Eagles v Demons- GBU

Mead

Norm Smith Medallist
Joined
Mar 2, 2002
Posts
6,795
Likes
1,080
Location
Perth
AFL Club
West Coast
Other Teams
Eagles
Thread starter #1

Its been a long time between drinks at the 'G for West Coast. And at halftime, after the Eagles had just blown a 20pt lead, and the Dees were swarming all over the game. It looked like a familiar script. Key injuries, unfamiliar playing conditions, travel, another fadeout, and another away loss. Except today it didn't happen like that. I can only guess what Woosh had to say at half time, but it certainly did the trick. Cue for a 10 goal third quarter and an extremely satisfying 33 point win.

The Good
On the back of an outstanding nullifying game last week, Chick had an outstanding day at the office. Put simply, sans Cousins, Chick stood up and led the side. Not only did the Chickster kick four goals, including two awe inspiring punts from 50+, he directed proceedings from the midfield with the sort of grunt work, flawless decision making, and stone cold tackling that we were all hoping for when he was recruited. His goal-saving run down of Vardy in the second quarter had me out of my seat and punching the air.
The second stringers in the midfield actually did a pretty good job covering for the loss of Kerr and Cousins. Judd was okay, but struggled a little as the #1 tagging target., Fletcher had a great game- although he didn't get the huge stats he did over the last few weeks, his skills were impeccable. The other big wrap was Phil Read, who is playing like a guy who has a lot of lost time to make up for. More than anyone else, we really needed Read to stand up and fill one of the midfield roles, and he did wonderfully. Embley had another good game, Chipper got some good touches towards the end of the game, and we also got fantastic service from our ruck department. Gardiner didn't really dominate thanks to a creditable performance by the promising Jolly, but looking at his stats after, he did finish with 39 hit outs, have 18 touches, and took 10 marks.

Up forward, Phil Matera was awol for a half, and then definitely present for a quarter or so. If Fido is going to kick 5 goals, I think I'd actually prefer that he does it in that manner- game breaking bursts of that type put the fear of god into the opposition. I actually rate this as Phil's most dangerous game this year- it was 50-50 through the midfield (unlike vs the Saints), and had he kicked accurately, he could have very easily finished with 8 or 9 big ones. The Big Cox also found himself in the right place at the right time, finishing with a haul of three. Jakovich also had a good day at CHF, following on from his dominant first quarter at CHB with a solid game capped off with an exciting goal after stepping through heavy traffic.

In defence, serious props must be given to the seriously proppy looking McIntosh, who has perfected the art of looking and moving like he only has a few months left to live, let alone play, and still somehow managing to towel his opponent. McIntosh did the job on the most dangerous FF in the league, winning the bulk of the one on ones against Neitz for the bulk of the day.The rest of the defence didn't exactly distinguish themselves. Chad Morrison had a good time of it mopping up loose balls across half back all day, and Hunter was lively as always.

In a general sense, one of the most pleasing elements of our game was the amount of physical pressure being exerted around the ball. Worsfold seems to be teaching our guys to hit hard and often, and our hard shepherding is paying dividends.

Deestroy:Well from a Demon perspective, I am struggling to find anything good to speak of, and I apologise for the lack of effort I will be putting into this report. Even our better players struggled at times; case in point Nathan Brown. He got our most disposals, kicked a couple of goals, and was regarded as our best player. Yet the number of times he made simple skill errors was amazing, he played on every time he got the ball, selling himself into trouble over and over again. Then of course there was the last quarter where he tried to make an art of running into his teammates. All this yet he was our best player, which goes to show just how bad we really were.

The only good thing I took from the game, was the continued contribution of Simon Godfrey. This is a guy who by all accounts should not be playing AFL; sure he can run all day, and is good as ****ing opposition players off, but he simply cannot kick. What separates him from the rest of the Dees side at the moment is heart - he has it in truckloads. Godders is clearly a player to get the maximum out of his ability; with his toughness and sheer grunt it’s great to see another player in the Tod Viney mould.


