Review Season Review

[iameviljez]

Revise this idiot.

Chill the * out. It's footy, not war. Besides, I was admitting that you were right.

 

[barmy44]

That season we finished 2nd, 2pts behind the Pies with a better percentage and lost to the Saints by a kick and would've won had Mooney not laid a s**t tackle.

idiot?

think we need far more respectful disagreement on here. you can disagree with someones position respectfully. i think doing anything other than that weakens your own position substantially.

 

[thecatattack]

Chill the **** out. It's footy, not war. Besides, I was admitting that you were right.

idiot?

think we need far more respectful disagreement on here. you can disagree with someones position respectfully. i think doing anything other than that weakens your own position substantially.

Sorry, I read his post wrong, I apologise.

 

[Partridge]

As I'm sure has been pointed out by others, you know good and well that the 41 point margin flatters a side who was down by ten goals at half time and 80-something in the third before Collingwood cue >>>> rack. At least the Adelaide game never got that bad.

And I'm sure you know good and well that the game lasts for four quarters, not by some arbitrary boundary people want to draw.

 

[thecatattack]

And I'm sure you know good and well that the game lasts for four quarters, not by some arbitrary boundary people want to draw.

lmfao

 

[iameviljez]

And I'm sure you know good and well that the game lasts for four quarters, not by some arbitrary boundary people want to draw.

Yes, but the game was dead and buried well before halftime and that had a significant bearing on the margin.

 

[Partridge]

Oh dear some are discounting the 2010 prelim because the Pies put the cue in the rack and margin then flattered.
By far the worst final I've seen in my lifetime. 2004 v Port comes close.

If you mean me I'm not discounting anything. It was horrendous. But the final margin was 41 points. That's a fact.

You mentioned in your lifetime. Did you see the 1994 or 1995 Grand finals? They were both way worse. The 1989 Qualifying Final wasn't pleasant either.

Remember, the statement was "our worst ever finals performance". It was not.

 

[Partridge]

Yes, but the game was dead and buried well before halftime and that had a significant bearing on the margin.

Do you think it was "our worst ever finals performance"?

 

[Art Vandelay_]

If you mean me I'm not discounting anything. It was horrendous. But the final margin was 41 points. That's a fact.

You mentioned in your lifetime. Did you see the 1994 or 1995 Grand finals? They were both way worse. The 1989 Qualifying Final wasn't pleasant either.

Remember, the statement was "our worst ever finals performance". It was not.

I was 4 in 94 so I doubt it.

The statement wasn't "our biggest finals loss" which point squarely at margin of defeat, it was "our worst ever finals performance" which is subjective and doesn't categorically mean margin.
That game is the worst I've seen us play in a final, the worst in my lifetime, whether it was the biggest margin or not is irrelevant to that assessment

And I'm sure you know good and well that the game lasts for four quarters, not by some arbitrary boundary people want to draw.

Come on, they put the cue in the rack and the margin was bloody flattering.
.

 

[Spazz Cat]

Do you think it was "our worst ever finals performance"?

Scores don't count now. Funny if you criticised the Nth Melbourne final, or the Essendon or Adelaide game this year the final score did count despite being blown away.
I hope it's not goal post shifting.
Just like H&A wins don't count now. Their false because our list is actually crap.
Except if you criticise C.Scott during the H&A season you get the constant greatest H&A% of all time line.
Just like if you criticised trading draft picks and wanted a rebuild. It was stupid because look at our ladder position.
But when we lose in finals the ladder position didn't count.
Why? Because our list was crap!
Maybe it was a mistake trading in mature players then?
No that's stupid. Look at our ladder position and how competitive we are.
But we lose finals?
Yeah cause we're overachieving with our poor list.
It's a circle of crazy.

 

[iameviljez]

Do you think it was "our worst ever finals performance"?

No, that is comfortably the 1969 SF where we got touched up by 20 goals.

