AFLW West Coast Women 2022 - Discussion

[Dark Sharks]

Yikes.

Another fun game for West Coast AFLW fans to sit through by the looks.

Wonder when we'll start being competitive. 2/3 games this season we've scored less than 15 points.

 

[Monocle]

McDonald
Caufield
Hooker
Guard
Paz

All played well... the others not so much.

Rowley showed good sign in her first game.

This comment is not going to go down well with the politically correct mob but McCarthy needs to drop some kgs, she has stacked on the weight and lost her mobility, consequently get caught way too often now, seems to have dropped two yards of pace.

Grace Kelly sadly has no idea how to read the play and is hopeless with the ball in the air, she was a real passenger today.

Ball movement and team preparedness to run ahead of the play to create link up options is non existent.

Like Biggie said SO much to do to get this team up the standard required to play the game at this level competitively.

 

[Monocle]

How did Lakay and Rowley go?

Lakay struggled early ( mind you the rogering that the umps gave her with ruck infringement would crush most debutants confidence ).
Rowley looked very promising.

Some of the other relative newbies.

Bella Lewis looks a shadow of herself from last year.

Thomas tried hard but pretty ineffective today.

 

[Dark Sharks]

Monocle If they let Imhara Cameron run around carrying a cutla kegs like its the clubs first ever season again, It'd be harsh chipping McCarthy IMO.

Would like to see the fitness standards raised for both. Can't exactly tell when the club doesn't list their playing weights like the men's.

I appreciate the fact the season is shortened and it's not a full time gig, but these players KNOW they are on the list for the following season, so even before the couple months of pre season training starts, they should've been keeping themselves in reasonable condition. You'd think it'd be part of their contract. It's a professional environment and this is the HIGHEST level of woman's football in the country.

 

[Carbine Chaos]

Monocle If they let Imhara Cameron run around carrying a cutla kegs like its the clubs first ever season again, It'd be harsh chipping McCarthy IMO.

Would like to see the fitness standards raised for both. Can't exactly tell when the club doesn't list their playing weights like the men's.

I appreciate the fact the season is shortened and it's not a full time gig, but these players KNOW they are on the list for the following season, so even before the couple months of pre season training starts, they should've been keeping themselves in reasonable condition. You'd think it'd be part of their contract. It's a professional environment and this is the HIGHEST level of woman's football in the country.

Agreed. Cameron’s conditioning for the first game looked so out of whack. Shouldn’t have been selected.

 

[AlphaSheep]

Game plan was a bit better, actually used some width. But still pretty trash, because we concentrate lots of players around and behind the ball, meaning there's never anyone forward of the ball. We do okay at the contests, but then have no one to kick it to. That's why we do this slow chip chip kicking -- it's to allow everyone who was behind the ball to get forward, you have to play slow to let them run up. But of course all the defenders go with them, which is why every forward 50 entry is to a contest and we never find any space.

It's been a dumb way to play footy for the entire AFLW so far, and it's a dumb way to play footy now, not one single team has been successful with it. We clogged up the field a fair bit for Adelaide, dragged them down to our level, but at the end of the day they were always going to get their 42, which means we needed a gameplan to get 43 or more. But if you move the ball so slowly up the field, I can't see how they're hoping to get more than 9.

The only few times we looked good were a couple of plays in the 3rd quarter where we got the ball into open space and ran. it's the kind of thing Melbourne and Freo have built entire gameplans upon, but no, apparently our coaches know better.

Liked Lakay, my biggest concern about her was mobility, but she looked okay, won some good taps, took at least one nice contested mark. Great to see McDonald beating her opponent lots of times, she's finally turning into a player. Rowley had some good moments in the 3rd quarter, but this kind of messy, congested football is hell on skillful kids in their first year, it's hard to get rhythm or confidence when every time you touch it, five Adelaide girls sit on your head.

Meanwhile in Freo, Dana East, who's a cracker of a player but no better than Rowley or Thomas, is looking like the future star she is in her very first games -- because in Freo, she can find space in which to execute her skills. If she played for us, she'd look rubbish too.

 

[Biggie]

Some mad second year blues for Lewis?

100%

She is waaay down at the moment

 

[Dark Sharks]

Whole team isn't improving.

Not surprising our best and fairest and brightest young player is also included in that.

Lewis is averaging 5 disposals and 2 tackles less this year than last year. She's yet to get more than 8 touches in a game in 2021.

Guard has laid 2 tackles for the entire season and touched the ball 4, 5 and 5 times in her three games.

I'm starting to lose sight of what the appeal with Grace Kelly actually is. Doesn't mark it, her skills aren't that great, she isn't a natural footballer let alone a forward, and she hasn't kicked a goal all year. I don't get it. I feel like she's there because we had zero other option when we started.

Same goes with Cameron. She was so exciting in her first season and looked a find. Since then she's been half the player. Why is she going backward?

Collier is worse this year... it goes on.


Hopefully with the captain back we can build some actual confidence vs St Kilda. Doomsday if we lose, there'd have to be some serious alarm bells.

Club asks us to get around the woman's team and the fans have all embraced it. But 3 seasons now, it looks like the club needs to ask ITSELF to get around it.

 

[Eaglesliveagain]

Think Grace Kelly should be a Backman. Has decent pace/closing speed and that way she can get taken to the ball

 

[Monocle]

Think Grace Kelly should be a Backman. Has decent pace/closing speed and that way she can get taken to the ball

Trouble with that is that Grace can't read a ball in flight so its going to be hard for her to spoil.

