Review Good/Bad vs Essendon, R17 2023

Who played well against Essendon?

  • Chayce Jones

  • Ben Keays

  • Lachlan Murphy

  • Riley Thilthorpe

  • Josh Rachele

  • Rory Sloane

  • Luke Pedlar

  • Jordan Dawson

  • Taylor Walker

  • Jake Soligo

  • Max Michalanney

  • Mitch Hinge

  • Izak Rankine

  • Josh Worrell

  • Ned McHenry

  • Harry Schoenberg (sub)

  • Nick Murray

  • Rory Laird

  • Wayne Milera

  • Darcy Fogarty

  • Brodie Smith

  • Lachlan Sholl

  • Reilly O'Brien


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Was expecting we would go into this game and learn a lot about our players - and we did.

Good:
-We kept attacking in the second half and were the better for the most of it, kicked 6 in the last when Ess went defensive. When we get thumped in the first half, good we don't just roll over and die

Bad:
-Sloane: that is the worse game I can remember him playing. I was thinking he reminded me of Gibb's in his last season. Still good/classy in patches, but when the pressure is really on, now looks slow physically, and mentally. As others have said, give him his 250th then don't offer him another contract. Keep him as a sub or SANFL player for the rest of the season where he can add value, or atleast relegate his midfield time. The club were pretty ruthless cutting Gibbs, lets see if they will be with Sloane...
-Murphy: couldn't get involved, when he was around the ball....it just went around him or he was unclean/poorly positioned. Reminded me of him from a few years ago when he was putrid regularly.
-Scholl: Another weak display. Regularly getting exposed now. Time to send him off the field and into the gym for the next 9months. He would be just like Atkins in the 2017 GF if we got there now...
-Mchenry: Some good, plenty of vintage McHenry bad. He has definitely been far more valuable as the sub. Feels like his rabid style breaks down a bit over a full game. Reckon when he tires his disposal suffers greatly. When he tires from a full game he can't run/linkup/find space as well as when he is the fresh sub.


Open the check-book to Parish/Redman. We need a free hit or two and need to draft mids, mids, mids. We really are not that far off it and defintely ahead of where we should be for a young & developing side. But we definitely have weak & fragile links....
 

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Senior players are in our most important roles.

Conversely, most of our younger players are in our least important roles and many of them are playing forward of the ball most of the time.

There is very little these players can do if our opposition has double the number of inside 50s, like was the case today at times.
The point I'm trying to make here is that at the start of the game, we did put those younger players in the key roles in the midfield. Our CBAs in the first term were 11 for Dawson, 10 for Laird, 6 for Pedlar, 6 for Rachele, 4 for Soligo, 1 for Sloane, 1 for Keays. In that term Keays got a centre clearance, as did Dawson, Laird got two, and that's it for our mids. Notice a pattern there? This is the quarter where we got comprehensively dominated in the midfield and gave up 7 goals.

The reality is we did have young players in the centre and we got pumped at clearances. We moved to more senior players in the midfield in the second half as a response to how the game was going - but we started with kids in the middle. The entire premise of your post is that we put all our junior players in positions where they can't impact the game, our useless senior players get dominated and we lose. This just isn't true, at least not this week. Pedlar did have a positive impact on the game as a forward with two goals though.

Also I think the last part of your post about how our young players forward of the ball didn't get it in the final term because Essendon were dominating play is wrong too. We dominated play in the last quarter, not Essendon. It was the first half where we couldn't get the ball up forward. I don't really have a comment on Rachele's 1 possession final term but you can't blame the fact that he was in the forward line and we weren't getting the ball in there.

Anyway, I rate Rachele and Pedlar and think they will both be good mids one day. I just think 'if we just threw our talented kids in the middle we would do better' is completely the wrong lesson to take from this game. Particularly for Rachele - he has a long way to go. Our coaches will likely take the opposite lesson and think that we need more mature bodies in the middle, and considering the goal of winning games and making finals this year they will be correct to do so. Hopefully Pedlar and Rachele still get a go.
 
1. “To start like that….means you won’t win”

View attachment 1733715



2. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. That jumper is an embarrassment and nobody, not a single Crows supporter, prefers that pile of red s**t over the traditional jumper. Adelaide is a club that has a mortgage on shitty away jumpers. How many are they up to now? Must be closing in on 50.