Then, I think, the 1995 GF, and then the 2010 PF. 1994 we were just lucky to get there. I was three when the '89 series came around.

In terms of performance *relative to* expectation, it's the 2008 GF all the way for me.

 

[Spazz Cat]

"At one stage, Collingwood led by over 80 points, before Geelong scored 8 second-half goals to finish 41 points behind. The Cats' 62-point half-time deficit was the largest that Geelong had faced in any game since Round 18, 1998 against Sydney."

Yeah, it was bad.

Yeah it was bad. Wasn't our worst of all time though. Score wise or subjectively. Last year against Sydney though wasn't much better. 44 to 5 in the first qr
69-20 at half time.

 

[Art Vandelay_]

Scores don't count now. Funny if you criticised the Nth Melbourne final, or the Essendon or Adelaide game this year the final score did count despite being blown away.
I hope it's not goal post shifting.
Just like H&A wins don't count now. Their false because our list is actually crap.
Except if you criticise C.Scott during the H&A season you get the constant greatest H&A% of all time line.
Just like if you criticised trading draft picks and wanted a rebuild. It was stupid because look at our ladder position.
But when we lose in finals the ladder position didn't count.
Why? Because our list was crap!
Maybe it was a mistake trading in mature players then?
No that's stupid. Look at our ladder position and how competitive we are.
But we lose finals?
Yeah cause we're overachieving with our poor list.
It's a circle of crazy.

You're catching on, we're not good enough.
Or; were all those season long moanings about Blicavs, Guthrie, Murdoch, Horlin-Smith, Stanley, Motlop et al not being good enough or not performing well enough just for show and s**t n giggles.

We can't have a collective sit here all season and bitch and moan as to why they're all being selected, bitching at why we're picking raw kids like Buzza, Parsons, Simpson and Zuthrie..... and then at seasons end not acknowledge that ability is a problem.

There's your circle of crazy.

 

[Turbocat]

2016..
2 Geelong 22 17 5 0 2235 1554 143.8 68
2017
2 Geelong 22 15 6 1 2134 1818 117.4 62


so basically ... thru the season ... we won 2 less games .. scored about 101 points less and had 264 points more scored against us. We lost 2 finals by 51 and 61 points and won one final 59 ...

Im more convinced than ever that our finishing so high up inflates our real status. We are just a finals team ... and we will have to wait another 12 months to find out if we have learned from this year.

 

[DanA]

I think this year our top 15 players were better but the structure was bad and bottom 7 players really let us down.

Next season:
FB: Bews Henderson Z.Guthrie
HB: Touhy Taylor Stewart
C: ?? Duncan ??
HF: Cockatoo Hawkins Ablett
FF: Parfitt Stringer ??
R: Smith Dangerfield J.Selwood
IC: S.Selwood, Menegola, Blicavs, C.Guthrie

Next season hopefully we can bring in Stringer and Ablett and find 2-3 quality player to complete the starting 22. We're still going to struggle for depth but hopefully with a better structure and more quality we can take a step forward.

 

[JumpyHolden]

You got to laugh at statements like overachieving and scores don't count. There were far more factors why we lost the 2010 prelim so badly, that bald headed money hungry turd wanting to leave and Bombers behind the scene antics had a far more unsettling effect resulting in the blowout than the team just dropping its bundle or bad coaching.
Say it however you want at the end of the day it's in the record books as a 2010 defeat of 41 points compared to a 2017 defeat of 61 points and what's worst is that I expect bigger thrashings next year the way we're heading.

 

[David the Cat]

Other than Port and Adelaide, we are the only club to have never "won" a spoon. I'd love to keep it that way. Fair effort over so many years.

1958 was the last one...we haven't won many though.

 

[David the Cat]

Do you think it was "our worst ever finals performance"?

Nowhere near the 1969 drubbing....by the Tigers as it turns out.

Some of our Gf's in the 90's were lamentable efforts.

