Neil Craig- Worst Coaching Performance Ever?

[CaptainDangerfield]

Drummond, how long have you been watching AFL? Seriously dude, rotations are part and parcel of the game. When VB came off he was blowing hard. It was a very warm day out there and everyone was blowing hard, including VB and Burton.

Seriously, even Ben Cousins used to get rotated REGULARLY last year and he left VB in awe with his fitness levels.

I think picking on the midfield rotations is not a valid point but match ups, lack of moves and other aspects of coaching can certainly be criticised today.

Is it time to give Stiffy 10 minutes or so in the midfield?

 

[tribey]

I hope you're right, I really do, but something tells me it will be a year of constant rotations for VB. There was no doubt he was outperforming Doughty, Shirley and Douglas and yet they seemed to spend most of the game on the ground, especially the first two. If someone is playing well, and they are as fit as VB is, you do not take them off.

I acknowledge my bias here, but I counted at least 3 measured completed passes into the forward 50 by Shirley - one of which resulted in that Perrie mark and subsequent shanked helicopter from 30m out straight in front.

Made a welcome change from the repeated mindless bombing that went on all day from players who are supposedly superior to him.

 

[RoosterLad]

DT - were you one of the lads in the Premiers Bar with Shirley 100 tops on and those face masks things sticking our of their necks? There was about a dozen of them, even a few nice young ladies too. It was a fair effort.

 

[jarmanagic]

Well, why would Sturt want Mattner's indecisiveness?

Seriously, what is his problem? Whenever he has the ball I cringe, he just never knows what to do with it. Half the time he puts his teammate under pressure with a stupid handball, and the other half he gets caught holding the ball.

Hang on a second

A poor performance today but Mattner was the least of our problems. He is prepared to run and create and break lines. Occ looks terrible, but if you storm through the middle and see our targets I doubt you would want to kick it anyway. Wrong scapegoat

Why the hell didn't Bode play? Crumbs, kicks goals and puts defensive pressure on inside our 50. Could have done with that. Welshy.... needs to lift, as poor a performance as I've ever seen from him

 

[tribey]

DT - were you one of the lads in the Premiers Bar with Shirley 100 tops on and those face masks things sticking our of their necks? There was about a dozen of them, even a few nice young ladies too. It was a fair effort.

Nah, but I saw a couple as we were leaving.

Was bloody impressed they'd go to so much trouble.

 

[Drummond]

Drummond, how long have you been watching AFL? Seriously dude, rotations are part and parcel of the game. When VB came off he was blowing hard. It was a very warm day out there and everyone was blowing hard, including VB and Burton.

Seriously, even Ben Cousins used to get rotated REGULARLY last year and he left VB in awe with his fitness levels.

I think picking on the midfield rotations is not a valid point but match ups, lack of moves and other aspects of coaching can certainly be criticised today.

That's not very fair Stiffy. I just don’t understand how someone as fit as VB is would need to be coming off every 10 minutes. He seemed to sprint off every time too, so obviously he wasn’t completely spent? There is no doubting he is fitter than Doughty who was having a shocker and yet he rarely, if ever, seemed to come off.

I am just disappointed that he was having a huge impact, was on track to smash his career high possession total, and yet he seemed to be coming off the ground after 10 minute spells in the midfield. Just would've liked to see him stay on for longer periods. I'm just hoping that it was just because of the heat today and that we won't by seeing this week in, week out.

 

[macca23]

I am a massive fan of Scott Lucas - think he is a very underrated CHF who is just a rung below the Pavlich/Tredrea/Riewoldt category.

Could not for the life of me understand why Craig didn't switch Rutten - the same guy who has shut down Tredrea, Pavlich, Hall and Brown in the past - onto him when it was clear he was dominating Stevens and would be the difference at the end of the day.

On the radio on the way home this issue was raised Stephen Williams and he said something along the lines of "oh but what about the threat of Lloyd?". What about it? Lucas was the main danger - move your biggest, strongest, best defender onto him and put the quicker Stevens on #18.

If it doesn't work it doesn't work but at least you'll know for sure instead of wondering about it later when the Mongo-Lloyd choir behind the goals are giddily singing about aircraft.

That was the obvious move - agreed. Lucas was always going to be the danger forward IMO due to Lloyd's time out of the game and as you said DT is only just a rung below the very best CHF's.

An alternative move would have been to move Bock onto Lucas and Stevens up forward. Try and make the defence impregnable while re-organizing the dysfunctional forward line with a totally different structure - perhaps mostly smalls leading everywhere with only one or two talls.

The Stevens mismatch-up was a fiasco and a match loser.

In fairness to Criag, he would have needed to be Houdini to extract something out of that forward line of ours. Apart from Bock, who else up there could even say they had even a resemblance of an average game let alone a good one.

