I went to the game, not for a result but for the chance to see what we have been working on all summer and what we can expect to do in terms of ball movement, transition, hitting targets, decision making and defending an opposition. It's fair to say all of the above on exposure have failed miserably.
It's the same old stuff. We cannot kick in to any free teammates. Every team we have played in the Nab Challenge has been able to hit targets via kick in. We simply always kick long to a contest. Rubbish.
We cannot defend kick ins. The opposition slice us up with free targets at will.
Our ball movement is laborious and slow. There's no creativity, we don't use the corridor anywhere near enough and it's predictable. Too many guys are too slow of mind or poor kicks of the footy when the ball is in their hands.
We still get caught up on "contested footy". The most dangerous area on the ground is the outside. Win this area and you control and ultimately win the game. The Dogs obliterated us in this area. They always outnumbered us on the outside. Even when we got first hands on it, all our guys are within a 1m of each other. We were boxed in, with nowhere to go.
The Dogs' players were always moving, hitting every contest on the move. Be it in attack or when defending out inside 50s, they were always moving making it harder to be tackled. Our movement is static, flat footed and no tackle seems to stick. When they do, we allow our opposition to always be able to release the ball out via handball.
How many times can we do loopy handballs to players who are under pressure?
Why do we persist by not playing our best forwards, actually forward? Elliott is our best small forward. He is a weapon and he is now spending too much time on ball. This is seen as the next step in his evolution but the reality is, his form and output will suffer individually and team. The boy is capable of being a 50 goal a year player. He, Fasolo, Broomhead, Karnezis and De Goey need to be our small/medium forwards. No more Blair or Goldsack who have no influence on the scoreboard or via assists. It's laughable having forwards who cannot score.
Cloke must be getting frustrated and rightfully so. The guy works his ass off and the delivery is not even park standard let alone league standard. Always over his head, wide, at his feet or on top of his head outnumbered. We have the best power forward in the comp and we cannot hit him or create space for him.
Our defence is the worst in the league. Brown and Langdon aside, the rest are not up to it. Williams and Sinclair could be but Toovey is no longer best 22- he is a shadow of the player he once was and Ramsay is lost at sea. Kicking skills from this mob are atrocious. How can you ever hope to be the "best transition side in the comp" when this group of players is kicking the footy? Bucks, please, turn it up.
There have been no improvements thus far and overall it seems like we are still going backwards. The results are irrelevant, it's the way we are doing things.
I'm all for playing Kennedy, Broomhead, Freeman, Scharenberg etc with regularity at the expense of guys like Blair, Toovey, Goldsack, Frost, Crisp etc. If we are going backwards we may as well improve the kids and young guns.