 

[Claude Balls]

In before a certain poster asserts that the 2010 team was actually a bunch of geriatric hacks and Scott is God for somehow getting a flag out of them the following year.

 

[JumpyHolden]

In before a certain poster asserts that the 2010 team was actually a bunch of geriatric hacks and Scott is God for somehow getting a flag out of them the following year.

Didn't you hear mate!! Apparently scores don't count anymore so he might not have a cause for argument.

 

[romeohwho]

Yeah I thought we were 2/3 best. Beat GWS comfortably. Didn't think we were better than the Swans but we beat them.
Before the finals I thought we were a better team than Richmond. We beat them a few weeks earlier with Duncan, Hawkins and Selwood out.
What's the point of finishing second if we're just overachieving. Just lose finals and get lower draft picks.
Is that what we should expect and be happy with. Damn that.
I never expected a flag at any time during this year. But we were uncompetitive in 2 finals.
2 finals being over at the start, just like last year is underachieving or underperforming for me. I expected better than that so I guess for me personally we underachieved.

But at the start of the year did you expect a prelim? Surely not.
Re Richmond- if you look at their season, particularly the second half-they were a good team. Consistent and hard at the contest. Lots of us had not been paying attention.
We keep making finals, we give ourselves a chance to get there evertually.

 

[feelinfeline]

- Simpson showed a bit but might be a bit too small

Simpson is 180cm (5' 11"). Same height as Sam Mitchell. Caleb Daniel is 167cm and seems to be going OK.

It is possible to check these things, you know.

 

[Whit3y]

A very good effort for Bomber to coach the 1969 Semi Final at just five years of age, but it may also explain the result.

comment of the week for me, i lol'd

 

[dazbroncos]

Recruitment

• Zac Tuohy (costing Billie Smedts, a four pick downgrade from pick 16 to pick 20, and pick 63) was an excellent addition. Even though Boris was irreplaceable it was great that we targeted and landed a high possession, running player to address a hole. Somewhat soured by a really poor Prelim Final but he wasn’t alone there.
• We said goodbye to Josh Caddy (pick 24 which became Brandon Parfitt and a late pick swap) which was a surprise at the time and not ideal but he was a forward pocked being paid $450k who wasn’t the best use of that money so I can see why they let him go. The good part is Parfitt who has had an excellent start to what should be a long and successful career with he club.
• The maligned pair Shane Kersten (traded for pick 63 which became Timm House) and Nathan Vardy (pick 72 which became Ryan Abbott) sought greener pastures and, as is the Geelong way, we didn’t stand in their way. Kersten had an underwhelming season at Freo while Vardy was very good at West Coast, almost playing more games this season than he did in his entire time at Geelong.
• Aaron Black (pick 92) was a relative bust in terms of output but has provided cheap depth which is really all we could have hoped for.
• Tom Stewart (pick 40) who started the season slowly, had a brilliant purple patch leading up to the finals and then a very disappointing finals series, save for one outstanding passage of play in the semi. Plenty to work with there and should be a 100 game player for the club.
• Ratugolea, Narkle, House and Abbott made no AFL impact in significant part due to injuries and judgement is reserved for now. If we get one of those making 50 games it will be a win given where they came from in the draft.
• Jack Henry, Zac Guthrie, Jermaine Jones and Sam Simpson all look promising and excellent value as rookie picks. Guthrie and Simpson in particular played much more than would have been expected and in Guthrie’s case the future looks really bright. Henry and Simpson should get another year to show something.
• Mark O’Connor looked very raw but had some ingredients of the archetypal Gaelic to AFL player.

Who improved?

