AFL Autopsy RND 17: Loss Against Port

[CBombers17]

Thought Stewart showed a bit down back. That could be very handy for the future. If Guelfi could hit a target he would be a good player. Has Joe checked out? He nearly missed the ball with that set shot. Nightmare stuff.

The biggest concern is the drop off from about 5 minutes into the second quarter. Space started to appear everywhere for Port and the contest was over.

Sure we turned it over a lot but skills.were nullified for both sides to some extent by the weather.To me it looked like our effort dropped. That's a concern for the coaches surely.

 

[PeaTea]

 

[PeaTea]

Well said. I stand corrected.

I think you see more about a team when the chips are down and how they fight. Apart from Stringer and Towna, no one showed any heart (Maybe too hard on Zerk and Stewart)

 

[boncer34]

Such a s**t end

 

[Zach Package]

Important to lose in the correct fashion, ie. monstered around the footy for the most part.

Biggest question for mine is why are we not unconditional in our pressure and our effort, why is it a sometimes thing?

Port went half the game kicking one goal and were genuinely struggling to generate anything meaningful, then we just give up for 8 minutes at a time and concede any hope of being close

 

[Schnitzengruben]

Honestly, I don't think we played any better or worse without Hooker, Hurley and Zaka. Those 3 blokes are on best part of $2m just themselves. We'd be absolutely mad to not try and get them off our books somehow this off-season, as well with a few other spuds. Reckon about 10 blokes at least need to find new homes or get their aprons on to work a Bunnings Sausage Sizzle.

 

[Howard Moon]

Not sooking, but it does seem any time a bloke has a round the corner kick from the boundary vs us, it's a dead set goal...mark it dien. Powell pepper in the driving rain is just the last straw

It's some voodoo s**t

 

[Bjchan13]

Honestly, I don't think we played any better or worse without Hooker, Hurley and Zaka. Those 3 blokes are on best part of $2m just themselves. We'd be absolutely mad to not try and get them off our books somehow this off-season, as well with a few other spuds. Reckon about 10 blokes at least need to find new homes or get their aprons on to work a Bunnings Sausage Sizzle.

How would you suggest you get 3 contracted past their prime 30 yr olds with very little football left in them off the books? Dont we have to pay them that money if we just sack them?

 

[MightyDon]

Honestly, I don't think we played any better or worse without Hooker, Hurley and Zaka. Those 3 blokes are on best part of $2m just themselves. We'd be absolutely mad to not try and get them off our books somehow this off-season, as well with a few other spuds. Reckon about 10 blokes at least need to find new homes or get their aprons on to work a Bunnings Sausage Sizzle.

They can be down right liabilities at times

 

[staaation]

I miss Hartley

 

[MightyDon]

Not sooking, but it does seem any time a bloke has a round the corner kick from the boundary vs us, it's a dead set goal...mark it dien. Powell pepper in the driving rain is just the last straw

It's some voodoo sh*t

Guys on the radio said Pepper had been having a shocker in front of goal this year 5 goals 12 behinds and he slots it

 

[yodellinhank]

I miss Hartley

And Jake Long

 

[Schnitzengruben]

How would you suggest you get 3 contracted past their prime 30 yr olds with very little football left in them off the books? Dont we have to pay them that money if we just sack them?

It won't happen, I'm only dreaming. Club wouldn't have the balls to do it anyway. Hurley should have some suitors, Zaka is dead money so much so that I don't think even GC would take him. I've thought Hooker would have some currency at Freo if we packed him up with Guelfi.

But yeah, it's unlikely.

 

[Runk]

If nothing else Essendon has given me a wonderful opportunity to spend more time on paint with numbers.

 

[eDPS]

 

[mike14]

That's actually impressive in a horrible way

 

[SydneyBomber]

Didn't even watch, don't feel bad at all, and won't watch next week either.
When is round 1?

 

[boncer34]

Didn't even watch, don't feel bad at all, and won't watch next week either.
When is round 1?