3. The AFC has beaten Essendon on the road four times in nearly 35 years. If you expected the Crows to win this game, please let us know how your first day on planet Earth went.
Just on #2, I swear we always play like s**t when we are wearing that red abomination. It’s like the players take half a game every time to work out who their team mates are. If they’re going to wear the ******* ugly thing, they need to train with it on.

I just don’t understand why we don’t have one home and one away strip. This stupid chopping and changing of away strips when you’re playing a professional high intensity reflex team sport is so dumb.
 
2. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. That jumper is an embarrassment and nobody, not a single Crows supporter, prefers that pile of red s**t over the traditional jumper. Adelaide is a club that has a mortgage on shitty away jumpers. How many are they up to now? Must be closing in on 50.
every red jumper we've had has ended up being a guernsey of death. this one is no exception
 
Hinge and Milera, multiple times each.

Hinge thinking he can kick a 70m worm burner. Has absolutely no sense of his own limitations.
Maybe, but his kicks are accurate more often than not. I am more concerned, for example, about TT, who is seemingly compelled to kick the ball across the ground into a one on three in the corridor. Going sideways is his automatic option, despite his previous horrendous results doing this.
 
Maybe, but his kicks are accurate more often than not. I am more concerned, for example, about TT, who is seemingly compelled to kick the ball across the ground into a one on three in the corridor. Going sideways is his automatic option, despite his previous horrendous results doing this.
TT’s bigger problem is running 3 metres under a marking contest
 
The point I'm trying to make here is that at the start of the game, we did put those younger players in the key roles in the midfield. Our CBAs in the first term were 11 for Dawson, 10 for Laird, 6 for Pedlar, 6 for Rachele, 4 for Soligo, 1 for Sloane, 1 for Keays. In that term Keays got a centre clearance, as did Dawson, Laird got two, and that's it for our mids. Notice a pattern there? This is the quarter where we got comprehensively dominated in the midfield and gave up 7 goals.

The reality is we did have young players in the centre and we got pumped at clearances. We moved to more senior players in the midfield in the second half as a response to how the game was going - but we started with kids in the middle. The entire premise of your post is that we put all our junior players in positions where they can't impact the game, our useless senior players get dominated and we lose. This just isn't true, at least not this week. Pedlar did have a positive impact on the game as a forward with two goals though.

Also I think the last part of your post about how our young players forward of the ball didn't get it in the final term because Essendon were dominating play is wrong too. We dominated play in the last quarter, not Essendon. It was the first half where we couldn't get the ball up forward. I don't really have a comment on Rachele's 1 possession final term but you can't blame the fact that he was in the forward line and we weren't getting the ball in there.

Anyway, I rate Rachele and Pedlar and think they will both be good mids one day. I just think 'if we just threw our talented kids in the middle we would do better' is completely the wrong lesson to take from this game. Particularly for Rachele - he has a long way to go. Our coaches will likely take the opposite lesson and think that we need more mature bodies in the middle, and considering the goal of winning games and making finals this year they will be correct to do so. Hopefully Pedlar and Rachele still get a go.

We didn't move to more senior players in the midfield, we just changed the mix. Sloane and Keays had two CBAs in the first quarter, and five in the last half.

First quarter

Dawson - 11
Laird - 10
Pedlar - 6
Rachele - 6
Soligo - 4
Sloane - 1
Keays - 1

Second half

Laird - 13
Dawson - 14
Schoenberg - 10
Sloane - 4
Rachele - 2
Jones - 1
Keays - 1

All we did is give Soligo's couple of CBAs to Sloane, and swapped Pedlar/Rachele for Schoenberg.

And then you look at impact for those players across the match

Dawson - 32 CBAs, 3 center clearances
Laird - 30 CBAs, 7 center clearances
Rachele, Pedlar, Soligo and Schoenberg combined - 34 CBAs, 4 center clearances
Sloane and Keays combined - 10 CBAs, 1 center clearance

I don't know how you can come to the conclusion it was our young players not standing up that cost us when chance for chance they were as effective as our other midfielders.

