Autopsy 2-men down on the bench Brions spank Dogs 108-67

I made this observation last year.

There is something about the psyche of this team in that you won't see the best of them until they have to win to survive. A real backs against the wall, nothing to lose, no way out, deep rooted collective psychological phenomenon. How valid that observation is has two games to run. We can lose next week and put ourselves in the position where we have to win every game till the end of the season, or thrash them and have one get out of jail card left.

Toss of the coin.
I’m interested to know whether you think it is the players or the coach.

Or are those two elements inseparable parts of the team?
 

Next Waiting

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I’m interested to know whether you think it is the players or the coach.

Or are those two elements inseparable parts of the team?
The latter. A bit from column A and a bit from column B.

The "no tomorrow" seems to sharpen the focus of both.....IMO...it's the vibe

But particularly, the Macraes, the Libbas, the Bonts and maybe even the Smiths grow another leg in those situations. It's almost as if they need the pressure to deliver what has to be delivered. What has to be done is clear and the game slows down. It's this kick, that handball, this option and that option.

Last year was a bridge too far, one or two too many critical outs, the travel and 4 away games. Blown away in the last 40 minutes of the season. Was compulsive viewing till then.
 
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Astro_

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One of my observations from last nights game was that the umpires paid almost no frees for players deliberately leading with their head to draw a free kick.

It was a very different dynamic to previous dogs games and overall I thought the umpiring was a lot better.

Did you have similar observations re the standard of umpiring was better last Night?

Is this a serious post?
 
So Hipwood sent straight to tribunal but Bris scores an easy goal and benefits from his "indiscretion"

Bris also benefit from the "rushed" behind. Should that have been a free kick and shot on goal for us or is it a ball up at top of square?

People say #freekickbulldogs but i don't recall us ever getting as many technical frees like last night for Bris whilst overlooking some obvious ones.

And while I'm on it, how come that centre bounce wasn't recalled that was so far off course and outside the centre circle.....

May not have changed the result, but boy did we get done over last night
 

D Mitchell

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...but because he continued to strive hard when things were going against us. .,..

He showed that he's going to be a very useful footballer. We just have to stop thinking of him as a certain future champion...
I always pay attention to anything you post DW (assume a "wink" emoj. perhaps a "sigh" if such exists). I hope you are right about the "strive hard" because I'm yet to see that, do you think it might be the mischief in the lad that he knows which games I attend and turns it on when I'm not watching ? If so, I'd enjoy his humour, if not his football. t's unfair to judge a player on what you see on a screen for the obvious reasons, did you enjoy your return trip to and from Brisbane ? In some of the games I've attended. he's produced a moment or 2 that offers a hint of the excellence that over excites the uncritical groupies, that's not enough. One six goal burst in the twos hasn't improved his productivity at AFL level. I didn't fly north to Brisbane. By stats, his scoring average was maintained, fewer than a goal a game, that's not good enough for a key forward. Encouraging that he doubled both his kicks and marks averages. Yet another loss Have we wasted a season to accomodate one player ?
 
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Al dente

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excluding Zorko who was subbed, we had the worst 6 players on the ground. 11 of the 12 worst players on the ground.

once again our bottom end gets shown up against good sides. Alex Keath, wow, what are we paying him?

i noticed McComb running with Neale at times, might he be a tagger long term, would still need to improve his kicking.

their top 2 players both small forwards (bit stiff there).

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Oct 19, 2012
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excluding Zorko who was subbed, we had the worst 6 players on the ground. 11 of the 12 worst players on the ground.

once again our bottom end gets shown up against good sides. Alex Keath, wow, what are we paying him?

i noticed McComb running with Neale at times, might he be a tagger long term, would still need to improve his kicking.

their top 2 players both small forwards (bit stiff there).

View attachment 1437643

those player ratings are absolutely bizarre. Tim O'brien had 6 disposals and one mark and rates that highly. Meanwhile Naughton was listed on AFL.com in our best 5 players and listed worst on ground here.
 
those player ratings are absolutely bizarre. Tim O'brien had 6 disposals and one mark and rates that highly. Meanwhile Naughton was listed on AFL.com in our best 5 players and listed worst on ground here.
Yikes! Bit of a glitch!
 
Feb 11, 2008
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excluding Zorko who was subbed, we had the worst 6 players on the ground. 11 of the 12 worst players on the ground.

once again our bottom end gets shown up against good sides. Alex Keath, wow, what are we paying him?

i noticed McComb running with Neale at times, might he be a tagger long term, would still need to improve his kicking.

their top 2 players both small forwards (bit stiff there).

View attachment 1437643
Naughton as worst on tells you all you need to know about those shitty ratings.
 

Munnez

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Cameron playing with Tom Hawkins rule book. Ridiculous how he shoves opponents under the ball and gets away with it.
Certain players can do pretty much whatever they want. Seems like they are allowed for the theatre of them kicking bags of goals, probably not the case bit does feel like it at times.
Naughts never seems to be on the positive side of the ledger wonder why that is 🤪
 

stefoid

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I think those ratings are done by some guy going thru the video and looking at each contest/disposal and seeing who did what and what happened as a result. Its not the number of contests specifically, but the overall sum of +ves and -ves. Like, if a mid was involved in 30 contests, and half performed hugely well and half did very poorly, I guess the overall contribution would be 0, while some other player has 5 contests, all of whiuch were done very well, would score some kind of positive result.

