Review Season 2025 a mixed bag

[Mr_Moogle]

Finals performance pretty much ruined the entire thing afaic. This is a piss weak club that will never win anything.

Can see us sliding next year. Club will take this season as an excuse to smell it's own farts instead of making genuine improvements. Just one example but we need total reform when it comes to recruiting and developing midfielders and I'm seeing sfa being done about that.

 

[Not Darryl Moss]

Gotta be happy with the season overall.

Made the finals. Gave our youngsters a taste of what September action is like.

Need to build on it for 2026.

2025 Minor Premiers, major finals disappointments: 2026 need to perform in September, not just be there. Does Fog have any upside as an inside/outside mid? Unlikely to be a top two-way runner, though if it worked, they'd be calling Nicks a genius. WTF

 

[Carmo]

Crows season review 2025

Finishing top at the end of the minor round when many had us only just in the 8 speaks for itself. Especially when you consider we are only midrange for games experience for our players being about 100-110 games average but remembering subtract out about 3 players, Tex, Smith and Laird and that drops well down again.

The most experienced side we could field next year now that we don't have Smith is 120 games, minus Tex is 110, minus Laird its back to 100.



I thought a lot of players had good years, Worrell, Filthy, Butts, Curtin, Tex, Dawson, Laird (compared to previous year), Milera, Berry, Max, Bond, Taylor, ROB, Rachele, Keane, Keays and Pedlar had either career best years or years that they should be pretty happy with.

Cook, Nank, Rankine, Soligo Peatling, ANB, Cumming, Borlase, McAndrew, Edwards, Ryan, Welsh, Draper, Dowling, Nick Murray had ok years. Some of these were a bit damaged by injury. I thought Cook especially came on nicely late in the season just judging on his SANFL performances. He should be one that should put the pressure on the guys in the ones. Nank had an up and down year. I thought Edwards and Ryan did ok, Ryan especially seems to have put on a nice bit of muscle. Dowling was unlucky, you'd think he'd be a Nicks favourite being a hard worker and all but he seems always out of favour. When we give him a game in the middle full time once a year in the SANFL (god knows why its only once) he dominates and gets 35 and 3 goals or something like that. Soligo starts every season on fire and then as soreness builds up he drops away. We need to manage him better. Peatling, ANB and Cumming were all ok, all had good moments, sometimes they each had bad patches. Should be better for the year just gone.

Sholl, Jones, Hinge and Toby Murray were really the only ones with bad years. Hinge started the year well but had dropped right away by the end. Toby Murray was actually going really well before injury destroyed his year. Jones did ok I suppose coming back from a lisfranc. Sholl had a really off year.



In terms of gamestyle we seemed to change a little bit, we didn't go as far as putting an extra number or two back in defense at times but we did seem to keep some people back close to that zone at times this year which was an improvement and I hope we keep going in that direction. My other main gripe is how we treat contests and our focus on grappling with opponents and tapping the ball down to a contest instead of to advantage. We did at times seem to change this a little bit as well, just subtle adjustment regarding grappling vs chase ball balance and the odd tap to advantage every second or third game which is not much but its trending in the right direction. Could still go further if you ask me. Also another gripe of mine that we seemed to improve on is the balance of take possession vs tap or soccer it on. As I've long complained we are far too much take possession balanced and we seemed to adjust that a bit as well. Again I hope we do more of it.



Just for the record regarding experience our experience over the last 3 seasons looks like:



Our experience differential vs other teams looks like



That's probably enough said on the minor round. Now we must discuss finals.

Experience

In our two finals games we had 112.5 and 116 games of finals experience. The only side in all the finals games that was less experienced was Freo in their only game 105.5. GC was 116.6 and 117.6, Hawthorns first game was 117.5 and GWS was 119.7. No other side was less than 120 and many were well above it. In the grandfinal Geel was 132 and Bris was 136.6.



Injuries

It seems we didn't run out of steam late in the year so much as we got a few injuries and lost personnel we couldnt, as a young side, afford to lose. Rankine was the big loss personnel wise, Rachelle's absence was also a pain. It was also a pain that Butt's good run of form was taken by injury and while Murray came back and was serviceable, I doubt he was at the level Butts was at. I think he definitely can get back to that level though. Then there was Fog and Dawson. Both reported to have injuries. I think these things were contributors, though not the main contributor, to our late season lapses v WC and Kangas and also in the finals. I think though too many are focussed on us to much re the WC/Kanga games and not giving credit for the efforts both those sides put in against us. Those sides were not those sides of a large part of the year.