• Jed Bews heads the list in a year where he really had to step up he certainly did. After being overlooked early for Tom Ruggles, he went on to play 19 games and collect a host of scalps along the way. His confidence appeared to grow as the season went on and he was clearly keen to take the ball and run with it at any opportunity. Just re-signed for a further two years and the #1 small defender spot is now firmly his to lose.
• Mitch Duncan seemed to take the “Dangerwood” insult to heart and stepped up his game to A-grade level to have a brilliant year. Extremely unlucky to miss the All-Australian 40-man squad, he was a model of consistency and class in the midfield. Now in his prime as a player, we can look forward to several high quality years ahead from him.
• Sam Menegola played 22 games, averaging 24 possessions and kicking a few little bags of goals. In the second half of the year in particular he seemed to find his niche as a high half forward who would use his running power to get to contests all across the park and then provide a dangerous option forward. Another who had a poor finals series which will need to be the spur for better things from here on in. At 25 years old he’s coming into his prime and will need to consolidate on a very good 2017.
• Zach Smith played mostly a lone hand in the ruck, amassing 675 hitouts for the year, putting him in the top 10 in the AFL. It was a more consistent season than we’ve seen from him previously. Still needs to get involved more around the ground, particularly in the air, but he’s entering his prime as a ruckman now and the continuity he has had over the past two years is clearly paying off for him.
• Jordan Murdoch makes the list purely on H&A where he had a very solid season playing 22 games and improving his output across most measures. Unfortunately his qualifying final was a stinker for the ages and he is again in a place of uncertainty.

Honourable mentions to Andrew Mackie (almost looked done at the end of 2016, Lachie Henderson who had a very solid year and James Parsons who just ran out of steam but played an important role as a defensive forward for most of the year when all other options were unavailable.

Who regressed?

• Cam Guthrie, let’s face it, had a terrible year on the whole. While he showed signs toward the end of the season as he re-entered the midfield during the skipper’s absence, it was a hugely underwhelming year overall. His season never got going and he was thrown around as the Mr Fixit but never really grasped any of those roles. After finishing 4th in the B&F in 2016, he now has a huge task ahead of him in 2018 as a player who is meant to be a leader of the next generation.
• Mark Blicavs had an up and down year as another player who struggled to find his niche. Played an excellent semi final on Josh Kennedy and was useful at other times either side of a month long absence with a cracked leg bone. Another who has question marks over his role and importance in 2018 - will he continue to be a midfielder or will he, after Lonergan’s retirement, be thrown back as has been mooted many times over the year?
• Steven Motlop had a well-publicised poor season. Not helped that he was in the final year of a significant seven-figure deal, he failed to deliver even to last year’s standards which were not have been at the required level of a player of his talents. He had half the scoring shots he had in 2016 and his confidence and demeanour looked shot until the finals started. In September he was Geelong’s best player, somehow managing to regain his dynamic zig-zag running and clever ball use. What does that all mean? Is he already out the door or can the relationship be salvaged? We are about to find out. Losing him for a second round pick at this point would be an enormous waste.

Dishonourable mentions here to Rhys Stanley (seems like he’ll never live up to the talent he has), Jackson Thurlow (ACL a notable excuse), Tom Ruggles (overtaken by Bews) and Josh Cowan (doesn’t have the body, let alone the talent for AFL football).

The coaches and gameplan

Hard to know where to start here as it seems like we finished the year not much differently to where we finished 2016.

We started the year seemingly willing to play a more attacking and dynamic brand of footy, kicking 100 points plus in our first five matches (all wins). But the signs were worrying at that time, also conceding high scores in all of those games and being very exposed on the counter-attack. Rounds 6-8 were all losses, two of which were despicable in nature. Round 9 back at home against the Bulldogs saw a return to 2016-style football - win the midfield, lock the game down, grind out a win. A brand which we deployed to great success for the remainder of the H&A season losing just three more games. This is both a blessing and a curse, however. While this brand has proven to effective to get us to the top 4 two years in a row, it has also proven to be a brand that will not stand up in September against the best sides.

Other troubling signs included:

• another post-bye failure in Perth against West Coast
• A failure all season to overcome a propensity to start games slowly and need to work excessively hard to get back into games
• A gameplan that again failed when the whips were cracking and at odd times throughout the year.

