Autopsy Round 9 - St Kilda v Carlton *SPUD'S GAME*

[MOLTEN GANGLANDS]

Think he was leading the comp for total marks (or contested maybe) as a defender.

Hes a kid, hes gonna lose some contests but hes shown plenty down back.

Even as a forward the effort is there, hes just not good enough (or potentially old/experienced enough) to be the number 1 forward in a team with average at best delivery.

totally, for his age he has performed really really well in defence, if he keeps developing the sky's the limit on what he could be, especially seeing as he's been training as a forward his whole life

 

[MOLTEN GANGLANDS]

Now we are finally accepting that NAS and Hill make a lot of obvious fumbles and miss kicks, over cook things. NAS gets a pass cos he’s young and upcoming. Hill get’s blasted cos his manager got him a lucrative contract back when no one wanted to come and he’s old. Well, Hilly won’t get better now. We have to accept that. I don’t think we should blame him or expect miracles now either.

We have to accept that as much as our young brigade is coming up, some haven’t (yet) and some of the old brigade are losing some finesse. I think we probably don’t expect to make finals now, and despite an early rally after our shocker of an opening against Adelaide, I can’t believe many of us expected too much this year with that fixture.

As a fan, i am still holding on to the hope that we will rally after the bye. We have to stay in touch until then. Somehow. And we have to hope that Carlton, Geelong, Gold Coast etc., start to really slip up.

Nas gets a pass cos we ask him to take the hardest kick in the game, the one that cuts through the zone and opens up play. It's natural that he will turn it over at a higher clip. When he has time and space to hit regular kicks he nails them and then some. His delivery inside 50 is elite, picks the eyes out of them.

Hill generally gets his kicks once the break has already occurred, on the wing or going inside 50, he's in time and space and his job is to finish the play, which he normally does to an acceptable degree (up for debate), but on friday night he was horrendous.

When Nas is in time and space on the wing or going inside 50 he is muuuch more effective than Hill, night and day.

While their roles appear to be similar, they're actually very different. In general Hill should be compared to Wilson, and Nas to Ronnie or Sincs (depending on what role everyone's playing at the time)

 

[The Punter]

1. Nas is better than Hill.
2. That doesn't mean he gets a pass when he consciously does something that is unlikely to work, like running on to his left foot and while running to his left tries to kick the ball to his right with his right foot.

 

[Dard Ball Get]

Richmond just beat WCE by 2 points. Without sounding overly negative I have a feeling we will be the first team to lose to WCE this year.

The Richmond we beat by 82 points? What have they got to do with anything??

 

[Bill Crouse]

On Hill's salary, important to note he is no longer on his initial contract. So considering our reported salary cap space, it is unlikely he is on massive coin any more.

He must have taken a pay cut, but I still don't understand how he was given a 3 year extension.

 

[The Punter]

He must have taken a pay cut, but I still don't understand how he was given a 3 year extension.

Probably for the same reason Mason Wood was given an extension of exactly the same length ending at exactly the same time.

 

[Bill Crouse]

Probably for the same reason Mason Wood was given an extension of exactly the same length ending at exactly the same time.

I was also surprised at Wood's contract but understood it more for a few reasons:
He was an UFA and had been underpaid on a rookie contract for most of his time on our list, while also being a leader.
He is more versatile than Hill, being a marking target and reliable goal kicker.

 

[sauce_head]

I was also surprised at Wood's contract but understood it more for a few reasons:
He was an UFA and had been underpaid on a rookie contract for most of his time on our list, while also being a leader.
He is more versatile than Hill, being a marking target and reliable goal kicker.

Is anybody questioning Wood’s contract? Surely not.

As for Hill he certainly has his strengths and weaknesses, but he is probably better for us to have out there than not. And I think he’s quite a good off field leader around the club as well.

 

[gringo2011]

Nah, Hills mistakes on Friday were very different, he was essentially choosing to go glory hunting with idiotic passes rather than making smarter decisions. As an older player you shouldnt get a pass on that.

Having said that, hes generally been quite good this year and we probably need to accept that his role (regardless of his salary) isnt that of elite wingman anymore.

At the ground we just couldn’t find free players. Carlton locked us down and then we started to be psyched out with every kick. Similar to how the Dogs took us down but by a worse side.

 

[Xxxx66]

Finally watched the game on TV after being there.

