Autopsy The Post-Essendon Vent Thread

[Zuma]

we are soft as butter and you all know it

 

[I Am Bort]

I was at the game, and we were getting laughed at. A real hard one to sit through.

What a humiliating performance - it was truly deplorable.

 

[twce13]

I was at the game, and we were getting laughed at. A real hard one to sit through.

What a humiliating performance - it was truly deplorable.

same, it was embarrassing. pop star mentality.

Our midfield needs changes, im all for short term loss this year and getting our structure right.
Redden, Priddis need to go, the later for good. he is no way near what he has been in the past and past-priddis was already a flawed product.
I'd be trying to get our midfield right with an eye on 2018 and NN return.

 

[mehow2g]

We need to sack all ex-North Melbourne staff at Eagles, I haven't rated that club in like 15 years they are spineless gutless and that type of s**t has made its way at the Eagles.

We actually are North Melbourne Jnr, this type of culture and play style we have been showing for years is going to take a long time to breed out.

We haven't looked good since 2011 and we've had a better list every single year since then.

 

[wooshwhisperer]

Watching this game was painful... put me off my sausage rolls!! But need to make a few observations so i can move on.
.. The WC midfield was stagnant and soft and had NFI where the ruckman were going.
.. you kick a goal and you reset to the middle with a some chance to get the ball back. Kick a point and let it come out easy and your screwed. JK Jack LeCras et al completely took away any chance with there demoralizing missed set shots
.. the players are becoming too Mitchell focused. Just because he calls for it... it is still up to the guy with the ball to make sure a 5 foot buggerall vintage player is not surrounded by 3 6 foot something young blokes.
.. when the s**t was hitting the fan where was captain courageous? Surely a couple of appearances by #25 at a centre bounces would have at least created a sence of desperation and leadership.
.. stop bombing it it and expecting JK to out mark 2 defenders.

So all the haters can hate their favorite haties... but if you dont kick straight you are screwed!

 

[WCEbrody]

It's not even the loss that hurts, it's just that when we do there's no passion,effort or giving a s**t at all from 90% of our players on the field. Nothing ******* changes either, we all knew very early on we weren't going to win that game.

 

[bUCKET__]

Masten had more contested ball than Priddis.

 

[Slash136]

Masten had more contested ball than Priddis.

Just gave him more chances to turn it over... Never been a fan of his but he has been better this season, against the dons he was back to his usual turnover merchant self. Priddis was awful but somehow still made it on to the best players list... SMH

 

[Here2tellyouwhy]

The vents in this vent thread are piss weak and you all know it.

 

[Biggie]

The vents in this vent thread are piss weak and you all know it.

Sam Butler is s**t and has ruined our season single handed

 

[Here2tellyouwhy]

Sam Butler is s**t and has ruined our single handed

Picking on a club champion like that is a s**t vent too

I'd love to vent but those weak *in insipid muppet campaigner down hill skiing tatt loving poor haircut heartless flat tracking dont deserve to wear the mighty wing slow plodding backwards kicking chest mark dropping web loving non hunting *in flogs don't deserve it.

 

[Biggie]

Yes but what about West Coast?

 

[CM9000]

Sam Butler is s**t and has ruined our season single handed

Tom Barrass is s**t and has ruined our season single handed.

 

[sey666]

Yes but what about West Coast?

They had the bye this week.

 

[CM9000]

So now for my actual melt:
* Sack Simmo
* Drop Masten, LeCras, Redden, Sheed, Priddis, JK, Butler, Nelson e.g. to the WAFL and replace them with youth who certainly aren't ready.
* Take the captaincy away from Shannon Hurn.
* Sack the entire coaching and recruitment stuff for this loss.
* We won't win the premiership, are too soft, won't make the top 8 e.g.
* Pessimstic attitude for the next decade.
* Ask ndot to pick our next coach.

That should be about it, now to the real stuff.

******* Essendon always getting favoured by those campaigners for umpires, ****ity **** ****.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to smashing GWS next week, hopefully it'll be a good game.

I think I'll make this my template for melts after every loss.

 

[Godfather32]

Hey guys, been out drinking all day, when does the game start?

 

[Dylan82]

What a debacle this is.

61 points.

That makes this the largest loss for the club since Round 4, 2014.

You have to go back to the end of the Worsfold coaching era in 2013 for the last time we had a season with two 50+ point losses.


