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Harvey

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Clay Davis

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So after Lower, Broughton and Fyfe each get around 30+ possessions against Sydney, and Barlow has returned, he decides Pavlich in the midfield for most of the game is a good idea.

Does anyone else think this was poor? I've been patient with his matchday decisions, but this was bad.

I'm sure plenty will disagree. But Pavlich has kicked over 400 goals and never been much more than a capable midfielder here and there. He is much better forward.

To me, this shows Harvey is reactive. It has happened all season. Pavlich is just about the solution to everything. I just don't believe this is the right way forward, and Harvey's persistence with it suggests he isn't up to it as a coach.
 

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it may also show that he backed his captain to lift and the midfield battle was edged in their favour from the outset.
 
Think Pav should have been played forward . We definitely lost value in him having him too much in the midfield in such a close tackling game.

Coming down to the wire we needed him forward but he wasn't in a physical state to compete when we wanted a goal. Seeing Clarke mark and have Pav stand nearby point downfield instead of getting himself down there made me pissed off at the time. However clearly he was out of gas.

They took marks in their forward 50 where we struggled most of the game
 
believe_it said:
Think Pav should have been played forward . We definitely lost value in him having him too much in the midfield in such a close tackling game.

Coming down to the wire we needed him forward but he wasn't in a physical state to compete when we wanted a goal. Seeing Clarke mark and have Pav stand nearby point downfield instead of getting himself down there made me pissed off at the time. However clearly he was out of gas.

They took marks in their forward 50 where we struggled most of the game
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this is probably more reason to why they won. their contested marking was great, unfortunately.
 
Look at our percentage and can anyone say our forward structure is working?
Whats the point of playing Anthony, Mellington, Bucovaz, Keplar in the WAFL.
 
I've got to agree to an extent that not having a true ff or tall players capable of taking a contested mark in the forward line was one of the big differences today. Either Harvs is way ahead of the curve or he is dead wrong and we will pay for it when it matters. I also echo the sentiments as to why McPharlin wasn't played on Kennedy?
 
blue shark said:
Look at our percentage and can anyone say our forward structure is working?
Whats the point of playing Anthony, Mellington, Bucovaz, Keplar in the WAFL.
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we're leading the league for scoring shots when we're inside 50 (a whisker over 50%), but our accuracy has been shithouse.

we generally don't have a problem getting it in, but i agree that we need to mixup the targets. not sure that harvs can experiment at this stage of the season, but failures with a conservative approach can only last for so long.
 

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I was concerned about the lack of a plan to beat the forward press of the eagles. If you knew u were gonna use duffield as the sub you shoulda had a new/better strategy of getting the ball out. Having mcpharlin take some kick ins is just plain stupidity. Best mark/one of the worse spot up kickers makes for a puzzling choice.
 
Did Suban add more than Palmer?

We've played underdone players all season. Was it sensible excluding a whipping boy for a bloke who is coming back from injury?

At least the third or fourth time it has happened this season.
 
Clay Davis said:
Did Suban add more than Palmer?

We've played underdone players all season. Was it sensible excluding a whipping boy for a bloke who is coming back from injury?

At least the third or fourth time it has happened this season.
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Unless Palmer was significantly impaired - a mistake. Palmer would have given us more thru the midfield freeing up Pav more. Others could have been rotated thru defence . In fact Mellington sub and duff starting would have been better as well
 
Clay Davis said:
So after Lower, Broughton and Fyfe each get around 30+ possessions against Sydney, and Barlow has returned, he decides Pavlich in the midfield for most of the game is a good idea.

Does anyone else think this was poor? I've been patient with his matchday decisions, but this was bad.

I'm sure plenty will disagree. But Pavlich has kicked over 400 goals and never been much more than a capable midfielder here and there. He is much better forward.

To me, this shows Harvey is reactive. It has happened all season. Pavlich is just about the solution to everything. I just don't believe this is the right way forward, and Harvey's persistence with it suggests he isn't up to it as a coach.
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I've had a gutful frankly and if i heard him and Mitchell were p***ing off back east next year I would chuck a party.
 
On paper IMO we had the much better team. That was a game that we should of won but the Eagles were much better than us.

Our game plan, fitness, skills, tackling and intensity has been way down from last year. Injuries have really hurt us throughout the year and maybe because of that the boys have lost a bit of confidence.

If the Eagles kicked straight we would of lost by 10 goals plus. One thing we really need to do before the start of next season is to poach a really good assistant coach to help out.

Why is it that we never put all our best mids in the centre at the same time. It is always Fyfe or Barlow resting up forward. Lower or Mzungu in defence. Crowley and Mcphee shouldn't be in the middle for centre bounces because we got smashed in the clearances yet again.

Big game against the Hawks next week.
 
Pav ran with Priddis.

Idea had merit, but he is far more capable as a forward.

I think today shows we are still ahead of West Coast development wise, missing our number 1,2 arguable best players and we lose by a kick after the siren.

Mundy and Sandilands play, we win.
 

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Tend to agree with Clay. If not at the start, it should have become painfully obvious during the 2nd quarter where we wondered forward aimlessly time after time and kicked 1 goal in about 40 minutes of play(from a free). The move needed to be made and it wasn't.
 
Clay Davis said:
So after Lower, Broughton and Fyfe each get around 30+ possessions against Sydney, and Barlow has returned, he decides Pavlich in the midfield for most of the game is a good idea.

Does anyone else think this was poor? I've been patient with his matchday decisions, but this was bad.