Welsh - hopeless. Gave us slightly less than nothing.

Perrie - always tries but the king of clangers today while thinking at the speed of running treacle.

Douglas - almost unsighted.

Burton - not one of his memorable games.

As for the criticisms of the rotations, that's unfair, as all players in the mid-field in all clubs are rotated to keep them fresh and at the top of their performance.

While the Stevens one was a baddy, and more experimentation could have been done up forward, the real criticism belongs to the players today. Once again we had more forward 50 entries than the opposition - 55 to 46 - but got trounced.

Wasteful footy, some stupid handballs and poor kicking to the forwards all contributed to a B grade performance by the players.

 

[NikkiNoo]

DT - were you one of the lads in the Premiers Bar with Shirley 100 tops on and those face masks things sticking our of their necks? There was about a dozen of them, even a few nice young ladies too. It was a fair effort.

They were all from Whyalla and Arno Bay and Rob had no idea they were coming down. They all had 12 on the back with Robert's Backyard Blitz underneath it and on the front a pic of Rob from his much younger days and the words "Have you seen this man? Missing in Action" hilarious bunch and ticking over very nicely in the shed the lot of them

 

[Drummond]

Drummond, how long have you been watching AFL? Seriously dude, rotations are part and parcel of the game. When VB came off he was blowing hard. It was a very warm day out there and everyone was blowing hard, including VB and Burton.

Seriously, even Ben Cousins used to get rotated REGULARLY last year and he left VB in awe with his fitness levels.

I think picking on the midfield rotations is not a valid point but match ups, lack of moves and other aspects of coaching can certainly be criticised today.

van Berlo 65% time on ground.

Douglas 83% time on ground.

Work that out.

 

[NikkiNoo]

van Berlo 65% time on ground.

Douglas 83% time on ground.

Work that out.

Easy

Van Berlo - midfield
Douglas - forward

Different areas of the ground require different management of players

 

[Coopers]

He often beats the tackler - don't crucify him because when he looks up to kick into the forward line there is nothing there for him.

Yes, this is exactly true. Mattner goes for a run... and has noone to kick to up forward. So he holds the ball, looks to handball... has noone to handball it to... and gets tackled. My question is, if there are 3 players zoning in on mattner to tackle him, where the **** are the free crows players supporting him?

ALSO:
- Why is Johncock being continually wasted in defence? His career is being wasted - he could be a GUN midfielder, and xist, do we need that. He should at least get a bit of time on the ball.
- If perrie can't mark, and can't kick, maybe he can at least punch the ball? Why didn't we put him on lucas? At least he'd be a similar size.
- Why the hell were BOTH porplyzia and bode out of the team? We had NO crumbers in the forward line - NONE?! Who was supposed to be playing that role?

 

[Drummond]

Easy

Van Berlo - midfield
Douglas - forward

Different areas of the ground require different management of players

Don't know what game you were watching...

 

[NikkiNoo]

He was playing mainly on the half forward line - which lines up on the wing at centre bounces.

 

[Stiffy_18]

Don't know what game you were watching...

Stop being a pain in the backside without reason. Douglas spent majority of the game in the forward line. He started there and was a crumbing forward for most of the day. He spent minimal time onball.

People wanted him in for Bode because apparently he could do the same job or even better. You were the one that wanted him in the side. You got your wish, now you are not happy. Fair dinkum dude is there ANY way to please you other than to play all the Norwood boys on the list and drop everyone that you dislike? I bet even then you would find something to bitch about.

 

[Vader]

ALSO:
- Why is Johncock being continually wasted in defence? His career is being wasted - he could be a GUN midfielder, and xist, do we need that. He should at least get a bit of time on the ball.

Because he doesn't have the engine to survive there. Every summer for the past 5 years they've tried to build his endurance in order to turn him into a midfielder. It hasn't worked and I seem to recall Neil Craig saying recently that they've finally given up trying.

He's a great small defender and a more than handy small forward. But he'll never be a midfielder.

 

[betterthanu]

you think they would let him pinch hit in there for a quarter or something. Ive never seen him in there for even 5 minutes. I guess they wouldn't bother teaching him the art if hes only gonna make cameos.

 

[Drummond]

Stop being a pain in the backside without reason. Douglas spent majority of the game in the forward line. He started there and was a crumbing forward for most of the day. He spent minimal time onball.

People wanted him in for Bode because apparently he could do the same job or even better. You were the one that wanted him in the side. You got your wish, now you are not happy. Fair dinkum dude is there ANY way to please you other than to play all the Norwood boys on the list and drop everyone that you dislike? I bet even then you would find something to bitch about.

