Purple_Oz
Debutant
It's just a reality check, really.
We played like nothing that we've been playing for weeks. It's just like we are a completely different team. There was not structure - where’s the spine?
I was quite stunned to see we started tonight with a 3-men forward line - isn't that exactly why we got such low scores earlier in the season? What have we learned? Did we really expect that such an unsuccessful forward structure (even against lower teams) would just suddenly work against a top-of-the-ladder team? As good as Pav is, there's only so much he could do (and there's no support for him in the first few qtrs either).
So much ink has been spent (even here in Melbourne) saying how important our 'new' forward line - now with Pav, McPharlin (and sometimes JLo) up there with the 2 smalls - has been to our revival. Why didn't we do the same from the start today? The goals we managed to kick in the last quarter (esp with McPharlin) pretty much proved this.
And with such limited options up front, why did we still just bomb it forward from midfield for the first few qtrs?
To have a 3-men forward line and a virtually non-existent half-forward, and still managed to allow the toasters to get so much space elsewhere pretty much sums up how we were outrunned and outplayed. The extra numbers they had around the ball (everywhere on ground) and the ease they disposed the ball were just amazing.
The free kick count may be against us, but it still doesn't add up to the losing margin. To blame the umps for the defeat is just delusional. And you will always get more free kick when you are first to the ball and have better second efforts - we simply didn’t manage to do so.
Compare the performances of the 2 teams in terms of:
- numbers around the ball (everywhere on ground)
- inside-50
- hard running
- effective disposal
- marks (contested and uncontested)
- and, in particular, number of goalkickers
All these got nothing to do with free kicks.
I am not saying that we can’t make it to the top level. On the contrary, looking at how we played in the past few weeks, I think we can. The past few games proved that we had an effective strategy to do so. We just need to play to our strength by following it - from the very beginning.
We played like nothing that we've been playing for weeks. It's just like we are a completely different team. There was not structure - where’s the spine?
I was quite stunned to see we started tonight with a 3-men forward line - isn't that exactly why we got such low scores earlier in the season? What have we learned? Did we really expect that such an unsuccessful forward structure (even against lower teams) would just suddenly work against a top-of-the-ladder team? As good as Pav is, there's only so much he could do (and there's no support for him in the first few qtrs either).
So much ink has been spent (even here in Melbourne) saying how important our 'new' forward line - now with Pav, McPharlin (and sometimes JLo) up there with the 2 smalls - has been to our revival. Why didn't we do the same from the start today? The goals we managed to kick in the last quarter (esp with McPharlin) pretty much proved this.
And with such limited options up front, why did we still just bomb it forward from midfield for the first few qtrs?
To have a 3-men forward line and a virtually non-existent half-forward, and still managed to allow the toasters to get so much space elsewhere pretty much sums up how we were outrunned and outplayed. The extra numbers they had around the ball (everywhere on ground) and the ease they disposed the ball were just amazing.
The free kick count may be against us, but it still doesn't add up to the losing margin. To blame the umps for the defeat is just delusional. And you will always get more free kick when you are first to the ball and have better second efforts - we simply didn’t manage to do so.
Compare the performances of the 2 teams in terms of:
- numbers around the ball (everywhere on ground)
- inside-50
- hard running
- effective disposal
- marks (contested and uncontested)
- and, in particular, number of goalkickers
All these got nothing to do with free kicks.
I am not saying that we can’t make it to the top level. On the contrary, looking at how we played in the past few weeks, I think we can. The past few games proved that we had an effective strategy to do so. We just need to play to our strength by following it - from the very beginning.