Unlike her sister who has picked up the nuances of the game, plus has great anticipation and the ability to dodge a weave, sadly Grace is very one dimensional and her only asset is if it's a foot race to get the disputed ball.

I am struggling to find a role to play her in that adds genuine benefit to the team.

 

[Biggie]

Yes Grace is on borrowed time in AFLW in my view

The comp has improved remarkably. We are stuck in sand at the moment

 

[bUCKET__]

GKelly's better games last year showed a fair bit, where she got some space & still proved pretty slippery once wall was in hand. Hard to speak much about our forward line this year when the ball movement is like it is.

 

[Monocle]

Whole team isn't improving.

Agree and thats a real worry.
The girls haven't been helped at all by being assigned a third Coach in three years, I think we would all agree that's less than ideal.

Hopefully with the captain back we can build some actual confidence vs St Kilda. Doomsday if we lose, there'd have to be some serious alarm bells.

I just watched the St Kilda / Melbourne game, two comments.

1. Like us the Saints cant run a game out for four quarters, so it will be the interesting marathon next week....someone, albeit by default someone has to win.

2. And this one is far more concerning- Saints looked VERY GOOD against the Dee's for three quarters - scores were level at three quarter time, then the Dee's ran over the top of them. However if our best football next week is only as good as the best we showed today AND the Saints play as well as they did for three quarters against the Dee's then we are in for another THUMPING.

Club asks us to get around the woman's team and the fans have all embraced it. But 3 seasons now, it looks like the club needs to ask ITSELF to get around it.

The Club has thus far, made a lot of fundamental mistakes in its infancy, particularly in the list compilation before we even played a game.
We IMO got the balance wrong, when we took on board so many Freo's marginal players and other Club spuds.

It still pains me that Sellwood used one of our two "Priority Entry Picks" on a kid that was not even fully committed to AFLW and chose the USA College basketball program rather than us ..... we totally blew and wasted that pick.

Hard to work our way up the ladder when we are not even improving and developing the young talent that we have already bought in.

The Club has some serious thinking and prioritising to do, in regards to it ever being a competitive force in the AFLW, as right now all we are doing is making up the numbers.

I am a paid up West Coast AFLW member, as is my daughter, but we are both aware that its going to be a long haul, because the lack of improvement in the first three season doesn't give either of us a lot of confidence, in those who are currently managing the women's program at the Club.

I look on at Richmond and St Kilda and see a level of improvement in their players that is lacking in ours ........ and it pisses me off.

Other than that all's going honky dory with our women's team.

 

[Biggie]

AFLW: Prior sees positive signs from Crows clash

AFLW senior coach Michael Prior said there were positive takeaways from Saturday’s match against Adelaide

www.westcoasteagles.com.au

 

[Biggie]

 

[AlphaSheep]

Yes Grace is on borrowed time in AFLW in my view

The comp has improved remarkably. We are stuck in sand at the moment

Grace looked fine under Pratt, because she'd get fast delivery into the forward 50, and space in which to operate. Prior is taking our players away from their strengths, which is supposed to be the opposition coach's job.

I just watched the St Kilda / Melbourne game, two comments.

1. Like us the Saints cant run a game out for four quarters, so it will be the interesting marathon next week....someone, albeit by default someone has to win.

2. And this one is far more concerning- Saints looked VERY GOOD against the Dee's for three quarters - scores were level at three quarter time, then the Dee's ran over the top of them. However if our best football next week is only as good as the best we showed today AND the Saints play as well as they did for three quarters against the Dee's then we are in for another THUMPING.

if we play like we did yesterday, we'll probably drag the Saints down to our level and make it an ugly game, but yeah, they'll beat us too. We're the worst team in the comp right now by a fair margin, and I reckon %80 of it is coaching/gameplan.

It's worth checking out Melbourne's games too, because their gameplan is the gold standard -- sure, they've got a super talented bunch of players to let them do it, but they're always moving the ball fast, moving it laterally, trying to find space. Their single objective is to get the ball into their forward line before the opposition defenders can get back, to create one-on-ones for their forwards. In other words, the exact opposite of how we play. It was, however, the direction Pratt was taking us, which is why we looked encouraging under him, and terrible now.

 

[Dark Sharks]

I actually think it's not just game plan either, also the actual talent on our list. Drafting, list management and development.

We've got some awful awful players in our side compared to other clubs.

I wonder if the top state league womans team would knock us off, like the way we all joke Subiaco could beat many AFL teams.

 

[Peter Wallis]

Yes Grace is on borrowed time in AFLW in my view

The comp has improved remarkably. We are stuck in sand at the moment

She made some great movies back in the day. Maybe she should go back to acting.

 

[Peter Wallis]

Maybe he should have shown some Prior restraint.

Probably fair to say that he won't be coaching the team next season. Not the smartest thing to say. Entitled to his opinion but saying this in the public sphere is never going to end well.

 

[Biggie]

AFLW: Five things we learned against Adelaide

Our writer takes a look at the learnings from a round three defeat against Adelaide at the Swinburne Centre

www.westcoasteagles.com.au

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

 

[bUCKET__]

Oh good, we're fit enough to really take advantage of a compressed fixture

 

[Biggie]

Oh good, we're fit enough to really take advantage of a compressed fixture

What could go wrong.

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

I suppose the good news is we currently have a reasonably full squad available? Not sure what’s happening with Cameron and Niamh, but Swanson will be back and Atkins should be as well.

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

…and now Evie Gooch will be unavailable for a week due to suspension.

I blame myself.