The result is the culmination of a series of systematic failures in selection, tactics and approach.

Selection:

• Essendon are the top ranked side in the league for rebounding the ball out of their defensive 50. So of course we remove our best ground-level player up forward for another lead-up player who hasn’t even played any reserve matches returning from injury.

• McInnes was only impressive against the Bulldogs due to the Dogs not playing a ruck at all. Against a seasoned AFL ruckman he was bound to be found out. If Giles and Petrie are both available we should not be going into a match with Vardy as the number one ruck option.

• Despite the Daniher-hype, Essendon have gained the majority of their goals this season from their fleet of quick ground level players. Yet no changes were made to a defence that has suffered terribly in the past against quick, crumbing forwards.

Tactics:

• The zone currently falls apart if the ground is much wider than Subiaco. Adelaide is only 1m wider than Subiaco so it deploys fine there and we are 5/6 at that venue over the last three seasons. Docklands is 6m wider and we are now 3/6 from the same period. The MCG is 19m wider and we 2/7 from that period also. Why is width important? The following reasons:

1. The opposition is more able to deploy a short-kicking game to nullify intercept marking due to the increased area of the ground.
2. In order to prevent holes forming in the zone, the zone itself backtracks towards the defensive goals (for example the width at 50m at Subiaco is the same as 40m at Docklands and 30m at the MCG). This enables additional lead-up space for opposition forwards at half-forward and makes opposition crumbing forwards more dangerous due to the closer proximity to goal.
3. The lateral disposal becomes more difficult to execute. The way we move the ball is generally like this: Backs > safest possible kick > half-back/wing > short safe kick/handball inside > running player > short inside kick > centre square > long kick to marking lead/run out the back > goal. On wider grounds, greater skill is required to execute the lateral disposal from out wide to the corridor. The ball will obviously take longer to travel the greater distance and be exposed to greater opposition pressure as a result. Without this lateral disposal, the entire offensive movement of the team shuts down.
4. Just as zones are more difficult to deploy on wider grounds in defence, the same is just as true when it comes to pressing. The wider the ground, the easier it is to run out of defence – or should be if you set-up correctly. We deployed our standard zonal press and time after time Essendon used the width of the ground to pull it towards one pocket and then expose it through the fat side on the switch.

• If you are going to tag a player that has a quick first step, make sure the tagger has a quick first step also, otherwise that player will still get their hands to the ball first and render the tag useless. The Redden “tag” on Merrett was reminiscent of the infamous Harvey semi-tag in 2010. 37 possessions vs 8 – that summarises this match right there.

• Priddis, Mitchell and Redden at the same stoppage offer zero spread. If we win the ball, we rely on Shuey and Gaff to get it clear. If those two get tagged and struggle to have an impact we become glacial in our ball movement. Conversely, if the opposition win the clearance we become limited in containing their spread, as was ruthlessly shown against the Bombers today.

Approach:

• We don’t play at the MCG again this season outside of finals. The next best thing then is to win well in the games at Docklands to allay any fears of travelling to Melbourne. This was a match to prove a point – at the first bounce I wanted to see players knocked off their feet by Blue and Gold hits. I wanted to see melees. I wanted to see pain physically inflicted upon Essendon by Eagles players showing that they refuse to be pushovers again in Victoria. Instead the Bombers pushed us about at will, and their physicality caused us to panic, lose our structure and then control of the match, with the result beyond doubt just ten minutes into the second quarter. The meekness of this performance is what infuriates me the most. What goes on in regard to the match preparation when travelling is obviously not currently working. It urgently needs to be re-evaluated and have changes made. I mean no disrespect to a great cause but it is really the best idea for this to be intervening during the final session before a match?

http://www.westcoasteagles.com.au/news/2017-05-20/eagles-lighten-up-ahead-of-bombers

As the old adage goes; train as you play, play as you train.​

I’m not sold on the idea of the majority of the leadership group arriving a day later either. You are a team, you play together, you travel together. There are plenty of workers in this country that miss out on family time due to travel. I’m sure a FIFO worker would love to be in their situation. Does this also mean that we had a number of key players flying not much more than 24 hours before a match and not attending a training session between getting off the plane and the match itself? I can assure you from my own experience flying cross-continent for work, there is no way I would want to be running for three hours the next day. Indeed, it usually takes 48-72 hours for my resting heart rate to get back to normality after being in the air 3+ hours. Anecdotal I know, but surely this can’t be the right way to gain maximum aerobic output allowing flights so close to matches?​

