Review Good/Bad v Essendon, Round 4

[Scorpus]

A tale of two halves

Good

• The first half. Everything about it was domination. Made Essendon look like a second rate joke team with bottom 4 credentials. Up by nearly 100 at half time.
• Walker in the first half. Beast mode. Looked like he'd kick 15
• Betts. Excellent player. Super consistent
• Sloane. Just goes hard at it all day every day. Gun.
• Rory Laird in the first half. 20 touches, was in it everywhere
• Matt Crouch very serviceable as always in close
• Our domination in the first half was sublime. Premiership winning sort of display.
• Structures in the first half were on point and completely shut down Essendon
• Lever was very solid with his efforts. Probably the only good defender tonight.
• Liked Andy Otten's game again.
• Liked Sam Jacobs' game even though he didn't win the hitouts
• Brodie Smith was a bit hot and cold, but mostly hot. Massive meters gained.

Bad

• Entire second half. Lazy, putrid, sloppy s**t. Midfield went to sleep and our skills fell off a cliff. Unacceptable garbage when our first half was so solid
• Letting Essendon absolutely dominate clearances and possessions and inside 50s and shots on goal in the third quarter. Our worst quarter for the entire year. Complacent s**t isn't going to cut it in the finals.
• Defense throughout the entire match. Awful. Hartigan had an absolute mare. None of our defenders could mark anything. McDonald-Tipungwuti kicked 4 for Christ's sake! Defenders just let Essendon stroll past all night with no defensive pressure to speak of.
• Passengers left right and center. Curtly Hampton, Wayne Milera, Troy Menzel offered absolutely nothing for most of the match. Riley Knight was invisible for large parts of the game.
• David Mackay gets a special mention for being a 150-game player who had 5 touches to half time. Finished with 21 touches after he decided to become a junktime specialiast as always. Was terrible as a defender and burned the ball as a link man. Has to go
• Tom Lynch was putrid. Missing a bunch of forwards and he did nothing. Really weak effort from a senior player
• Injury to Jake Kelly when we have no defenders in the bank

 

[Lance Uppercut]

Well done Crows. Just way, way too good. Won it when it was there to be won and then did what had to be done.

Scary good imo. Good luck for the rest of the year. The real deal you lot

 

[dogs105]

Good

Scoring heavily in first quarter
DESK
Sloaney
Smithers
Eddie and Tex
Running out the last quarter - 7 goals to 3.
Sauce in first half

 

[Interloperer]

Good:
* Strong Win
* Opportunity to challenge the coaching staff to fix the major flaws exposed without costing 4 points... (part 1 of selection/strategy thought)

Bad:
* The first half has to have the highest "score divided by non-passenger players" ratio ever, by a long shot
* Garbage defence
* All of the flaws in the second half existed in the first but were rendered obvious by the second half, so there's less opportunity to see how good the coaching team is as a result. (part 2 of selection/strategy thought)
* The fact nothing was fixed at half time isn't good either.

 

[Sanders]

The good is obvious

Bad is it showed how vulnerable we still are in the middle. When we lose control at the stoppage the entire game is wrestled from our grip

 

[Redleg Crow]

Hard to judge

First half our attack was superb - defence not so.
3rd quarter we were completely switched off. Not a surprise really, but awful to watch
Last quarter was good - but the game was so dead it was barely worth judging

Gold Coast will be a better test than we thought it would be a couple weeks ago.

 

[PrideOf]

That has got to be the most uninspiring 24-goal, 65-point win I've ever seen.

The first half was like a training run.

The second half was like a JLT game without the meaningless three-letter corporate acronym and fans resenting paying $20 to watch a sub-standard practice match.

 

[Dave]

Much too good for us. Playing bloody good footy, will trouble most teams playing like that.

 

[Seagrave_Holmes]

Just simply too good, way too good.

 

[FR0GGY]

Good: 1st & 4th qtr

Bad 2nd & 3rd qtr

 

[rocket18]

On the way home.

Bit of a meh game, a training run perhaps.

Did what was required early then just sat back. I found it very hard to get involved, just going throught the motions.