Some things, the criticism of Wilson is rediculously overstated. He fluffed maybe 2/3 kicks slightly but he also set us up multiple times with some very classy kicking. I think I found the contest he shirked maybe. Anyways defensively he worked super hard. The FK against him to McKay was only because found a way to get into the D50.

We desperately need another Contested marking option. Blame the AFL/VFL imo we have to bring in Viking when he’s finished his suspension. Espescially with Max out. As I’ve said many times. Stick him forward.

Overall watching back I think the game was 50/50 if not 60/40 to win. They took there chances we didn’t. Not just that. It was our turnovers, missed tackles and not punching the ball that cost us and caused their goals. Then the 4 behinds in a row in the third.

I still want some more power/speed on ball

Windy/Jones/Pou

Great post. If we knocked off the fumbling we probably win, if we also hit targets we definately win.
I think Darcy is a nice kick, so maybe just his radar is off.
Watching live, I noticed our forwards having trouble with seperation making it hard to hit them up. He's the least of our problems

 

[Xxxx66]

At the ground we just couldn’t find free players. Carlton locked us down and then we started to be psyched out with every kick. Similar to how the Dogs took us down but by a worse side.

Spot on. Not always the kickers fault

 

[SinCitySainter]

We win the ball and we are absolutely static half the time. Hill and Nas have a horrible time trying to find a free player. When Carlton had the ball they ran to space and their players tried to honour the movement as we allow separation by defending areas rather than players outside the 50. When we had the ball Carlton stuck a lot closer to us which we made easy by not spreading from the midfield.

 

[Ads734]

Great post. If we knocked off the fumbling we probably win, if we also hit targets we definately win.
I think Darcy is a nice kick, so maybe just his radar is off.
Watching live, I noticed our forwards having trouble with seperation making it hard to hit them up. He's the least of our problems

Hundred per cent there were at least 4/5 quality kicks including a few inside 50s. Can’t remember off the top of my head but I think 2/3 to coops/cana/hall. Honestly he was actually superb along with Ronnie

 

[Ads734]

Seriously cannot get the Viking in quick enough. He will imo be our best current CM along with king, coops

 

[austinnn]

Yep, I thought during the week that we've had a tough fixture to start the season but 4-4 was reasonable in the circumstances. Games still to come against Carlton, Essendon, Melbourne, North and the Eagles were must win games. All our standard or worse.

One done already.

I also think the Spud game should resort to a black arm band game from now on. Continue to honour the guy but let's move on.

I don't know much about Danny Frawley; I never watched him play, I didn't see much of his media buffoonery, I saw him mostly as a Richmond coach and ex-St Kilda head who came back briefly as skills coach or something in the late 2010s. I heard most of the stories about what kind of guy he was as a player, no nonsense and down the line and loyal. I don't pretend to know anything about his mental anguish and would be projecting if I was to try to make sense of the end of his life.

BUT

If Danny Frawley could see a whole week every season dedicated to celebrating his life and roasting him, essentially re-living his funeral every year, culminating with a game being played in his honour with all the Saints players wearing special jumpers (representing the club who were so poor and lost so many games during his time there) and opposition players standing in a circle in silence pregame, and for his family to expose their feelings and beg the footy watching public to take care of their mental health and and watching all this happen before the Saints boys took the field to try and win a game of football,

...what do you think he'd think about that?

I think its a bit weird to use someone's death to manufacture a blockbuster game be it Maddie Riewoldt or Danny Frawley. I get that they are turning a loss into a positive call to action, but that should all be separate from the actual game I think. Liverpool FC do it quite well; the week of the Hillsborough anniversary there is plenty of media about it, but any game that week goes ahead with the minimum disruption, I think a minute's silence is all the 97 get usually.

I reckon Spud would be happy with a bit of media during the week for the mental health stuff and then just get on with the game without all the fuss and focus on trying to win. Sorry for any offence caused.

 

[Teflon]

There is that but Hill was also just trying to do the impossible. He twice tried a 5m "dink" over an opposition player with the outside of his boot rather than kicking something possible to a contest.

I think Brad Hill is one of the most over rated kicks in the AFL, hes not "bad" but hes nowhere near as good as made out. Nas at least is hes just asked to make the difficult ones every possesion.

Totally agree

 

[stfan]

Is anybody questioning Wood’s contract? Surely not.

