I'm curious what you say about Ashmore - I never knew we had any connection with her?
I thought we were fumbly and didn't play with much cohesion, a lot of players didn't get much of the ball or didn't do much with it when they got it. We played pretty similar to last week, the difference being we could just grind Geelong out of the game forever whereas North have enough very good players and enough weapons to make it impossible to do over a whole game. They were more organised than we were and also, disappointingly, more skilled, I think.
I liked when we played more free-flowing in the third quarter, but ultimately it didn't get us anywhere because in that quarter, like all game, we didn't have much of a clue in the forward line. We miss Lochland so so much. I'm not sure about dropping McLeod either, because she's no star but she's been a fairly regular goalkicker for us over the years.
Katie Brennan had a pretty good game but my memory of her at the start of the comp was that she was more of a one-touch player. She takes some great marks but today she dropped some sitters, muffed some disposals. I hope she's playing herself back into form and I hope Huntington is back soon so they can each take some pressure off each other.
I liked bits and pieces I saw from Smith, Ferres and Gogos, some of our more underrated midfielders. Lamb, Blackburn and Conti played well. And incidentally, it was utter madness for that umpire not to let Blackburn take a set shot when she'd have been kicking from 50. He clearly wasn't watching us last week...
I think we're a middle-of-the-pack team this year. If it all goes well for us, we get Huntington and Lochland back in time and nobody else is injured, I think at our best we can have a shot at the flag this year, but it won't take much for us to freefall out of contention either.