The Bad
There was a period during the second quarter when Jolly was temporarily on top of Gardiner. That in itself isn’t that bad, because its pretty rare for a ruckman to dominate for four quarters with no let up. What did bother me, though, was our midfielders failed to adapt to the change in play. Even after a quarter of Melbourne winning it out of the centre, they were still running offensively and expecting to get the knock. To Gardiner’s credit, he fought back in the second half and again gave our players the sort of ball use they’re accustomed to, but that lapse came pretty close to costing us the game. Our midfielders *must* get better at reading the game- our offensive style is pretty fun to watch, but there are times when you just have to man up until the momentum swings again. I wouldn’t expect Gardie to win all four quarters against King next week, and if our midfielders don’t keep that in mind, we could get burnt.

There are still some issues in our defence. Every time Melbourne kicked long to Neitz, it was time for a sigh of relief, because McIntosh generally had no problems getting a fist to the ball. However, when Melbourne chipped it around their forward line, they had a lot more luck and our midsize and small defenders had trouble manning up. The number of goals the Demons got from soccering loose balls was also mind boggling- We badly need Wirrpunda back in the back pocket, taking charge of the mopping up operations.

The two guys playing their first game for the year, Munro and Adkins, had mixed days at best. Munro looked a lot better up forward than he did down back- he’s at his best when he can go find the ball, because he judges it well in the air and makes good position. When he’s forced to body up and wait for it, though, he’s just too scrawny- Vardy and co had a fun time of it when Munro was playing back, simply because Munro was not strong enough to match up to them in the marking contests. Munro certainly has some raw talent, but he really needs to beef up- physically, he’s a lot less developed than Green, Hunter, and the other guys who came through at the same time.

Adkins’ day could best be described as erratic. His use of the ball was pretty good, his kicking was very precise indeed, but my god, he made a mess of it on occasions. The two most notable mistakes were him committing the elementary error of playing on without checking if there was someone on his hammer, and getting caught- lucky for him the umpires were asleep- and secondly, getting pinged for running too far, despite having all the time in the world to bounce it if he was so inclined. There were promising signs in Chipper’s game, and I’d like to see him back next week, but he probably needs a fair bit of AFL game time before he reaches his full potential.

Haynes is also a player who is still in the ‘almost there’ category. He leads like a pro, is far more agile than your average FF, but put simply he needs to learn to kick the set shots. Despite his reputation for not being much of a tackler, he seems to be pretty good on the HBF- he’s probably got a season or so in front of him before he becomes a real bona fide FF.


Deestroy:
If it wasn’t for a 1-quarter spurt, the Dees would have copped another severe belting, but I’ll get into that more in The Ugly section. There are more negatives than you can point a stick at for the Dees, the least of which was the injury to Jeff White, meaning that Jolly, who has been playing a bits and pieces ruck role for the last year, will have to start playing near full games in the ruck, a major test of his fitness, he was really good in the 2nd quarter, but faded as the game went on.

A major negative has been the sides seeming lack of endeavour when things aren’t all going our way. We have a number of players who are struggling for form (i.e. Vardy, Walsh, Whelan, Bizzell, Green, Bruce, etc) and they don’t seem to be able to even grind out some respectability to our losses. You see it’s all or nothing for this lot, and that is one of the most disappointing things. It was easy to see this first hand with the difference between our 2nd and 3rd quarters, when on top we can be awesome, but whenever challenged we fall to pieces.

Another thing I will speak about is Neale Daniher’s coaching. I say It’s a cop out to blame losses such as Saturday solely on the coach, but he did play a factor. He simply doesn’t throw up anything for the other coach to think about. About the most daring thing he does is push Neitz 30 meters from goal and play a ruckman in the goal square, hardly revolutionary is it? Sure, he did move Bizzell to CHF, pity this was once the game was already well and truly over. ND is too much of a reactive coach, and unless this changes, he may need to start looking for a new profession at the end of the season.