Mate, go back a week or two and I was in disbelief that people wanted Bode dropped. I brought out all the statistics to prove his worth, so don’t for one minute suggest that I wanted Douglas in the side at the expense of Bode. Get your facts straight before having a crack.

Is there ANY way to please me? Well yes, yes there is. Get rid of the old, pathetic dud Ian Perrie, bring in Kurt Tippett and get Bode back in the side now.

 

[Cap]

don't get me wrong, bode is alright, but does anyone honestly believe he would have made a difference ?

the reason we lost was due to lack of options in the KPP not the small players

come on guys get with the program, if we had the ability to move Bock or McGregor back to take lucas it would have been a different story, but we didn't. I am much happier that Douglas got more game time than wasting it on Bode - he is in the Welsh and Perrie league.

 

[Stiffy_18]

don't get me wrong, bode is alright, but does anyone honestly believe he would have made a difference ?

the reason we lost was due to lack of options in the KPP not the small players

come on guys get with the program, if we had the ability to move Bock or McGregor back to take lucas it would have been a different story, but we didn't. I am much happier that Douglas got more game time than wasting it on Bode - he is in the Welsh and Perrie league.

But we also lacked that crumber in the forward line that will be front and square and win the hard ball at the ground level. Our defensive pressure was also not there yesterday and there is no one better at applying it than Matthew Bode.

Our talls brought the ball to ground (especially Perrie) but there was no one there for the crumbs. We needed to field the strongest possible side to get the 4 points in this game (easiest of the first 5 or 6) and we failed to do that. We knew we were depleted in KPP department but we had a crumber that could give us something and opted to leave him out. That IMHO was a wrong move well before the ball was bounced.

 

[Drummond]

But we also lacked that crumber in the forward line that will be front and square and win the hard ball at the ground level. Our defensive pressure was also not there yesterday and there is no one better at applying it than Matthew Bode.

Our talls brought the ball to ground (especially Perrie) but there was no one there for the crumbs. We needed to field the strongest possible side to get the 4 points in this game (easiest of the first 5 or 6) and we failed to do that. We knew we were depleted in KPP department but we had a crumber that could give us something and opted to leave him out. That IMHO was a wrong move well before the ball was bounced.

I love calls like that. Isn't it basically a cop out for dropping everything and having no ability to take contested marks.

 

[Cap]

But we also lacked that crumber in the forward line that will be front and square and win the hard ball at the ground level. Our defensive pressure was also not there yesterday and there is no one better at applying it than Matthew Bode.

Our talls brought the ball to ground (especially Perrie) but there was no one there for the crumbs. We needed to field the strongest possible side to get the 4 points in this game (easiest of the first 5 or 6) and we failed to do that. We knew we were depleted in KPP department but we had a crumber that could give us something and opted to leave him out. That IMHO was a wrong move well before the ball was bounced.

is that more a reflection of our most senior small forward in Welsh than a issue with a 4 game rookie in Douglas ?

 

[Stiffy_18]

is that more a reflection of our most senior small forward in Welsh than a issue with a 4 game rookie in Douglas ?

Well Douglas came in and took Bode's role so I would say a lot of the blame falls on his shoulders. Not all but the blame should be equally distributed.

Just because he is a kid it doesn't mean he can't run, chase and put pressure on his man. Something he didn't do yesterday.

 

[Stiffy_18]

I love calls like that. Isn't it basically a cop out for dropping everything and having no ability to take contested marks.

Sometimes its hard when you have 2 blokes hanging off you. But you are right, it sometimes is an excuse for dropping marks. We all knew Perrie was underdone and he will drop the undroppable so why not have a crumber in front of him to mop up and at least give us half a chance to score rather than no chance?

 

[Cap]

Well Douglas came in and took Bode's role so I would say a lot of the blame falls on his shoulders. Not all but the blame should be equally distributed.

Just because he is a kid it doesn't mean he can't run, chase and put pressure on his man. Something he didn't do yesterday.

- so the 4 game rookie gets a lot of the blame while the 100 + veteran gets what excuses for a bad game

sure Douglas can run, chase and put pressure on, but so can welsh, Welsh did sweet bugger all to even pick up the slack of playing next to a rookie

c'mon stiffy surely your post was in jest ?

 

[Stiffy_18]

- so the 4 game rookie gets a lot of the blame while the 100 + veteran gets what excuses for a bad game

sure Douglas can run, chase and put pressure on, but so can welsh, Welsh did sweet bugger all to even pick up the slack of playing next to a rookie

c'mon stiffy surely your post was in jest ?

No I blame them equally. Just because Douglas is a youngster doesn't excuse his lack of effort just it doesn't excuse Welsh just because he is a senior player.