As for Hill he certainly has his strengths and weaknesses, but he is probably better for us to have out there than not. And I think he’s quite a good off field leader around the club as well.

Yes agree.

I cannot fathom anyone complaining about Wood's last contract. He is worth it for the offield value alone that he provides us, let alone his on field value which is also worth it.

 

[jwikked]

I think it’s a bit weird to use someone's death to manufacture a blockbuster game be it Maddie Riewoldt or Danny Frawley.

I’d never thought about it like that, it is weird that we’ve done it twice trying to create a marquee game.

That said, both are very worthy causes, with the intention to raise significant money for charity. I’m torn on the idea of those games.

I don’t like turning them into a pre-game funeral, but I also don’t like that we ditched Maddie’s Match entirely, even if very little effort was put into it towards the end.

Maybe it should be something the clubs media team focuses on, while the players and match day remains largely normal.

Don’t know. The simplest answer is for us to just win these games, so that there’s no question mark hanging over the running of these matches.

 

[pebblesofsand]

Now we are finally accepting that NAS and Hill make a lot of obvious fumbles and miss kicks, over cook things. NAS gets a pass cos he’s young and upcoming. Hill get’s blasted cos his manager got him a lucrative contract back when no one wanted to come and he’s old. Well, Hilly won’t get better now. We have to accept that. I don’t think we should blame him or expect miracles now either.

We have to accept that as much as our young brigade is coming up, some haven’t (yet) and some of the old brigade are losing some finesse. I think we probably don’t expect to make finals now, and despite an early rally after our shocker of an opening against Adelaide, I can’t believe many of us expected too much this year with that fixture.

As a fan, i am still holding on to the hope that we will rally after the bye. We have to stay in touch until then. Somehow. And we have to hope that Carlton, Geelong, Gold Coast etc., start to really slip up.

Hill and NWM both make mistakes because our game plan relies on us winning the ball on a turnover in the back half and having both of them take risks in order to create scoring opportunities.

 

[The Punter]

We didn't start poorly this time, and we weren't flat, so the Spud's Game stuff is a little overblown.

 

[EddieMurphy]

You know our list has years worth of holes to fix when we have no midfield AND no talls/contested marks.

 

[Minga]

We didn't start poorly this time, and we weren't flat, so the Spud's Game stuff is a little overblown.

Extremely overblown. It all comes from the first spuds game being played against Melbourne in 2021.

It was round 2, we were coming off winning a final for the first time in forever, losing to the eventual premiers in dynasty team Richmond in 2020, and then beat GWS in round 1 2021. Vibes were good.

There was an expectation that we should beat Melbourne, who missed the finals in 2020. They were a relatively unknown quantity at the time. So when we lost, IMO, everyone got shitty at the vibe of spuds game, and threw blame onto that. There may be an element of it being a downer but still I think it’s way overblown, and doesn’t come near to offsetting the importance of the event.

I remember being so shitty at Melbourne and thinking they didn’t deserve the win, and that we had just played below our usual level.

They of course, went on to win the premiership that year and hand us the longest drought in the league on the way out. Goes to show what I know.

Cut to 2025 and we are still complaining about the same shit. As far as I can remember nobody complained when we won spuds game last year against the Pies. Easy to play the blame game & FWIW, I’ve heard plenty of great things about the impact of spuds game and the pre game speeches throughout the weekend for a cause that’s much bigger than footy so I think we just need to put it rest and stop the blame game.

 

[SG34]

Nah, Hills mistakes on Friday were very different, he was essentially choosing to go glory hunting with idiotic passes rather than making smarter decisions. As an older player you shouldnt get a pass on that.

Having said that, hes generally been quite good this year and we probably need to accept that his role (regardless of his salary) isnt that of elite wingman anymore.

I think your language choices here tell us more than Hill’s motives: (essentially, glory hunting, idiotic)
Personally, I think he was overwhelmed and was trying too much, and he is a tad slower than he once was.

 

[Saints TV]

 

[phantom13]

I think your language choices here tell us more than Hill’s motives: (essentially, glory hunting, idiotic)
Personally, I think he was overwhelmed and was trying too much, and he is a tad slower than he once was.

He’s our most experienced player.

He got the ball in some poor positions (not all his fault) but his choices with the ball were his. Whether motive or mistake it was shit.