Autopsy 28 point loss vs. GWS franchise

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Our crumbers have this unbelievable ability to be where the ball isn’t at a contest inside 50 and it does my bloody head in. Zero forward craft.

Also we didn’t acclimatize to the conditions well at all. Sheezel with some uncharacteristic fumbles early on. Thomas I thought was all class. Just silky.

As is the case each week now, what really killed us was our turnovers.
We should never bomb the ball inside 50 and whenever we did we literally picked out the Giants spare defender every time.

Aaron Halls first 40 minutes was criminal. They got their tails up and our confidence was shot and then after half time they put the result beyond doubt.
 
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Our crumbers have this unbelievable ability to be where the ball isn’t at a contest and it does my bloody head in. Zero forward craft.

Also we didn’t acclimatize to the conditions well at all. Sheezel with some uncharacteristic fumbles early on. Thomas thought was all class. Just silky.

As is the case each week now, what really killed us was our turnovers.
We should never bomb the ball inside 50 and whenever we did we literally kicked out the Giants spare defender every time.

Aaron Halls first 40 minutes was criminal. They got their tails up and our confidence was shot and then after half time they put the result beyond doubt.

Yeah, from my POV, Hall's possessions and DE% at face value look good on paper. But I just don't get how DE% is actually measured, because all I see is turnover after turnover. I was critical of Howe for that reason, but looked good in his last couple of senior appearances compared to Hall. Some rubbish handballs to players under pressure coming out of D50 cost goals as well when a long kick would have been far better, would expect better of a senior player which was pretty much the demise of Atley. At the other end, Zurhaar having predominately played deep forward just doesn't seem to know how to lower the eyes and hit up a team mate. Don't know what the answer is, perhaps bring in Perez for Hall. Maybe TT plays back (hard to do when he's averaging 2 a week in 2023) with run and carry and sublime disposal (combine Halls run with Sheezel's clean disposal) , sheezel forward and gets dangerous around goals improvement in fwd craft, and Bull attends centre bounces and plays deep forward but not in between.
 
Likes

Prepared to take the game on, use handball and run. Could see in the later part of the game the Giants were able to shut some of this down.
The bone crunching tackles which came at the end of Giants handball chains, Aaron Hall laid one that was a thing of beauty.
Better ground structures, kept the ball from running end to end quickly and gives the backs a chance to organize.
Changing gears, at one point we brought the ball out of defense slow and deliberately, then bang ran and passed into the forward line.
Force them to turn it over, much improvement here, cant do much if you just chasing bums all day long. This goes hand in hand with effort and commitment.
CCJ clunking them in the forward line, starting to look like a handful for any defender. Will be interesting if we can get Charlie C into the lineup.
At some point Spicer will calm down a bit and not want to off load the ball at the first opportunity, that's when he will kick goal of the year.
George Wardlaw plays like an out and out champion. Once he's strong enough to break the tackles he will monster teams.

Dislikes.
Long kicking to no one in particular.
Too easy turning the ball over.
Killing the ball to the top of the 50 arc.
Not putting hands on the ball and stopping their small forward from extracting the ball and goaling. Need to learn its not over until its really over.
Umpires, they were shite, too many technical frees and let the giants get caught holding the ball on a number of occasions for naught. Boo.
 

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It was never really acceptable. All those leads we gave up under Bard ... how much of that was about fitness. All those lost first round games, all those poor first halves of each season and strong finishes - examples of how poor our fitness was before Shaw came along.
I like to think that those blown leads were due to Bard's inability to inspire belief and confidence in the team when they needed it. We had plenty of wins against teams higher than us on the ladder and were able to outwork many opponents.

Truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but what I will say is that our fitness issues were never exposed as ruthlessly under Bard as they have been since 2020. In fact I'd guess that they dropped again during last year's preseason, maybe due to Nobles' unpopularity. We could well be coming from two fitness tiers back. Which would defy belief for a professional organisation
 
Our crumbers have this unbelievable ability to be where the ball isn’t at a contest and it does my bloody head in. Zero forward craft.

Our lack of a pure crumbing small forward is glaring.

If we had prime Lindsay Thomas on this team we would be a top 8 side.
 
Bit surprised at the doom and gloom, once again the kids were terrific. Stevo and Zurharr had poor games which didn’t help, and Hall just has to go. How many times can you say never again??

Spicer has gone from a delisting cert to something more interesting…had a couple of horrible inside 50 entries but he is building, albeit from a very low base.

With Jy, LDU and Greenwood back after the bye I would expect us to win 2/3 games and tbh that’s ok considering where we are coming from. Ford, Scott, CCJ, Powell - that 2nd tier of kids are cementing their spots and we know that we have some bona fide guns in the middle. Plenty of work to be done but plenty to like.
 
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I thought the GWS game was going to give us a good read on where we were at - a fellow bottom 4 team on our 'fortress' in Hobert.

The start was refreshing but the rest was rinse and repeat - 11 straight defeats now we have had by an average of 6 goals each. Unfortunately we have been that bad for so long now that sort of statement just doesn't seem to be surprising.

The youngsters look great - Wardlaw wow - but the decline in the older players is largely offsetting this improvement hence the overall results are broadly in line with previous years. Our depth is poor so any injury run puts us straight back in the hole.

The next 3 matches are going to be very testing for the young guys to be apart of but they will battle hard - the older guys can't be relied upon to hold the fort - they simply aren't good enough.

We really needed that win yesterday against a fellow bottom 4 side but we came up badly short in the second half.
 

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The herald sun votes today gave 1 vote to Ziebell Briggs did not get a vote
If no one on staff watched the game, they should at least have the journalistic credibility to shamelessly copy some other paper's work instead of embarrassing themselves like this.
 
Yep Goldy was destroyed. Need a brute option – i.e Xerri – as Goldy can't go with the monsters anymore. That said, I'd still give him one more year.
Agree, none better than Goldy to teach Xerri/CCJ and having him as a someone who could come in cases of injuries/suspension is more than handy. I think it's too much to expect him to do what he does now every week.
 

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