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Oppo Camp 2025 Other Games Rolling Thread

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A defeatist attitude that just ignores the facts. We spanked the Hawks, and lost in a game where extenuating circumstances won’t apply next time.
Against Geel we controlled the game but were unlucky Crisp missed a shot on goal to win the game. They needed a Herculean last QTR by Danger to win.

Who in their right mind rolls over with claims of “bogie teams” given these recent results.
Not defeatist. Maybe a bit of PTSD.
We beat anyone if we play to our strengths.
 
Assuming we get to a GF, then Sam Mitchell needs to beat his bogey side to then get to his bunny side

S Mitchell record vs Geelong 11-18 as s player, 1-4 as coach
S Mitchell record vs Collingwood 15-7 as a player, 3-3 as coach

For me, I hope the Cats win, as I am confident that we'd again be bullied by Hawthorn if we play them again.
Geelong should have hawthorn covered I reckon. Week off is back being an advantage again. First few years clubs didn’t know how to deal with it. Now they do.
 
EDIT: They sprayed opportunities in front of goal and didn't chase as hard as they could have. He was coaching the players on the ground and his comments should be about them, and their performance.

He was responding to a question about how the Rankine situation affected the team. His answer was fine. Nothing to see here.

He was saying he didn't feel it was an off field distraction for the playing group, but that they're not as good a team without him. Every single person who follows AFL believes that they're not as good a team without Rankine.
 

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Nicks wasn’t comparing his situation to Hawthorn at all.

He just said that having his best player out changed his team dynamic. Which seems perfectly reasonable, if not obvious?

You don’t think having Nick Daicos out would change our team dynamic?
It's a bit different when your season has ended, but it's unusual for a coach when asked "what difference would player x have made?" To answer: "we'll never know will we? It changed the dynamic of the group. He's one of the best players in the comp. Our best player. He's hard to replace. It was a challenge to fill that void". (Paraphrased).

And after that not to make some definitive statement about how it's not an excuse we still should have done better etc. It's the lack of this that makes the preceding seem like excuse making and I don't think it's uncharitable to interpret it that way. If you want to be literalist and say he did not directly make an excuse that's also fine.
 
No doubt Nick's absence would, but I just can't see Malthouse or Fly speaking publicly along those lines.

Coaches don’t just vomit out stream-of-conscious thought bubbles. They get asked direct questions and they answer them. Nicks was asked about the impact of having Rankine out? I thought he gave a perfectly reasonable answer.

If Malthouse had been asked that question, he would have answered something along the lines of “having our best player out is not the reason we lost the game”. But I don’t think anybody would hold up Malthouse as a paragon of how to handle press conferences.

As for Fly - he seems to treat press conferences as addressing the Collingwood faithful - the wider AFL community seems like an afterthought. So I’m guessing he’d answer the question in much the same way as Nicks did.

As JuniorB posted, Nicks has not displayed strong leadership during this finals campaign.

I don’t think his handling of the Rankin situation was great.
 
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It's a bit different when your season has ended, but it's unusual for a coach when asked "what difference would player x have made?" To answer: "we'll never know will we? It changed the dynamic of the group. He's one of the best players in the comp. Our best player. He's hard to replace. It was a challenge to fill that void". (Paraphrased).

And after that not to make some definitive statement about how it's not an excuse we still should have done better etc. It's the lack of this that makes the preceding seem like excuse making and I don't think it's uncharitable to interpret it that way. If you want to be literalist and say he did not directly make an excuse that's also fine.

Yeah, that’s fair.

But he’s speaking to his constituents. Which is not us. Maybe it all makes perfect sense and is reasonable when parsed through the mind of a Crows supporter.
 
Fly wouldn't have even mentioned it, that's the difference.
Next year, if Nick misses a game and we lose. The reporters will ask him about the impact of missing Daicos:

Next soldier up, system based, Yada Yada yada... But it would also be ridiculous to not acknowledge that he's a really important player for us - which he would acknowledge, as he does regularly about players.
 
It's a bit different when your season has ended, but it's unusual for a coach when asked "what difference would player x have made?" To answer: "we'll never know will we? It changed the dynamic of the group. He's one of the best players in the comp. Our best player. He's hard to replace. It was a challenge to fill that void". (Paraphrased).

And after that not to make some definitive statement about how it's not an excuse we still should have done better etc. It's the lack of this that makes the preceding seem like excuse making and I don't think it's uncharitable to interpret it that way. If you want to be literalist and say he did not directly make an excuse that's also fine.
In terms of underlying messaging. Excuse didn't pop into my mind at all. I thought there was some messaging to Rankine in it.
 
1990 - we kicked 5.2 in the second half

View attachment 2425030
Yes, I know, That game (1990) was still in the balance at half time.
In the first GF in 2010 we kicked 2 goals in the second half to draw. 0 goals in the 3rd and 2 in the last quarter.
We also kicked 7 goals in 1977 when we lost to North as well. As I said, there are some exceptions.
my point is we don't kick a high enough score in the second half and often it has cost us premierships.
 

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Looking ahead to today's game, I am keen to see if brisbane will send a hard tag to either of rowell or Anderson and vice versa if the Suns will deploy a hard tag on mcluggage.
 
No. He was asked about the Rankine impact on the club. I'd paraphrase it as he said the impact was only football. And that they're a much better team with Rankine in it.
Not anything he needed to say really. If their capitulation is due solely to the absence of one player then they have serious issues. He might have been better advised to play the straight bat and say the usual cliches… “ both teams have 22 players, it’s about the system not the individuals, one out one in” etc
 

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