The Ugly
Hmm. Well, the umpiring wasn’t really in the same category as last week’s Derby debacle, but it was still interesting. It appeared that the Men in White were focusing on the bizarre, and ignoring the mundane. Players were getting pinged for (clearly not) deliberate out of bounds, there were a number of very very soft 50s and off the ball decisions, but meanwhile, a lot of push outs and holding the balls went unnoticed- we can’t complain to loudly, because on numerous occasions we got away with murder- how Adkins wasn’t pinged after he played on off the mark and was caught, I’ll never know.

I’ve also gotta say I feel Melbourne fans’ pain. There were periods today where their play was from the Ken Judge school of football- particularly mention must go to the two Dees who both ran to collect a handball, and tripped over each other, leaving them prone on either side of the pill.

Finally, it’s fast getting to the stage where I groan every time we have an away game on a Saturday, because it means the turds from ten will be commentating. KB and someone or other, er, lets just call him Ashley Shaw because I can’t be assed thinking of his first name, have the ability to make Dermott Brereton sound like the most erudite wordsmith to ever grace the small screen.
Just some handy reference points for them-
-Allen Jakovich does not play for West Coast. Believe it or not, he has a brother who somehow found the time to come out of Al’s shadow long enough not to win a few B&Fs, play 250 games, and be a dual premiership player.
-When you call Chris Judd ‘Ashley Judd’, and realize your mistake, you should not make light of it. You should be very very ashamed, and beg our forgiveness.
-KASEY Green, KANE Munro, ADAM Hunter, DAVID Haynes, ANDREW Embley. Their first names are not interchangeable. Can I suggest writing them on the back of your arm if you really have that much trouble?
-For the nth fricking time, have you ever referred to a team as ‘The Melbourne’, or ‘The Essendon?’ No? Well, perhaps you can stop calling us ‘The West Coast?’

Deestroy: .Melbourne, we were once again ****house. I am beyond getting ****ed off and upset by these soft performances, I am into the indifference stage. If you’re a Simpson’s watcher, I can draw an analogy to Marge. She yells at Bart anytime he does something wrong, but when she found out Bart had shoplifted; she acted with indifference in a stage that was beyond anger and was closer to being shattered. I’m in that stage.

But for the purpose of this report I will rip into them. We are a side of front running soft ****s and it will be hard for this side to get anywhere when the members of it play for themselves. Players like Johnstone who plays like he couldn’t give a **** about the overall result, providing he gets his pay check, are common in the current player group. There is simply no heart in the Melbourne side, and the chicken hearts delivered to the club last week were probably being generous to the
actual heart size of the Demons players.

For you I didn’t really see many negatives, except in the 2nd quarter where I believe we won every center clearance. I thought some changes would be made to try to change this around, playing your midfielders defensive side in the middle or something to that effect. Full credit to your lot though, you fully deserved to beat us, as many other sides will this year.

I will finish up by saying ‘Ruthlessness’ is a term that has been thrown around by my club quite a bit over the months since our semi final exit from last years final series, which is funny since I couldn’t think of a thing we lack more of.


Well that’s it for now, cheers to Deestroy for another great guest review- All things considered it was a pretty good win, and one which could very well set the pace for our season. Next week, we take on Geelong at Subi in a game we can’t afford to lose, and Melbourne have another chance to redeem themselves against Port at the MCG. Incidentally, if you're a Geelong fan and feel like doing a bit of writing next week, PM me.
 

(Log in to remove this ad.)

noodle

Norm Smith Medallist
Joined
Mar 14, 2002
Posts
5,271
Likes
723
Location
allyourbasearebelongtous
AFL Club
West Coast
#3
The Good.

We are becoming a tough unit. Having chick in the side is fantastic just for his tackling ability but the younger guys are starting a follow in his lead. I'm not saying we are near Brisbane's level of toughness but we are heading the right direction.

