AFL Autopsy Pre-Season Game 2: Geelong vs Essendon, Kardinia Park, Saturday 06/03/2021 @ 7:10 PM AEDT

Chicken Dinner?


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    34
  • Poll closed .

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Mar 11, 2018
9,859
16,760
AFL Club
Essendon
That was some of the more competent footy I have seen us play for a while.

Players knew what we were doing when we had the ball, their was connectivity. Players knew what we were doing when we didn’t have the ball, defensive pressure and positioning were good.

Individual skill level was good. General ball handling and hand ball under pressure were as good as I can remember them for some time.

I dunno....it looked.....competent. I can’t think of a better description.

It looked like a team that had the discipline to stay with a practiced structure and move the ball forward quickly with multiple players involved in the play.

Defensively we didn’t let Geelong play their usual ring a ring rosy, chip it around routine much and piled on the pressure with numbers around the ball when it hit the ground.

Competent, hard working 4 qrts and no one slacking off.

Dare I say a bit Richmond like..
 
Oct 22, 2008
17,249
19,432
Geelong
AFL Club
Essendon
Merrett even said that Rutten has streamlined the approach so the players have a lot more clarity on structure and game plans.
I was thinking maybe Worsfold actually was the coach last season. Or perhaps it shows the difference between getting it straight from the source and not through several filters.
 
I was thinking maybe Worsfold actually was the coach last season. Or perhaps it shows the difference between getting it straight from the source and not through several filters.
The latter I would suspect.
 

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fairbump_playon

Premiership Player
Jun 27, 2014
4,711
7,532
AFL Club
Essendon
Really happy with what we saw tonight. Particularly happy with Laverde (I was a massive sceptic of him going back), Draper, Caldwell, McGrath and Hind.

Can’t believe people are canning Smith in here, he literally put us on his back for 4-5 minutes in the last to get us in the game. Kicking a goal on the run, followed up with an assist and then had a massive hustle play that nearly resulted in a goal when he was gassed.

That’s what you want from smith, that clutch campaigner. Smith looked anything but cooked. Hooker and Heppell on the other hand look really slow, teams will look to exploit their lack of athleticism. Heps awareness is a long way off, needs to to come back quick if he’s going to play half back. And Hooker is toast when the ball hits the deck.

Really happy with that performance though. Ripper.
Smith isn’t cooked - looked fresh again which is nice. That good stretch of his game was awesome.

There is still no excuse for being constantly selfish inside 50 and burning teammates multiple times. It’s so easy to change that part of his game but it just doesn’t happen. It’s frustrating because his defensive pressure shows he can be team oriented.
 
I was thinking maybe Worsfold actually was the coach last season. Or perhaps it shows the difference between getting it straight from the source and not through several filters.
Rutten probably has a lot more freedom to say certain practices are not on when the person promoting those practices is no longer working alongside him.

It was obvious some of the things Worsfold was pushing were not up to scratch bit you can’t really tell players not to do them when he’s technically the senior coach.
 

fairbump_playon

Premiership Player
Jun 27, 2014
4,711
7,532
AFL Club
Essendon
Rutten probably has a lot more freedom to say certain practices are not on when the person promoting those practices is no longer working alongside him.

It was obvious some of the things Worsfold was pushing were not up to scratch bit you can’t really tell players not to do them when he’s technically the senior coach.
It’s ok doing the wrong thing over and over if you learnings from it
 
It’s ok doing the wrong thing over and over if you learnings from it
Maybe the issue was they stopped after one learnings. They really need to have multiple learningses to improve
 
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