Which year?

 

[The Devils Advocate]

Thank * the NFL is back.

 

[Yoda_]

Important to lose in the correct fashion, ie. monstered around the footy for the most part.

Biggest question for mine is why are we not unconditional in our pressure and our effort, why is it a sometimes thing?

Port went half the game kicking one goal and were genuinely struggling to generate anything meaningful, then we just give up for 8 minutes at a time and concede any hope of being close

hard working midfield/fwds is where we are lacking.

 

[eDPS]

hard working midfield/fwds is where we are lacking.

When it comes to half forward we have had Snelling, Clarke and Ham running through tonight and all 3 would have likely ran the most kms for us. The problem is that they are also not natural forwards who can cause damage or lead to the right spots.

Could also say Townsend worked pretty hard aswel although not a HF, sometimes hard running is not enough if it’s not done by the whole team it seems.

 

[Lore]

I also put this in Woosha's thread since people like to dissect his body language and s**t, but mostly it's about this game obviously so also putting it here.

Rd 17 | Worsfold post-game

Senior coach John Worsfold spoke to the media after our round 17 match at Adelaide Oval.

www.essendonfc.com.au

It's always worth getting first hand information. Those tweets are like 5% of the answer and the articles I've seen so far only quote bits and pieces that suit their narrative.

'Do you think the debate going to heat up more this week?':

Um I'm not really sure what the debate was about, so our focus tonight was to continue to work on playing the style of footy we want to play, working hard together, for each other, and trying to improve. So it's hard to answer any questions about the debate coz I'm not sure of.... (reporter cuts him off with follow up question)

Yeah. Look from what I've seen in my time in football, inexperienced teams struggle to compete against very experienced teams for the course of a full game, and for big parts of the game we took it right up to them, but their class was too much in the end. So you're talking about a team that is right in the premiership window in terms of age and experience, and they don't travel at the moment, they're living at home and they're playing a very inexperienced team that is trying to learn and trying to learn without really getting the opportunity to train together.

The facts are, we're well below where we want to be, but that's through a lot of factors other than understanding what we're trying to do and committing to it, that's not the reason we are where we're at. Pretty much all year, we've had seven or eight of our first 22 out of the team. So tonight at least we had Daniher out there, but we know he is going to start working back to his best footy next year. This year was just about getting him back playing and he's had to do that without any match practice and without much training. So Joe is not going to be at his capability for a while yet. Stringer the same with the footy he's missed.

So there's a lot of factors to take into account. I'm really confident that if Essendon sticks to what they're working on and what they believe in together, and pull it all together, we'll see where they're at, but we haven't had the opportunity to see that I don't think all year. So I understand that Essendon people think that Essendon should be better, but they've also got to understand that the competition challenges clubs now to work to the same rules – the same rules of the draft and the salary cap and no one team has any more right to be successful quicker than any other team, just because they're a big-name club, so you've got to knuckle down and commit to doing the work and good clubs will do that and come out of it with success.

With regard to the battle in the midfield:

Yeah so that first quarter we were really keen to take up that challenge to them and you know we weren't perfect but there was some really good stuff in there, and then they were just too strong in that second quarter so there was a few things where they just got inside us. Maybe our players felt like because we were right in the game we could start to try and get outside them a bit more and get the ball outside the contest and test them out that way but they started winning it inside the contest and we couldn't strip the ball back off them in that quarter.

So they blew the game open and that's why you'd expect from super teams that are at the top of their game in peak condition. They showed that's why they're on top of the ladder, I assume, I think they are? They're not there because they're fluking it. They've been working on it for 6-7 years and they've stuck at it and that's what I'm saying you've got to be prepared to do that.

Off-topic question about Port's finals prospects and whether they're a legitimate contender:

Who comes up with this stuff? Like you sit on top of the ladder because you're beating the opposition that you play every week, and this year and only playing each team once, so the ladder tells a story of how good you are. There's no easy draw for anyone this year. There is factors around hubs and lack of travel or being at home, living in your own environment, training on your home ground, they're all little things that assist, but you've got to beat your opposition. Credit to the teams that sit where they currently sit on the ladder is an indication of how good they are in the competition.