But it wasn’t all bad.

A string of injuries led us to debut many more players than we would have anticipated. Better still, the debuts showed, on the whole, very promising signs for the future. Stewart, Parfitt, Parsons, Guthrie, Buzza, Simpson, O’Connor and Cunico all showed varying signs of prowess, from the right-at-home to the raw-but-promising. On current evidence we’d hope to get at least a few hundred games out of the group and probably more with even luck. This has to speak, at least to some degree, to the quality of the coaching group that was able to maintain a significant degree of continuity in the gameplay and approach even while these debutants were thrown in to play important roles.

The coaching group also pulled a few rabbits from hats at times through the year. The GWS draw interstate when completely undermanned demonstrated a real willingness to throw caution to the wind and try something completely different, nearly pulling off the win. The use of Dangerfield as a forward was judicious and very successful when deployed. The semi final effort was the pinnacle of it all, showing a resolve and flexibility that we could not have been confident the coaching group possessed.

Looking ahead - what needs to change?

It’s pretty clear that it has to be back to the drawing board from a gameplan point of view. You can forgive a few failures as just a bad run against good opposition. But this is now clearly a pattern. This Geelong needs to win the midfield, slow the game down and grind out wins. It demonstrably does not work in finals and that needs to be accepted and changed as a matter of priority.

With Lonergan and Mackie retiring there is both a hole left behind but an opportunity to seek to overhaul our structure and the way we move the ball from the back half of the ground. Lonergan’s ball-in-hand play has been limiting for several years now and Mackie is no longer the hard running long kicking player he once was. We have several players waiting in the wings to fill the voids. Stewart for one has already proven himself very capable. Thurlow played only a bit-part in the year but in his second year back from an ACL will add dash and excellent foot skills when he does cement his spot. Just those two changes will see quite a change in the way the ball comes out of D50. Kolodjashnij, who managed to find an unusual niche for himself as a winger, will probably return to his more natural home.

There’s clearly another big opportunity to improve the list at the trade table. The names in discussions would slot straight into the 22 and displace poorer performers from the 2017 team. However, even grabbing Ablett and Stringer will not solve all structural issues. To me, those structural issues are what holds us back from being a real flag threat. Realistically, finishing 3rd-4th is a fair reflection of our list and the obvious gaps.

There’s a need to inject some better kicking skills into the 22. It’s not obvious where that comes from on the current list. That should be a focus in the draft.

We’re also crying out for some crumbing forwards. While Gregson and McCarthy will hopefully play a greater role in 2018, neither are your typical front and square electric pace players that would compliment Hawkins so well. Will Jones provide something here? He looked to be getting close to a debut late in 2017.

The second key forward role is also a big question mark. Stanley has failed to make it his own. While Buzza has shown some promising signs, it’s hard to see him being a 30-plus goal forward in 2018. The Taylor experiment will probably be put to pasture with Lonergan's retirement, placing even more urgency on finding the long-term solution.

The prospect of losing a couple of players on the more attacking end of the spectrum is also pretty concerning. Menzel’s limitations are well-known but as his 40 goals would not be easily replaced. Likewise Motlop is a player of a type where we have very little depth and a stagnant gameplan needs more, not less, of his ilk.

On the whole, there’s not a huge case for concern but nor is there a large amount of confidence that we can bridge the gap between also-rans and Premiers. I’m confident the club will give us a good showing again in 2018 but the outstanding questions will make for fascinating and nervous viewing.

insert gif of dude clapping like a crazy man..

wild applause.

GO Catters

 

[cynical]

Simpson is 180cm (5' 11"). Same height as Sam Mitchell. Caleb Daniel is 167cm and seems to be going OK.

It is possible to check these things, you know.

he looks and plays smaller(maybe because of his weight), it's also harder for guys that height to make it because of that limitation

smaller players always need a lot more skills than taller ones

hopefully he is the next stokes but we will have to wait and see