I'm sure plenty will disagree. But Pavlich has kicked over 400 goals and never been much more than a capable midfielder here and there. He is much better forward.

To me, this shows Harvey is reactive. It has happened all season. Pavlich is just about the solution to everything. I just don't believe this is the right way forward, and Harvey's persistence with it suggests he isn't up to it as a coach.
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Agree the Pav in the centre for any length of time made no sense. He adds more to the team up forward than he does in the centre, and our lack of forward line structure/effectiveness today showed how much we needed him there. Regardless of our delivery in there, I'd rather Pav up forward. There are other guys that can cover the midfield, and likely better than Pav to be honest (if they're given a bit of time). But no-one can replace what he adds to our forward line.

Persistently playing him midfield is bizarre.

The Elvis/Kennedy non-match up was also bizarre. Seemed like Harvs was trying to be too creative, and persisted with a left field idea that didn't work. As have said on another thread, SNOS worked his a*se off but Kennedy still beat him fairly comfortably. If Kennedy had kicked straight, it would have been a belting.

Broughton on Lecras was another pretty obvious match up that didn't happen. I think many people would agree that this would be a good/the right match up.

Harvs trained under Sheedy and picked up a bit of the left-field creativity. I'm not fussed if he tries out some weird tactics and matchups on the field, but if they're not working, drop them and go back to the obvious stuff.

Harvs probably isn't the best game day coach in the league. He can be reactive sometimes. And he is probably stubborn in persisting with tactics that don't work, when things aren't working. But I think part of this is also due to backing in his players that have been giving roles to play.

But... he matched Mz on Embley for most of the game and that seemed to work pretty well. Priddis also did very little... Crowley probably had something to do with this (but I couldn't really tell how often he was matched up on him). DeBoer kept Hurn very quiet from what I could remember, and contributed a bit up forward. Hilly was trusted to handle an important, high pressure role and delivered... with commitment/guts and effectiveness.

Not all bad, but I think Harvs needs to bin plans a bit earlier when they're not working. Needs a plan B. And needs to be a little bit more meat-and-potatoes sometimes rather than going for cute/left-field match ups. I think the players love him, and he develops the kids pretty well. Just a learning curve for him hopefully.
 
The planning / coaching (under great duress from injury) has been good and as Haze said in the radio, the team culture under Harvey is the best it's ever been.
The reason we lost (just) today was the players went into their shells and refused to take risks and move the ball quickly allowing WC far too much time to get their structures in place. Our kicking out from points was unimaginative and the way we refused to take the game on and move the ball down the middle at times was disappointing. Harvey said as much in his press conference so it's not like that's what he asked them to do. Pressure of the home crowd maybe? THey've generally been better away from Subi this year.
 
E Shed said:
The planning / coaching (under great duress from injury) has been good and as Haze said in the radio, the team culture under Harvey is the best it's ever been.
The reason we lost (just) today was the players went into their shells and refused to take risks and move the ball quickly allowing WC far too much time to get their structures in place. Our kicking out from points was unimaginative and the way we refused to take the game on and move the ball down the middle at times was disappointing. Harvey said as much in his press conference so it's not like that's what he asked them to do. Pressure of the home crowd maybe? THey've generally been better away from Subi this year.
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Agree with a lot of this. No one thought we were favourites today and the eagle have been better than us tis year. We lost but I'm excited for next year after today.

You need to have everything clicking to be an elite team in the comp and we've had way too many things go wrong this year but this Harvey hating is just plain baloney. The eagles dominted us in the first derby and I thought we were much better today.

Where should we be on the ladder with the injuries we've had?

How much should we have won by today minus Sandi and Mundy?
 
I'd like to see Pav up forward more for sure. I don't think Pav playing in the middle is why we lost this game.

We were not near the effort we put in the week before playing Sydney. Lower and Broughton were in the middle today, not as effective.

Eagles ran hard all day, they spread better from congestion and their handballs in traffic were far superior. They had more players willing to work for each other plain and simple. Did anyone notice they way they moved when a free kick was given, they put the foot down. They spread and created space in their fwd 50 much better.

Unfortunately for our playing group we've taken a backwards step as in we are defending first rather than taking the game on as we did last year, we are in a lot of ways out-thinking ourselves. We stayed in this game because of our talent level, if we got back to applying the hard work aspect along with it we'd be right up there.
 
Totally mystified by many decisions this year.
1 Why the sudden dislike of Kep (first 10 rounds probably one of our best players)
2 Pav playing in the midfield when clearly his best position is CHF (understand maybe earlier with all the injuries but now we have a few options with Barlow back and Broughton running in there also)
3 Buco finally cracks a game as sub then out next week not to be seen again.
4 Pitt given many chances and even named in the 25 this week when clearly Mellington is ahead of him
5 Mellington shows something coming on as sub then plays WAFL following week therefore ineligable to play Swans game and back again to WAFL this week.
6 The use of Palmer? OK if you know he is leaving then say so make him feel like krap and don't play him. If they don't know what he is doing play him in his PROPER position and maybe he could help us. If he does not perform in his rightfull midfield role THEN drop him to the WAFL.
7 Bringing back players too early, Sandilands, Melbourne game Barlow, this week Suban.
8 Went to the trouble of getting Jack Anthony, is given 1 game in the first derby some of which he played in the back line then dropped never to be seen again.

I could go on but I'll say this.
I pleased with how Harvey and co have put together what I believe to be a good competitive list but am worried how they have managed it this season.
Injuries have been a massive factor but despite this I feel we could do a lot better with more logical selections and team placement.
 

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