The Bad.

I was a an engagement party when this game was on. In a park no less. Although I did get to see bits on the TV that someone was smart enough to bring along.

Injuries are a bit of a worry. Cousins looks like he will be able to get over his but not Gasper. I would leave him out for 4 weeks minimum. I feel that he his a required player but he is never going to do any good playing half a game.

The Ugly.

I didn't see to much of it but in the 20 minutes of football I saw I agree that the 10 commentators are ****e. Why o why do we always get the B team. They are a bunch of ****en muppets. :mad:
 

GoEagles

Norm Smith Medallist
Joined
Aug 10, 2000
Posts
7,443
Likes
11
Location
Sydney
AFL Club
West Coast
#6
*Applaudes* Terrific GBU Report as always - and nice cameo by Deestory (was a hard act to follow after Kenny's review last week)

I propose a new segment for the GBU. "The Dropkick" to identify the biggest tool throughout the game - of course this week, the award would go to Tony "Ashley" Shaw who is thick as a brick with his stupid one liner comments and getting just about every single Eagles name incorrect.

Gotta love his excuse "There are so many Eagles players who are 6'2 or 6'3 with the same colour hair."

Honourable Tool Mention goes to Kevin "long pauses" Bartlett who was obviously looking up every Eagles player in the Footy Record to make sure he didn't stuff up.
 

vicki

Team Captain
Joined
Feb 18, 2002
Posts
575
Likes
1
Location
perth
Other Teams
westcoasteagles
#7
GBU

Thanks once again Mead. Great report.

As for the Channel 10 team - I agree completely. They show no respect for us in the way they don't even bother to get the players names correct.

And that "the West Coast" REALLY annoys me more than any of their other mistakes.

The other thing with commentators that irks me the most is, that after 6 years or so, they still (apart from Dennis) cannot pronounce Wirra's surname. For their benefit : it is "punder" rhymes with "thunder". I find myself shouting at the TV every week.
 

jod23

TheBrownDog
Joined
Apr 2, 2000
Posts
61,486
Likes
17,879
Location
Perth, Australia
AFL Club
West Coast
Other Teams
Liverpool, Chicago Bulls.
#8
Nice work Mead...big ups to Deestroy for doing his part when Im sure he didnt want to relive what happened on the weekend :D

Top read.
 

thegur

Team Captain
Joined
Oct 8, 2001
Posts
363
Likes
0
Location
west virginia
#9
big ups to Mead - the recruiting of Daniel Chick was brilliant. Are we rebuilding or aiming for a premiership? Right now, we are heading for finals football, and if I had to choose between a chance of having a good player in 4-5 years, compared to what Daniel Chick gives us now ... give me Chicky. Our recruitment of players with lower picks previously (Read and co.) has allowed us to be more flexible with draft picks (given the depth of youngsters on our list).

He gives us the ultimate tackler who kicks goals, and if he gets anywhere near 2001 form, he will be our most important mid-sized player given his defensive skills. I know we have the cats this week, but I'd think Chick would be a candiate for Buckley.

Speaking of the cats, this week, I think we can afford to blood a youngster in place of Travis. me thinks Lynch, and play him at CHB, if he f*cks up, then swing Jako there, and move Hulk to CHF. Don't mind Howser either though .... maybe at FF.

over and out

thegur
 

Mead

Norm Smith Medallist
Joined
Mar 2, 2002
Posts
6,795
Likes
1,080
Location
Perth
AFL Club
West Coast
Other Teams
Eagles
Thread starter #10
Originally posted by thegur
big ups to Mead - the recruiting of Daniel Chick was brilliant. Are we rebuilding or aiming for a premiership? Right now, we are heading for finals football, and if I had to choose between a chance of having a good player in 4-5 years, compared to what Daniel Chick gives us now ... give me Chicky. Our recruitment of players with lower picks previously (Read and co.) has allowed us to be more flexible with draft picks (given the depth of youngsters on our list).

