I made the journey to Geelong yesterday, and aside from the typical hallmarks of a Geelong game - adults waving flags, adults wearing facepaint, adults seemingly disconnected from an era in which Geelong weren't the most awesome and incredible team ever - we got treated to a reasonably typical North circa 2014 performance. Ept and inept in unequal measure.
Mid way through the first it was clear - all the players, the coaches, support staff, cheer squad members and North fans who made the trek to Bumpkin Stadium needed to form an orderly queue at the end of the quarter and prepare to receive the collective cockpunch for everything that had occurred during those 30 minutes.
In the end, we went down by 20 points, and were it not for a couple of shitty misses could have almost snatched an entirely improbably win for the jaws of the most deserving defeat in the history of AFL football.
Keep in mind our previous three journeys to BS have yielded losses of 66 points, 35 with Rawlings starring before that, and 70 the time before that. 20 stacks up well with reference to them.
But this is 2014, and we've got higher expectations of the club, and the team. We produced a solid half of unforgivable trash, and at half time I was back to visualisations I'd only had once before (following the Essendon loss in Round 1) - what does this team play like without Brad Scott in charge?
In the third we agains started slow but then Ziebell (who I'd marked for the twos mid way through the second when a refusal to play the ball cost us another OMG GO CATTIES goal), Bastinac, Dal Santo, Swallow and Gibson started to get into it. Harvey and Greenwood continued to show class - while Nahas made a few team mates look like assholes, and The GENERAL continued the sort of form AND EFFORT which will have him top 5 in our B&F come seasons end.
We come home with a wet sail and nearly meet my 3qt prediction of us losing by 2 goals. Did anyone watch the last without an intense feeling of complete frustration? Where was this sort of effort in the first half? Drew actually started to look like a focal point up forward. We had more focal points than fecal points in our forward line for the first time in a while.
We walked out not really knowing what we'd just saw, but knowing we'd fisted a golden opportunity to set our selves up for the finals and top four. Because that's our expectation for a team that finished tenth last year and couldn't finish off games against all sorts of sides, good and bad. We lost to Brisbane last year - we beat Geelong once and should have been twice.
But is that the point? Maybe our expectations as fans are too high and right now inconsistency is the only consistency? We're not gunning to get a flag from an old list, we don't need to nail one last flag before Shagga/Simmo/Arch retires - we have years of Ziebell and Cunnington to go.
Do we have to just sit back and wait and accept that performances like that will happen?
Mid way through the first it was clear - all the players, the coaches, support staff, cheer squad members and North fans who made the trek to Bumpkin Stadium needed to form an orderly queue at the end of the quarter and prepare to receive the collective cockpunch for everything that had occurred during those 30 minutes.
In the end, we went down by 20 points, and were it not for a couple of shitty misses could have almost snatched an entirely improbably win for the jaws of the most deserving defeat in the history of AFL football.
Keep in mind our previous three journeys to BS have yielded losses of 66 points, 35 with Rawlings starring before that, and 70 the time before that. 20 stacks up well with reference to them.
But this is 2014, and we've got higher expectations of the club, and the team. We produced a solid half of unforgivable trash, and at half time I was back to visualisations I'd only had once before (following the Essendon loss in Round 1) - what does this team play like without Brad Scott in charge?
In the third we agains started slow but then Ziebell (who I'd marked for the twos mid way through the second when a refusal to play the ball cost us another OMG GO CATTIES goal), Bastinac, Dal Santo, Swallow and Gibson started to get into it. Harvey and Greenwood continued to show class - while Nahas made a few team mates look like assholes, and The GENERAL continued the sort of form AND EFFORT which will have him top 5 in our B&F come seasons end.
We come home with a wet sail and nearly meet my 3qt prediction of us losing by 2 goals. Did anyone watch the last without an intense feeling of complete frustration? Where was this sort of effort in the first half? Drew actually started to look like a focal point up forward. We had more focal points than fecal points in our forward line for the first time in a while.
We walked out not really knowing what we'd just saw, but knowing we'd fisted a golden opportunity to set our selves up for the finals and top four. Because that's our expectation for a team that finished tenth last year and couldn't finish off games against all sorts of sides, good and bad. We lost to Brisbane last year - we beat Geelong once and should have been twice.
But is that the point? Maybe our expectations as fans are too high and right now inconsistency is the only consistency? We're not gunning to get a flag from an old list, we don't need to nail one last flag before Shagga/Simmo/Arch retires - we have years of Ziebell and Cunnington to go.
Do we have to just sit back and wait and accept that performances like that will happen?
