Port Adelaide were dreadful...
I actually thought their endeavour was fine. It was a strong contest throughout, with both teams throwing themselves in all night.
they had no decent ruck...
And we had a relatively ordinary effort from Rhys in response. I don't see how this worked greatly in our favour.
and missed some good inside mids,
SPP was out, I admit, And Rockliff as well. Who it must be said has been incredibly underwhelming for them thus far.
And we were missing arguably one of the greatest of all time in that role. Still don't see how they're well behind on that metric, based on this year's output.
their slow ball movement was terrible. They basically had no run and carry which is the best way to beat us..
Have to agree here.
It's almost like the Cats were coached to hold them up at every opportunity and take away one of their supposedly key advantages over our line-up on the night.
Was still a good win but would be a different story if they had a full team (in a team with a lot of soft outside players they really needed a lot more inside grunt).
How different could it have been if we had all of these best 22 players (Gaz, Hendo, Harry, Toma, Guth, Nakia) available for us on the night? And, for the fifth week running, not had at least one player out of the game before half-time.
Just because the team has a good win doesn't mean everything is rosy and Chris Scott is the best coach ever.
All is not rosy. And he is not the best coach ever. And even those you most vehemently oppose here would not disagree with you about that.
He and the MC have had a shocking start to the season.
There have been mistakes, undoubtedly. And there have been several real positives...
Fogarty, Kelly, Esava and Henry have all debuted and shown plenty of promise. And Parfitt appears to have gone up a notch (or two). Hyphen came in last night and played a really effective game, blending seamlessly into the team.
The backline is holding together brilliantly, given all the injuries and the significant changes since 2017.
The forward set-up looks more threatening and less predictable than last year as well.
And the last two weeks give some encouragement that we are setting up better around the ground,thus stifling our opposition and limiting their ability to score regularly and rapidly.
We have a long way to go, of course. But 3-2 (including a 1-point loss and an interstate defeat to the team on top) and fifth on the ladder after one game at home just doesn't fit with a 'shocking start' narrative from Scott and his MC for mine.