I'll tell you who the ineffective players were in the midfield:

Laird - 7 inside 50s, 5 score involvements
Smith - 6 inside 50s, 2 score involvements
Sholl - 4 inside 50s, 1 score involvement

Our other senior players:

Sloane - net negative impact on the game
Keays - good up forward, didn't play midfield
Walker - reasonable up forward, didn't play midfield
Murphy - no impact on the game
Milera - average game with little to no impact
O'Brien - even contest with Andrew Phillips

Laird had 10 clearances and 16 ground ball gets but only had 1 score launch, so of all that first possession use he had no impact on our scoring. He also somehow managed to have more inside 50s than score involvements, so his ball use going forward was poor

Rachele has been absolutely torched on here. He had three more touches than Sloane but +4 clearances, +2 score involvements, +10 pressure acts, +7 effective disposals, +2 ground ball gets, and slightly more meters gained - why on earth would the solution be to use MORE of Sloane?

I'm not saying that only our senior players were poor though, we could have used a bigger contribution from Soligo (though he wasn't played in the midfield) and a few others (McHenry and Sholl were net negatives) but it wasn't the reason we lost the game.
 
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Just on #2, I swear we always play like s*t when we are wearing that red abomination. It’s like the players take half a game every time to work out who their team mates are. If they’re going to wear the ****** ugly thing, they need to train with it on.

I just don’t understand why we don’t have one home and one away strip. This stupid chopping and changing of away strips when you’re playing a professional high intensity reflex team sport is so dumb.

How about just the traditional jumper and white shorts. And zero away strips.

That club has proven beyond any doubt they can’t be trusted to produce an away strip that is both functional and attractive.

That thing, as well as being ugly, clashed even more with Essendon.
 
Top 14 players on the ground for ground ball gets

View attachment 1733832

The 195cm Brandon Zerk-Thatcher had more ground ball gets than 21 of our 23 players

200cm Peter Wright with more than 20 of our 23 players
Yeah, we got smashed as they were running harder to get to the contest.

Our attitude was wrong from the 1st bounce - they clearly wanted the ball more.
 
Are Rachele and Sog showing early signs of Adelaide long-contract syndrome? ;)
No.

They are showing signs that they are both very young players that havent even got 50 games under their belts yet.

Yet some here want to go to town on them when they have a couple of poor games..

Whats amazing is the same people that like to tee off on our youngsters when they are struggling a bit say nothing about the endlessly s**t performances from some of our older players.. one of which is nearing 250 games of experience..

Poor performances from very green youth is to be expected.. consistant poor performances from older experienced players is whats totally un-acceptable.
 
So many red flags yesterday.

Hinge kicking.
Rachele soft and doesn't run.
Thilthorpe inability to get to a contest or judge it.
Sloane cooked.
Murphy missing and no pressure.
McHenry disposal and turnovers.
Soligo and Pedlar inability to touch the ball.
Dawson and Laird failing head to head with their peers (Merrett, Parish).
Michalanney finally showing signs of being a first year player. Being asked to play key defence due to poor coaching.
Sholl squibbing multiple times and inability to break a tackle. Liability.
Fogarty inability to get into the game.
Rankine quiet when the game was up for grabs. Happens every time we lose and opposition gets a run on.

No clear third midfielder.
 
What’s bad is how we had some posters devaluing Ports win against Essendon, what have they had to say about our pathetic performance?
Some are still in the denial stage re: Port. I've been the acceptance stage for about a month. Not necessarily that they will win it all for sure, but are definitely contenders.
 
1. “To start like that….means you won’t win”


96×96
6.3 kB

View attachment 1733715



2. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. That jumper is an embarrassment and nobody, not a single Crows supporter, prefers that pile of red s**t over the traditional jumper. Adelaide is a club that has a mortgage on shitty away jumpers. How many are they up to now? Must be closing in on 50.


3. The AFC has beaten Essendon on the road four times in nearly 35 years. If you expected the Crows to win this game, please let us know how your first day on planet Earth went.
The red jumper is a bit out there.

However surely the traditional strip on a red base is far better than the revolving door of kiddy designs, murder of crows, claw marks, raptor head etc.
 
What’s bad is how we had some posters devaluing Ports win against Essendon, what have they had to say about our pathetic performance?
Essendon have a very attacking and slick game plan and under the roof of Marval it was always a challenge particularly how we've perform away, we didn't turn up for the 1st half and it was game.
 
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