considering he constantly beat Marshall throughout the preseason, it doesnt look like there is a quick fix for it. We need Billy to get fit quickly if we want to improve our competitiveness in the centre square.

- The umpiring was frustrating but we shouldn't be giving the umpires so many opportunities to pay things against us. Bloody hell Long. I would drop him next week because his ego and stupid, pointless whacks cost us a few goals.

- Stuv was clearly underdone but was the difference. It must have been a strategy to manage him in the first half of the game to make sure he was firing at the end. I found it strange that he was on the bench for a while then ran straight forward but it worked. Even Stuv at 75% is better than 90% of the rest of the list.

- Wilke stood up big time in the last quarter. Those were some good marks for someone playing their first AFL game but he seemed to composed. Definitely worth persisting with.

- Parker is a star. He will be an absolute rollercoaster every week but Im on for the ride.

- I'm torn on Battle. I thought it was his best game in defense. He started looking more comfortable reading the ball coming in and his positioning definitely improved. But I think we need him up forward. Bruce cant be the only tall up there, especially the way we constantly resort to bombing the ball in there. Our lack of height was very noticeable and something we need to fix asap.

- Is Jack Bowes from GC a tagger? He seemed to be starting on Steele at every stoppage and niggling him all game. Might explain Steele's slower first half working through that. But what a compliment to go from AFL tagger to the guy being tagged in just one preseason.

 

[mightymalaka]

The kent gave me an infraction yesterday, but this whole potting because he is a mod and therefore has an agenda is poor form IMO.

Can't believe now that i was the one defending people's right to melt! There's melting and then there's those toxic personal attacks which only
Make the perpetrator look like the tanty throwing dick they are! I should know!

Starting to think Plugger might have been on to the something about the growing number of our fans that would prefer us to fail!
Cannot believe that any sane supporter would feel that way but after today i'm starting to wonder!

 

[gringo2011]

View attachment 641090

Great, it's just like when GT tried to find out why umpires are all campaigners, another 20 years of punishment coming up.

 

[Pakenhamsaint]

Not sure if its been covered, but Jeebus, those pre-recorded chants. Why do we set ourselves up to be mocked with this kind of stupidity??. I know the guys who do them are fun and clever, and more powr to them and those in their bay, but augmenting natural crowd noise with stuff over the PA is embarrassing.

Marketing people need to take less drugs lol

Those chants were fine when the blokes that sat around aisle 30 did them. Having them blasted over the ground is silly.

 

[luca77]

Evening guys, I've been wading through the posts.
Happy to scrape a win today, and some decent moments along with some frustration during the day.
Not sure if anybody else was bugged by this, but it was doing my head in.
2 of their guys were allowed to hobble around out there on one leg, unimpeded by our players and impact the game. DMac was standing ever so politely alongside Swallow, and the other guy Ainswerth or whatever his name was too was just strolling around. Get stuck into them! Push them, bump them, put them on their arse. Make their coach think about sitting them out for the afternoon.
If I was Dew I would have been loving the lack of attention and the luxury of just leaving them out there knowing they'd get through OK.
I thought we were a big chance to get them a man or 2 down and take advantage of rotations e.t.c, but noone in the coaches box seemed to be thinking the same way at all. I know what a Collingwood/Geelong team around 2010 would have done to our players in that situation.

Anyway, not sure what else has been covered or not, so I'll read a bit more before I comment much on the game. I thought Lewie was just OK, and I think Marshall has enough run and versatility to find a way in even as backup. I really would love to ask the coaches (or people on here with a good memory for these things) when having Bruce as a back-up ruckman has really worked out well for us. Today I thought Bruce handled it pretty well, but as the season goes on and the niggles come I think he's gonna find it harder and harder to perform up forward while playing 2nd ruck.

 

[gringo2011]

The kent gave me an infraction yesterday, but this whole potting because he is a mod and therefore has an agenda is poor form IMO.

Oh that's different, he's bastard then. Down with George, he's too tough.

 

[Joffaboy]

I’ve never seen anything like it. Either a protest by the players against the club or match fixing.

Heppell saying after the JLT they needed energy.
Certainly none today.

 

[gringo2011]

I haven't read the rest of the thread yet, so sorry if any of this has been done to death but some thoughts from todays game:

- We are screwed in the ruck. Pierce was terrible and it cost us in the middle. And considering he constantly beat Marshall throughout the preseason, it doesnt look like there is a quick fix for it. We need Billy to get fit quickly if we want to improve our competitiveness in the centre square.

- The umpiring was frustrating but we shouldn't be giving the umpires so many opportunities to pay things against us. Bloody hell Long. I would drop him next week because his ego and stupid, pointless whacks cost us a few goals.

- Stuv was clearly underdone but was the difference. It must have been a strategy to manage him in the first half of the game to make sure he was firing at the end. I found it strange that he was on the bench for a while then ran straight forward but it worked. Even Stuv at 75% is better than 90% of the rest of the list.

- Wilke stood up big time in the last quarter. Those were some good marks for someone playing their first AFL game but he seemed to composed. Definitely worth persisting with.

- Parker is a star. He will be an absolute rollercoaster every week but Im on for the ride.