Tactics

I don't see a big gap in fitness or skill or size or strength between us and the teams we played in finals. We were good enough in that area. What I think killed us was the approach to the game. We got off to bad starts and we didnt adapt to the finals style. I still think Nicks is too defense and process and gameplan focussed. I'll bet Mitchell just told his players get at them and put as much pressure on as possible, keep it simple when we've got it, especially early, just see ball get ball and get it forward and muscle memory from the rest of the year will do the rest. Meanwhile we had to concentrate on where the tap was going, then we had to balance grappling with our player versus just see ball get ball, then we had to worry about our method of getting it out and forward. They had four goals before we knew what hit us. There's no way Nicksy would even entertain the thought of using ROB's dominance at the taps (of Filthy's) to do a couple of nice taps to seagulls running past (port style) to get a couple of cheapie goals to get us off to a great start in finals. No you can't be doing that cheap stuff, no sir. Much rather them get four goals up and then chase it down, that's how real sides do it. IMO this was our main issue. This is an easy fix to do, thing is it requires changing of ones mind or acknowledging these issues even exist and that'll be the hard part.







Recruiting and Trading

I think our trading and recruitment was ok. Didn't lose anyone that will hurt too much, just Smith and Crouch to retirement. Gained an experienced role player, mid sized, with a bit of speed for the forward line and midfield that cost us nothing.

Signed the most sought after Cat B talent in the land. Big tick here.

Drafting was ok. Would've loved to have got Sharp. Oh well, Marsh looks like he has some freakish attributes which is what I said I wanted. That boy can run and already has a long and mostly accurate leg on him. Cant wait to see what he does kicking wise after a few years of leg weights because those legs of his dont exactly look muscly. Ludowyke was way too good to leave there like our recruiters said. High potential key forwards don't grow on trees and if you're getting one in the 50's (or whereever we picked him) you gotta go for it. We've needed a good pack splitter, given how much defenders like to stand back and block up our forward space. Its not really Tex or Fog's go. TT can do it but do we want our Rolls Royce doing dirt bike jumps? No way, this is where Ludo, Maley and Ibis will come in, hopefully hurting a few of those defenders and leaving them all that more tentative to get in Filthy or Fogs way. The train ons being fast mids mean at least we're trying to plug the obvious gaps we see.

So our next midfield piece will have to wait a little bit yet. Draper and Edwards waiting in the wings compensates a bit for this. Dowling, Bond and Taylor to I suppose. Maybe even Max.

Same with ruckmen. Will have to wait another year at least.

We still have our first two picks next year as well in another good SA draft crop by all accounts.

 

[GreyCrow]

Crows season review 2025

Finishing top at the end of the minor round when many had us only just in the 8 speaks for itself. Especially when you consider we are only midrange for games experience for our players being about 100-110 games average but remembering subtract out about 3 players, Tex, Smith and Laird and that drops well down again.

The most experienced side we could field next year now that we don't have Smith is 120 games, minus Tex is 110, minus Laird its back to 100.

The most pointless set of stats ever posted

' if we drop xx then we are younger ''

In terms of gamestyle we seemed to change a little bit, we didn't go as far as putting an extra number or two back in defense at times but we did seem to keep some people back close to that zone at times this year which was an improvement and I hope we keep going in that direction.

I thought we went 7 most of the year

My other main gripe is how we treat contests and our focus on grappling with opponents and tapping the ball down to a contest instead of to advantage. We did at times seem to change this a little bit as well, just subtle adjustment regarding grappling vs chase ball balance and the odd tap to advantage every second or third game which is not much but its trending in the right direction

This is fair

Injuries

It seems we didn't run out of steam late in the year so much as we got a few injuries and lost personnel we couldnt, as a young side, afford to lose. Rankine was the big loss personnel wise, Rachelle's absence was also a pain. It was also a pain that Butt's good run of form was taken by injury and while Murray came back and was serviceable, I doubt he was at the level Butts was at. I think he definitely can get back to that level though. Then there was Fog and Dawson. Both reported to have injuries. I think these things were contributors, though not the main contributor, to our late season lapses v WC and Kangas and also in the finals. I think though too many are focussed on us to much re the WC/Kanga games and not giving credit for the efforts both those sides put in against us. Those sides were not those sides of a large part of the year.