The only way I can rationalize naughton having a negative score is he was involved in a lot of contests where his opponent marked or otherwise affected the contests such that brisbane went off with the ball, and these incidents outweighed the number of times naughton marked or brought the ball to ground for us. Which... is probably about right. And when he did get it, he missed 2 or 3 set shots (from memory) that otherwise would have contributed quite a bit to the positive,.

However, you get a shitty high floaty kick that favours the defender, Naughts still has to make the best of it, so its more like an indictment of the team overall than him personally, IMO.
 
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Charlie Cameron gets away with scrags, pushes and holds all the time.

Presumably in the name of "So Exciting to Watch".
 
Sep 22, 2008
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I made this observation last year.

There is something about the psyche of this team in that you won't see the best of them until they have to win to survive. A real backs against the wall, nothing to lose, no way out, deep rooted collective psychological phenomenon. How valid that observation is has two games to run. We can lose next week and put ourselves in the position where we have to win every game till the end of the season, or thrash them and have one get out of jail card left.

Toss of the coin.
I think this was the case but it’s gone mate, that mentality isn’t going to stay forever there’s only so long you can get up with a “worlds against us” attitude before it’s just plain tiring. I think we’ve badly lost our edge - the constant moaning about absolutely any minor inconvenience under the sun from the coach, the demoralising beating last year, the constant struggle to kick winning scores even though we’re absolutely dominating key indicatiors (due to an over complicated, inefficient gameplan), the favouritism of s**t campaigners over more deserving players, and basically having to play 2-3men down most weeks - it’d bloody get to ya over time

The fire is gone, expect us to fizzle out even worse over the next few weeks
 
excluding Zorko who was subbed, we had the worst 6 players on the ground. 11 of the 12 worst players on the ground.

once again our bottom end gets shown up against good sides. Alex Keath, wow, what are we paying him?

i noticed McComb running with Neale at times, might he be a tagger long term, would still need to improve his kicking.

their top 2 players both small forwards (bit stiff there).

View attachment 1437643
Hands up who thought Naughton was worst on ground!
 
Sep 27, 2005
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I hope that if we do the whole 'backs against the wall, have to win every game' thing this year that it backfires and we lose every one. I'm over it. Yeah, it was great in 2016, but it's 2022 and I'm sick of us making things as difficult as possible before we spark into action.

Last year we were sitting pretty at the halfway point and we screwed up horribly and missed the 4. We beat the Bombers as we should have and had it not been for that arsy win against Brisbane we would have been nowhere.

Really good sides just win and they keep winning, only mentally weak sides need to lose and be in a last gasp scenario each week before they spark into action.
 

Doggy

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I hope that if we do the whole 'backs against the wall, have to win every game' thing this year that it backfires and we lose every one. I'm over it. Yeah, it was great in 2016, but it's 2022 and I'm sick of us making things as difficult as possible before we spark into action.

Last year we were sitting pretty at the halfway point and we screwed up horribly and missed the 4. We beat the Bombers as we should have and had it not been for that arsy win against Brisbane we would have been nowhere.

Really good sides just win and they keep winning, only mentally weak sides need to lose and be in a last gasp scenario each week before they spark into action.
Assy win against Brisbane?

Bit disingenuous don't you think... thoroughly deserved that win. Yes the club made it hard on itself blowing the last part of the season but pretty difficult covid conditions were put on the team during the finals and they performed admirably.

It was a very good performance and it's pretty insulting to call it assy just because it was 1 point.
 
The storytelling coach needs a bogeyman to spin the players his ‘us against the world’ narrative. Injuries, the draw ,Covid, the umpires , journos, our underdog status …..


None of its there this season . Instead of reading ‘oh the places you’ll go’ or performing his latest rousing speech , Bev may as well bring in Terry Wheeler to read out the special buys in the ALDI catalogue. I see electric throw rugs are back in stock.

We’re bog average , our decent players are out of form and we sprinkle the team with ‘hard working’ rookies from our VFL team. Now, hard working is the minimal standard you should expect from an AFL player. Like in any industry , Anyone who doesn’t work hard is clearly not invested in the job. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer my footballers to have some skills attached to their hard working ethos.

There’s no story to spin any more , the backs aren’t up against the wall , we’re not underdogs, we’re not taking anyone by surprise. 2016 was great and 2015 was almost better. There were great moments last year too. But this year is a difficult watch.
 
Naughton lost points because the two goals that he kicked were on the goalline (ie doesn't any points for accurate goalkicking) whilst losing bulk negative points for missing thrre other shots at goal. He only also had 4 contested possessions total where this points system doesm't give you any points for an uncontested possessions. Of course an "uncontested" possession inside the attacking half isn't uncontested in the same way a kicn across half back or a handball received is uncontested, but that's how they've credited his possessions given the binary choice of uncontested/contested.

It's really not that surprising. For instance think of some of the behinds he's kicked. Given that the "expected score" of a bloke free in possession 60m from goal should be greater than one behind, the fact that Naughton's involvement caused a net result of only one behind shouldn'5 that controversial that he's subsequently getting points taken away.
 
Dec 29, 2009
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Assy win against Brisbane?

Bit disingenuous don't you think... thoroughly deserved that win. Yes the club made it hard on itself blowing the last part of the season but pretty difficult covid conditions were put on the team during the finals and they performed admirably.

It was a very good performance and it's pretty insulting to call it assy just because it was 1 point.

Was a good performance and win but was also a game where a bounce the other way and we would have lost and it would have been a wasted year last year.

Not an assy win but definitely a game that could have gone either way, fortunately for us it went our way.
 
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