He gives us the ultimate tackler who kicks goals, and if he gets anywhere near 2001 form, he will be our most important mid-sized player given his defensive skills. I know we have the cats this week, but I'd think Chick would be a candiate for Buckley.

Speaking of the cats, this week, I think we can afford to blood a youngster in place of Travis. me thinks Lynch, and play him at CHB, if he f*cks up, then swing Jako there, and move Hulk to CHF. Don't mind Howser either though .... maybe at FF.

over and out

thegur
I'm totally with you on Chick's worth. It might sound a bit over the top on the basis of a 4 goal, 17 disposal effort, but he really is a wonderful player, and was the key to our win- I'm very glad we picked him up. The guy tackles like a nutter, has a booming kick, and is just a good, solid hard player- he stood up and led the side in the absence of Cousins. The thing about Chicky is there are two measures of his worth- one are the obvious things he does on game day, like his 4 goal effort today, and his bitchification of Pavlich last week, the other is the less quantifiable effect he's probably having around the club. When you add a guy like Chick who is prepared to work that hard and put his body on the line, it boosts your leadership stocks and does wonders for the work ethic of players coming through. I'm guessing Woosha chose to pick up Chick because he saw him as the player on offer who would most assist his efforts to rebuild the WCE in his image.

Regarding Jako at CHF, he's actually probably in the top 10 CHFs in the league atm, and he's played a few good ones at that position- 15 disposals, 5 marks and a goal are certainly respectable figures for a big CHF on a wet day. I wonder how long this could extend his career if he really slots into the position- is there any serious hope of him making it to 300? That would encompass him playing this year, all of next, and at least part of 2005- or about 18 games each of the three years- not unachievable, given his usefulness both up forward and down back, and his current state of fitness.

Incidentally, GE, I love the idea of having a Muppet of the week. Fans, commentators, coaches, players and officials all eligible :)
 

llosis

Club Legend
Joined
Apr 29, 2003
Posts
1,847
Likes
1
Location
front and square
AFL Club
West Coast
Other Teams
West Coast Eagles
#11
Finally, it’s fast getting to the stage where I groan every time we have an away game on a Saturday, because it means the turds from ten will be commentating. KB and someone or other, er, lets just call him Ashley Shaw because I can’t be assed thinking of his first name, have the ability to make Dermott Brereton sound like the most erudite wordsmith to ever grace the small screen.
Just some handy reference points for them-
-Allen Jakovich does not play for West Coast. Believe it or not, he has a brother who somehow found the time to come out of Al’s shadow long enough not to win a few B&Fs, play 250 games, and be a dual premiership player.
-When you call Chris Judd ‘Ashley Judd’, and realize your mistake, you should not make light of it. You should be very very ashamed, and beg our forgiveness.
-KASEY Green, KANE Munro, ADAM Hunter, DAVID Haynes, ANDREW Embley. Their first names are not interchangeable. Can I suggest writing them on the back of your arm if you really have that much trouble?
-For the nth fricking time, have you ever referred to a team as ‘The Melbourne’, or ‘The Essendon?’ No? Well, perhaps you can stop calling us ‘The West Coast?’
A bit like Deestroy i am past the point of angry (and even past indifferent) to point of pure laughter! Mead that is great comedic writing - summed it up beautifully. Classic ineptitude from the Ch10 hacks.
 

(Log in to remove this ad.)

Deestroy

Norm Smith Medallist
Joined
Mar 29, 2002
Posts
6,622
Likes
87
Location
Melbourne
AFL Club
Melbourne
#14
Thanks for the positive feedback, and sorry I spoke less about the game and more about Melbourne's problems! ;)

BTW Mead, I've shall we say borrowed (or more accurately copied) this review in full onto The MFC Flame, hope thats ok.

Cheers.
 
Top Bottom