Rankine wasnt injured

Dawson and Fog had easy fixes - dont play them banged up in Finals

Tactics

I don't see a big gap in fitness or skill or size or strength between us and the teams we played in finals. We were good enough in that area. What I think killed us was the approach to the game. We got off to bad starts and we didnt adapt to the finals style. I still think Nicks is too defense and process and gameplan focussed. I'll bet Mitchell just told his players get at them and put as much pressure on as possible, keep it simple when we've got it, especially early, just see ball get ball and get it forward and muscle memory from the rest of the year will do the rest. Meanwhile we had to concentrate on where the tap was going, then we had to balance grappling with our player versus just see ball get ball, then we had to worry about our method of getting it out and forward. They had four goals before we knew what hit us. There's no way Nicksy would even entertain the thought of using ROB's dominance at the taps (of Filthy's) to do a couple of nice taps to seagulls running past (port style) to get a couple of cheapie goals to get us off to a great start in finals. No you can't be doing that cheap stuff, no sir. Much rather them get four goals up and then chase it down, that's how real sides do it. IMO this was our main issue. This is an easy fix to do, thing is it requires changing of ones mind or acknowledging these issues even exist and that'll be the hard part.

Nice summary - not sure Nicks sees this as an easy fix or a need to fix more accurately

Recruiting and Trading

I think our trading and recruitment was ok. Didn't lose anyone that will hurt too much, just Smith and Crouch to retirement. Gained an experienced role player, mid sized, with a bit of speed for the forward line and midfield that cost us nothing.

Signed the most sought after Cat B talent in the land. Big tick here.

Cant complain about our efforts. By all reports we did as much as we could.

My only concern is how late we were in going for some of these trades ie Petracca was like when a girl asks you to dance and you start to panic your breath might be bad and flounder around and drop the ball

Oliver the same. Not sure how much the AFC really wanted him but it seemed the communication we had with him last year wasnt as strong as some made it out to be

Given the chatter around Bailey and Sanders almost a year out says we can think long term when we want to

 

[AFC979810]

Dawson and Fog had easy fixes - dont play them banged up in Finals

Fog didnt have an easy fix. Needed offseason surgery to get his Toe right.

Unfortunately at the end of the year players need to perform hurt.

 

[Golumless]

Tactics

I don't see a big gap in fitness or skill or size or strength between us and the teams we played in finals. We were good enough in that area. What I think killed us was the approach to the game. We got off to bad starts and we didnt adapt to the finals style. I still think Nicks is too defense and process and gameplan focussed. I'll bet Mitchell just told his players get at them and put as much pressure on as possible, keep it simple when we've got it, especially early, just see ball get ball and get it forward and muscle memory from the rest of the year will do the rest. Meanwhile we had to concentrate on where the tap was going, then we had to balance grappling with our player versus just see ball get ball, then we had to worry about our method of getting it out and forward. They had four goals before we knew what hit us. There's no way Nicksy would even entertain the thought of using ROB's dominance at the taps (of Filthy's) to do a couple of nice taps to seagulls running past (port style) to get a couple of cheapie goals to get us off to a great start in finals. No you can't be doing that cheap stuff, no sir. Much rather them get four goals up and then chase it down, that's how real sides do it. IMO this was our main issue. This is an easy fix to do, thing is it requires changing of ones mind or acknowledging these issues even exist and that'll be the hard part.

I think this is really questionable. Of all the things to focus on with a side that is noted to be a weak inside midfield group (and the numbers are dire on an individual side), it's not gambling the occasional splash play? In a sector that at best, only scores 17.2 points per game and we were scoring at a mid table (10.8 per game) rate with said weak inside midfield group (and were only conceding 10.4 points per).

Over the season, it seems like we did a good job mitigating a weakness in our personnel. However, weakness is still a weakness, not matter how much mitigation is in place. Every team in the league would have told their players this is where you will get us, as much as we didn't help ourselves with the continued selection of Berry (I think there is a much stronger argument if you want to make a case we missed a trick by not moving Laird/Peatling into our 3rd inside mid role).