Regarding dropping Hooker:

Yeah generally, we leave players out of the team if they're performing below the level that we expect from them, and that we know that they can give output, and if we can't see that they're going to bounce back to that level in that coming game. So we're looking for things that say they're ready to get back to their best footy and we haven't seen that from Cale.

About having a week left as head coach at Essendon:

I'm excited about having a really good week's preparation for Melbourne this week. It's a testing time when you can't qualify for the finals, around the attitude we see from the players this week is going to be a big indication of how successful they want to get and how quickly they want to get there, so the disappointment that they showed post game was genuine, and my attitude is absolutely boys I can see you're hurting, but you've got another opportunity to learn this game plan practice it at full AFL intensity before you go on a break and then into a new preseason where you'll embed it even stronger. So don't waste that opportunity, look forward to it.

My job is to support these boys to get to where I think they can get to as quickly as they can. Now I may only have seven days more contact with them and I'll do my best in that time to help set the standard for where they want to get to going forward.

Question about Stringer getting back to full fitness with another preseason:

I've got no doubt that any player in the AFL that has a good preseason will play to the best of their ability. Any player, that's all players, everyone, all of them.

Yeah serious injury in the season... We all had an eight week lay off and then Jake had a serious injury I think, Collingwood? Where he was close to one of the best on the ground against the Pies and then he obviously had that serious ankle injury. And players that come back from long term injuries this year coming back without really getting any match practice and that's tough for them. So yeah, Jake will be, with a good preseason under his belt, he'll be ready to play really good footy for us and hopefully alongside our key forward line.

Off-topic question about the top four and finals, who is best placed?

Yeah the anomalies for this year are obviously where these finals are going to be played. So in any normal season if port finish on top they get a home final, but it's not normal this year because you know I think they've had, how many games have they played here in the last couple of months (reporter: They've had 7 in total..) Yeah some of them have been away games? So that's different to what they'd normally have.

So there's things like that, Brisbane aren't travelling anywhere near as much and they normally would travel every second week like Port Adelaide would. They're not having to do that so they're getting a feel for what it's like to be a Melbourne-based team where they don't have to travel every week. So yeah potentially you'd think maybe there's something there for those teams, but yeah. It's going to be different for Geelong, they're not going to get a final in Melbourne. West Coast not sure, they probably, yeah who knows? So it's going to be interesting, yeah. There is an anomaly there that I'd say for the teams that are not living out of home have some sort of platform to work from.

(reporter quizzes him again). I'm not going to comment on whether it's a good or a bad thing, I'm at a Melbourne-based club up in Maroochydore.

 

[Albertross]

Sure, it was a shitfest, but, I thought we showed more endeavour in this game (beside Q2) than what we did last week. Yet, if it was a dry game, we would have lost by 80.

Bring on next year, can't wait for more of the same.☹

 

[yodellinhank]

I also put this in Woosha's thread since people like to dissect his body language and sh*t, but mostly it's about this game obviously so also putting it here.

Rd 17 | Worsfold post-game

Senior coach John Worsfold spoke to the media after our round 17 match at Adelaide Oval.

www.essendonfc.com.au

It's always worth getting first hand information. Those tweets are like 5% of the answer and the articles I've seen so far only quote bits and pieces that suit their narrative.

'Do you think the debate going to heat up more this week?':


With regard to the battle in the midfield:


Off-topic question about Port's finals prospects and whether they're a legitimate contender:


Regarding dropping Hooker:


About having a week left as head coach at Essendon:


Question about Stringer getting back to full fitness with another preseason:


Off-topic question about the top four and finals, who is best placed?

I made it to "the way we want to play".

 

[Lore]

I made it to "the way we want to play".

Gold star for you. ️