Yes agree with you re the perceived pressure. The player who appears to have the most composure is Butler who's almost at the end of his career and is also now slow and Certainly not elite, just reliable and doesn't appear to go into panic mode. I've come to the conclusion that the GF loss last year has got in most players heads and they have one massive GF hangover - eg lost all confidence including the captain unfortunately. Too many out of form.
In 2011 when we lost to Gee in the prelim, the justification was that much of the group was young and they would learn from the experience of going head to head with the Cats who were giants at the time and i believed that was a fair statement. Unfortunately, this group has no excuses anymore. We just are not good enough, and our senior players are the worst offenders. Start again time.
As much as I hate to admit it, I think you may be on the money. Just looked at the stats and only 6 players had a disposal efficiency of 75% or more and Barrass was the best. I guess that tells you something when one of the least experienced comes out on top. Mind you stats aren't always the be all!
