Crows v Eagles

[SellarStardom]

Last night was a practice match in Alice against a side almost at full strength in the Eagles so lets not worry too much, hell Australia use to beat England in Soccer practice matches when we were crap.
Anyway positives from last night,
Petrenko is showing form, plenty of ball but disposal can AND WILL improve. "A young Mcleod"!!
Cook doing some nice dashing work, maybe a wing position in the future??
Martin taking some nice pack marks, shows his skills considering his height.
Henschtel is coming back well and Tex is chipping in, I agree that with Tippett there he should find it even easier.
Sloane seemed to do a couple of good things too
Negatives
Our disposal still sounds ordinairy and like the Geelong game it sounded like opposition players were loose everywhere.
With ordiniary disposal our forward entry is crap, hopefully when Tippett is fit we can utilise Gill and maybe Tippett or Stevens out at 50-80m out as HFs and get better movement from defense into attack.
Sellar - still question marks but again a forward (he is not a defender please) will struggle with piss poor delivery, I haven't lost hope in him.

 

[cmndstab]

Rutten, yeah. Tippett jury still out.

Who else do we have taking his place? Put him in there and he takes the FB. You can effectively shift every player's defender down. We have a long-bomb target besides Hentschel all of a sudden. Not to mention the fact that he's enormous and can split a pack.

 

[Stephen2]

Also remember Walker has taken both Glass and Scarlet as defenders in the last 2 matches

Good point PrideofSA! Walker is such a gun, can't wait to watch him all year

 

[The Sloane Ranger]

I have not read through all the thread, however here are my thoughts, we need to remember that given virtually none of us viewed the game live our opinions can only be based on the commentary of the game which we must treat with caution.

Positives
The 3 trial matches thus far have enabled us to play the majority of our 1st, 2nd and 3rd year rookies.

Walker, Otten , D-Mac and possibly Petrenko have demostrated that they are ready now to be in our best 22.

Cook, Sloane and Jacky have demostrated to me that they are improving with every outing however we may expeience some inconsistency along the way which should be expected.

Hentchel - another game under his belt

Bock - continues on with his 2008 form

Steven -continues to be a valuable swing man

Zoomer - just evergreen

Concerns
Conversion in front of goals, this cost us the result

Ability to kick high scores, however I have noticed that throughout the NAB series not too many 100+ scores have been kicked

Maric and Griffin - both must do more around the ground, they need to be more than stoppage players

Importance of the Truck - Lynch killed Moran early and Sellar late, at present Moran and Sellar do not have the competitiveness or footy smarts to play on the last line of defence.

Moving forward
Hopefully Tippett and Douglas may be available for selection this week, over the next two games we need to stop trialling and focus on the players competing for our best 22, no more Martin type of selections.

Injury prevention and rehabilitation is critical to our success in 2009, Truck, Tippett, VB and Proplyzia are all critical components to our side, we do not have the depth this year to carry too many injuries.

Forward line, we must continue to play Walker and Tippett up forward no matter what the pain is, IMO Hentchel and Gill should fight out the third tall forward role, at the momenet I am leaning towards Gill as he has the ability and capacity to play as a lead up forward and push hard up the ground while Tippett and Walker stay inside 50.

Summary
I would of loved a win however given the fact the crows flew up on the same day and we gave plenty of game time to our younger players and we are improving with every outing, I am happy with what we got out of last night.

However from next week I want to reduce the trialling and start the focus on rnd 1

 

[Zvim]

Whats the point of Gill

We asked that question in 2003. He had a pretty good 2002 in the VFL and while I don't think he is completely useless I doubt he will ever progress past his current level of ability. A reasonable player when you are short of options but if you have young kids with potential it is probably better to play them and let them grow from the experience.

 

[Vader]

Thread now cleaned up.

Disappointing that the Crows lost again, but it sounds as if our youngsters got a lot more gametime and had a significant impact as a result. Will be happy with the outcome if that is the case.

 

[WALL-e]

wow, 3 hours of sleep before flying back home, jetlagged, reading this, only to feel even shitter.

WTF 15 yo orgasm, promote Cook, Sellar in D

I'm out.

 

[force65]

of what ive seen of otten in the first 3 games he has been playing some really good footy....i think him playing through the midfield can really help the crows this year

do you reckon he is in our best 22 now?

 

[jenny61_99]

Effectively we are down Massie also

Not so much Massie as Symes has taken his role. So yes, down Rutten, Bassett (or a replacement thereof) and Symes. I have a feeling our defense would not look so brittle were we to have Rutten and Symes back in with Moran the spare man in defence.

 

[CaptainDangerfield]

As I have said in the past "no Jericho, no Crows".

I thought we would win this one for sure. I have The Coasters in my bottom 4. This could be a long year.

 

[macca23]

of what ive seen of otten in the first 3 games he has been playing some really good footy....i think him playing through the midfield can really help the crows this year

do you reckon he is in our best 22 now?

He'll definitely play games this year and on pre-season form deseervedly so.

IMO he'll just be outside our best 22 if they're all available, but injuries will ensure that he gets games.

 

[bus24]

hell Australia use to beat England in Soccer practice matches when we were crap

Don't let the fact that England has the strongest league fool you. The National team is pretty ho-hum, with a penchant for South Australian epic chokes.

(Not that Australia is that good, mind)

 

[Crow-mo]

hell Australia use to beat England in Soccer practice matches when we were crap.

really? that's a funny way of describing a team being outplayed.

 

[Crow-mo]

Don't let the fact that England has the strongest league fool you. The National team is pretty ho-hum, with a penchant for South Australian epic chokes.

(Not that Australia is that good, mind)

hey, I was there. England fielded a strong line up and were completely outplayed.

 

[RooDog]

does anyone know who we are playing in Berri next weekend?

 

[beartoo]

Loser of Carlton Hawthorn match today.

 

[spexau]

Not so much Massie as Symes has taken his role. So yes, down Rutten, Bassett (or a replacement thereof) and Symes. I have a feeling our defense would not look so brittle were we to have Rutten and Symes back in with Moran the spare man in defence.

Saw Brad at the Garden of Unearthly Delights last night and he says he gets his casts off in a couple weeks and he friggen hates them lol. So I guess he'll be back in training soon enough

 

[Effes]

Saw Brad at the Garden of Unearthly Delights last night and he says he gets his casts off in a couple weeks and he friggen hates them lol. So I guess he'll be back in training soon enough

Do you think he's no chance of playing round 1?

 

[WALL-e]

Do you think he's no chance of playing round 1?

His fitness base should be right up and he's definately in our 22, just a matter of if he can get a couple of NAB callenge games of trial matches into him for game practise, he may come through 1 or 2 weeks in the sanfl if he can't.

 

[spexau]

Do you think he's no chance of playing round 1?

No idea, only saw him briefly. Considering there is like 4 weeks until round 1 and he gets his casts off in roughly 2 you'd probably consider him an outside chance. He has been hammering the bikes from all accounts so his fitness can't be terrible.

 

[WALL-e]

Highlights are up on afc.com.au

 

[spexau]

Highlights are up on afc.com.au

Can anyone put it on YouTube? My PC seriously hates telstra's website.

Edit: Tried doing installing the Firefox plug-in and the afl site is the only one it still won't work with. And IE gets past the ad then stops

 

[beartoo]

Some of those passages of play were special. If we can string 4 quarters of that stuff together, we'll be right up there.