Complete opposite to last week, which was a tight high pressure slog. Tonight was quick end to end bruise free footy, good to have such different games and dominate both styles.

 

[pjcrows]

A pretty average performance after quarter time but a class above. Our forward 50 weapons are ridiculous.

4-0. Rest up. GC won't be easy.

 

[CrowsB4hoes]

Good : Menzel kept me alive in the goalkicking comp

Bad: he didn't do much else

 

[Redleg Crow]

That we can be not all that great and kick 96 points in a half is pretty stunning.

Scariest attack I can recall

 

[jenny61_99]

2

Good: 1st & 4th qtr

Bad 2nd & 3rd qtr

6-4 to 4-0 in second quarter.

 

[Iron]

The niggling bad week in week out is that our midfield looks ok and then really bad in the same game. I don't think we have the answers yet. Hopefully we can find them sooner rather than later.

 

[adelaidecrows]

For the 4th game of the year, it was a good result. There is still 18 games left. If we played like this within weeks of finals I would be worried but really, that 3rd quarter is nothing more to worry about. A good 3 quarter time bake from the coach will sort that s**t out 99 times out of 100 and it did. Still valuable %. Job done, no point dwelling on this. A win is a win is a win.

 

[dogs105]

2

6-4 to 4-0 in second quarter.

Outscore a team by 2.4 each quarter - you win by 64 points.

 

[Rave Slave]

The good was great and the bad was telling.

I didn't think Essendon played badly in that first half, I just thought we were too good. I didn't think we played all that badly in the second half, Essendon were just completely in control in the middle. What did happen however is we had some of our weaknesses exposed and teams will look to exploit that in coming fixtures.

Our defence is outstanding, our forward line is scary and for mine looks better without Jenkins, but our midfield is a concern. Mackay is a passenger, Milera is a passenger and we rely on too much from Sloane. We need Crouch back in and firing ASAP and we need some of our youth to not go missing for quite so long.

If Sloane played for any of the Vic clubs he would without a shadow of a doubt be the face and marketing tool of the entire competition. May well retire as my favourite all time Crow he's that good.

Walker again outstanding and looks to have recaptured his pre-knee best.

 

[Cromulent]

Eh put the cue in the rack at half time. 65 point win. Can't complain too much..

 

[GreyCrow]

Good
Mostly covered
Sloane
Betts
Walker
Jacobs

Bad
Attitude

Shrug the shoulders let the coaches work it out. The flattest 10 goal win. Maybe because we all know it should have been 15 goals

 

[Mike Smyth]

For finals (from tonight):

-Shouldn't play finals:

Mckay, Menzel, Douglas

-Need to find consistency

Hampton, Lynch

-Need to improve work ethic;

Milera

 

[1970crow]

Had a few go poorly. Mackay typical rubbish followed by a few late to pad the stats. Hampton was pretty quiet as was Menzel, but both showed signs that they've got a future, not sure what we do when Brouch is ready. Both Lynch and Harto tried hard but you'd think they had a touch of the flu the way they mis-handled the ball.

The best part was constantly seeing Woosha and thinking to myself that he might be saying to himself, "s**t, coulda coached those guys".

 

[Danger in Texas]

Sloane and Eddie brilliant as always. So were Tex and Sauce in the first half.

Laird and Smith I thought were very good off half back. Super creative. Good to see a performance like that from Smithers in particular.

Good work in close from Mrouch. Just so consistent.

Atkins was very good I thought. Couple of goals and some very neat disposals. Is what you want from him.

Cameron electrifying again. Hope the hammy isn't bad.

Lever was very good throughout. Was the general of our defence tonight.

Liked Knight's game. Didn't think he was invisible for large parts.

Hartigan had a mare. So did Brown, I thought. Talia was average to okay.

Dougie built into the game I thought. Was effective in the 2nd half.

I'd say the same about Mackay, but a lot of his possessions were vanilla and screamed junk time. On a short leash.

Menzel showed glimpses. Milera was better than last week.

Hampton disappointed me.

Shame about the Kelly injury. If he's not good to go next week, who comes in? Surely not Doedee after only one week back?

 

[Redleg Crow]

Good:
Nice to see Laird have a good one after a couple so-so weeks.