• We seem to have no means of countering opposition momentum during a game. We tend to keep doing the same thing and hope the opposition starts going cold. Unfortunately it can also end up like today, conceding 6 goals in 13 minutes. Why were no changes made when it was clear things were not working prior to the floodgates being opened? If the opposition gets on top and has a run of momentum, we should have a means of killing the game that we can go to. There are several options; extra spares in defence, playing the ruck a kick behind play, adding the forward flankers to the defensive side of stoppages. That we did none of these speaks volumes.

• There needs to be a genuine Plan B for when the zone gets picked apart. At the moment if the zone fails, when the game is already beyond us we’ll throw McGovern up forward and Yeo on the ball. This actually makes us worse – it is still the same system that was getting beaten before with players now being played out of position. There needs to be an alternative method involving structural setup that can be deployed effectively when things aren’t going to plan.

I’ll finish with this:


Our ability to rebound from defence went missing and we let the Bombers get easy goals on the break.

We are now 0/12 in matches where the opposition has had 3+ goal assists since the start of 2015.


I still believe that we have a great team, but currently we are all at sea if we have to cope with width and it needs to be addressed urgently. We have three more games at Docklands this year starting with the Bulldogs in Round 15 to go some way in making up for this.

Hopefully by then the team has learned from its mistakes today.

 

[frenchconnection]

Has Hurn coasted along long enough being 'good bloke, kicks well'?

Blow torch needs to come on the leadership group when the players routinely don't show up.

Tough job for Simpson to get much out of them today, they were spent before a ball was kicked.

That is the worrying part though - how can any player not turn up to give of his best? A loss I can take - it's how they lose and lack of effort by many that is the concerning part. After their lack of effort today (and also when they played the Hawks) don't know how many of them can look themselves in the mirror. There are exceptions and one player who I feel plays his guts out is JK, even when his kicking goes astray. He's still putting in!

 

[frenchconnection]

I can just see next weeks changes now In: Jetta, Petrie Out: Redden, Player x

Soft mids stay the same

We play like rockstars at home and nothing changes

I wouldn't say of late that we have been playing like rockstars. We just got home against the Bulldogs (mainly due to bad kicking, but you could say the same about the Bullies) against Port (away) again just got home. Played well against the Dockers for a quarter which got us home. Cant say that any of our wins this year have been that convincing in my opinion. Maybe I'm a harsh marker, as apart from the last 3 matches last year, they have not been convincing since 2015. I know we are missing NicNat, but we can't rely on one player to dig us out of the doldrums!

 

[frenchconnection]

I think we just need to **** off Redden and make an example out of Priddis (Simmo wont though). Bring in some new blood and give them some games.

If Simmo won't though as you put it, well then it becomes obvious, he's not the right coach!

 

[frenchconnection]

Watch us come out at home next week.

Then lose the week after.

We've got GWS at home next week - that's not going to be easy, so not confident of a win.

 

[frenchconnection]

Looked to be going at half pace

That's not like Shuey - I wonder if he's playing injured?

 

[frenchconnection]

Even the North match was come from behind (they kicked the first 2 goals of the match)
But if you're referring to coming from behind later on in the match- Richmond 2015 comes to mind (we were leading for most of the game, but they mounted a comeback in the second quarter to take the 1/2 time lead)
But yeah I miss the glorious '06 Skilled Stadium comeback

Now that was a sight to see. How I miss those days also, but we had a bit of mongrel in the side back then which we seem to lack in the current side unfortunately.

 

[frenchconnection]

We need to sack all ex-North Melbourne staff at Eagles, I haven't rated that club in like 15 years they are spineless gutless and that type of s**t has made its way at the Eagles.

We actually are North Melbourne Jnr, this type of culture and play style we have been showing for years is going to take a long time to breed out.

We haven't looked good since 2011 and we've had a better list every single year since then.

Think you're being a bit harsh there - apart from the GF loss we played pretty well most of 2015.

 

[placebo]

It's crazy how utterly abysmal we are at responding to momentum shifts. One of the worst at it in the entire league, we lack players who are classy or composed enough to handle the added pressure and our on-field leadership is horrendous.