- I'm torn on Battle. I thought it was his best game in defense. He started looking more comfortable reading the ball coming in and his positioning definitely improved. But I think we need him up forward. Bruce cant be the only tall up there, especially the way we constantly resort to bombing the ball in there. Our lack of height was very noticeable and something we need to fix asap.

- Is Jack Bowes from GC a tagger? He seemed to be starting on Steele at every stoppage and niggling him all game. Might explain Steele's slower first half working through that. But what a compliment to go from AFL tagger to the guy being tagged in just one preseason.

The ruck is a worry. Longer had better hurry up.

 

[gringo2011]

Heppell saying after the JLT they needed energy.
Certainly none today.

Euphemism for more drugs, you're not down with the street lingo.

 

[gringo2011]

Those chants were fine when the bloke that sat around aisle 30 did them. Having them blasted over the ground is silly.

They still do them and are really good, Parker seemed to get a really good go from them live and enjoyed it.

 

[pebblesofsand]

Seriously. You and plugger etc are absolutely kidding yourselves. Appreciate you have a role at the club, but if you are willing to accept that level of performance then enjoy the next 55 years without success to go with the previous 55.
We were absolutely pathetic today. Billed as being the fittest side in the comp and then nearly turned it up against a side that’s largely regarded as the worst since Fitzroy. Not only that they were effectively down two players.
I’d love nothing more than watching us turn it around, but being happy with that absolute trash? Give me a spell. You reckon the successful clubs would be pissanting round, being happy with that tripe? Absolutely not.

Yeah - much better if we'd played like Melb, Adel, Sydney, WCE, Essendon, North - enjoy it Pumpkin!!!

 

[StCicatriz]

lay off george and perse peeps

 

[VDS66]

Oh that's different, he's bastard then. Down with George, he's too tough.

Nah, apparently I deserved it. I think I was reported.

 

[aussierulesrules]

I'm very unimpressed. It was pretty shit. I'm not sure I can take another year of crap and I think we're on track to do just that unfortunately

Yep, I've got to say it's getting harder and harder to get myself up for these uncomfortable bloody marathon trips to and from the ground (having just gotten off a sweatbox of a tram, that took almost an hour to get from the city to Caulfield station- now I'm home, 9 hours after we left this morning), only to watch us play lacklustre bloody game after lacklustre game.

And that's a big part of the reason I barely cared if we won or not by the end, because yet again we picked and chose when we had a crack.

For what seems like forever now, we don't put teams away once we get on top in the game and have our foot on the throats, and instead take our foot right off the gas, and only come back to life once the other team finally gets their noses back in front.

Then we start taking it seriously again, and invariably we win (I'd hate to think of how many times we've done that since about 2008, when Ross Lyon obviously instructed us to try to defend our leads, instead of increasing them), when a potentially big or much bigger win was in the offing.

And it's the same when we're losing. They basically throw in the towel and stop trying, because it's not close any more.

So for a long time now I generally feel like we really only have a serious crack when the game is close, rather than just going out and having a crack for 4 quarters each week, regardless of the state of the game, and I for one am sick of it.

New season, but the same shit today. We go in at half time with the clear ascendency in the match, but instead of coming out breathing fire in the 2nd half, to really put them away, we come out flat as a pancake, and stay that way until whenever the hell it was that Gold Coast finally regained the lead.

Then we pull our fingers out again as per usual under those circumstances and get the close win and yay, but if I'm going to be paying my money and giving up a big assed chunk of my weekend and sitting on those uncomfortable trains, buses and trams and having to hike between them with my 86yo father, I want to see my team have a freaking crack for 4 quarters, not just when it suits them.

 

[malevu]

Just back in Melbourne after being OS for 6 weeks, so I've missed seeing the pre-season games and all the build-up. Back in time to see today's game but for most part I was wishing I'd stayed away a couple more days.

In the end it was good to bag a win and take heart after watching limp efforts by the likes of Essendon and Adelaide, both much more fancied teams than us. Clearly we showed some ticker today and Cho has stated that's his strongest push this year.

But realistically, other than some strong debut performances from Parker and Wilkie and a reminder of how valuable Bruce is to our structure, there was very little to get enthused about. A one point win on our home deck against the Wooden Spoon favourites says it all. On paper it should've been our easiest game of the year.

Because I haven't seen us in the JLT I'm prepared to bank the 4 points and move on to next week and make a firmer judgment then.

But just a couple of worrying points already - Our backline will get monstered by a decent team, so we'd better get ready for some decent scores against us.
Oh, and don't start me on the ruck situation. Here we go again. Hickey/Longer...Hickey/Longer.... soon to be replaced by Longer/Pierce. The first game i saw on my return was last night's Hawks and Crows game. And there was Big Boy still rolling on like normal 5 seasons after we gave him away. For what? Savage and Dunstan. Who wouldn't undo that trade now? It's so frustrating to me that we gave up a good ruckman, just coming into his prime, to a team as good as Hawthorn. And ever since we've been bemoaning our chronic ruck situation with seemingly more of the same to come in 2019.

Sorry, for an early melt. It's good to be back and I'm hopeful for an improved year but we really need to step it up from today's performance.

And I purposely haven't mentioned the great news about the "Hanners rebuild". Are we serious?