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Worrying Signs

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Dogs_Playing_Poker

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Collingwood
A few things lately I have noticed have got me worrying
I see it as wellingham, toovey, goldsack, dick, reid, cook, wood, macaffer, beams, barham, stanley all being on a rotation policy. some can play well and get dropped, while others play awful at get retained. it seems every two or three weeks all these players get turned over.

Our scores have been low the last few weeks, but I suppose we did kick 19 goals against north melbourne only 3 weeks ago. its all about ball use for me & sadly we really lack in this area. We get the ball enough but the quality of our possessions are exceptionally low.

I see several of our players as not having disposal upto afl standard. cloke, rocca, wood, toovey, wellingham, n.brown, barham, stanley, macaffer, maxwell, clarke, reid, l.brown, swan, o'bree & shaw. i know thats alot of players, but would we want the ball in the hands of any of these players after the siren to win the match? i would not.
It also really hurts us infront of goal... the pies conversion this year is 99.102, or 49.25%. and the last two weeks its been 36.36%. collingwood are the only side in the competition to have kicked more behinds than goals.

leigh brown is not the answer. chris byran is not the answer. collingwood have been reliant for five years on tall forwards bring the ball to ground. didak, medhurst, davis, thomas, etc... kick the majority of the pies goals, and most of those are not from marks. so the delivery into the forward line has never really been an issue. but now without most of those medium forwards, its a different scenario.

i also think the gap between collingwood's best and the rest is too big.
you've got...
Didak, Pendlebury, Davis, Fraser, Lockyer, Swan, Medhurst.
then the next level is probably Maxwell, Shaw (based on current form) O'brien, Anthony, Clarke, Thomas.
but its a long way to the next best...

I know that I will support the boys no matter what but these issues are really worrying to me, and they need to be addressed...
 
I think you're being a bit harsh on Clarke, Shaw and Wellingham. At their best, they all have good disposal IMO. The first two are out of form, and Wellingham has been decent of late.

With our best 22 in, I think our side is extremely even. No team is going to have a small gap between their best players and worst players when they have 6-7 key injuries.
 
Maxwell's disposal not up to AFL standard?

Don't listen to the pricks on bigfooty who say he can't play, his disposal is perfectly fine.
 
smiddaz123 said:
Maxwell's disposal not up to AFL standard?

Don't listen to the pricks on bigfooty who say he can't play, his disposal is perfectly fine.
Click to expand...

When not under pressure his disposal is fine, when under pressure he kicks crap house he had 2 absolute shockers against carlton (stanley gets slaughtered for similar).
Also its more his decision making in his kicks than his general kicking skills.
 

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smiddaz123 said:
Maxwell's disposal not up to AFL standard?

Don't listen to the pricks on bigfooty who say he can't play, his disposal is perfectly fine.
Click to expand...

bigfooty might not be the best place for you smiddaz123 after we play 2 poor games and Mick goes and picks ANOTHER poor side.

we're all passionate mate and sometimes we say things that we wouldnt consider saying if we were winning!

we all know that.;)
 
There are a lot of worry signs, and yes, our disposal rate and accuracy at goal are major concerns.

But, I believe we will get some good things out of this "down" period. We will find out if players like Stanley, Dick, Barham, Cox, Reid and other frings players have what it takes to be a consistent AFL player.

We will also find out a lot about our "good" young players, Clarke, O'Brien, N.Brown, Sidebottom, Beams etc, who are under more pressure then usual at the moment due to no support from missing senior players.

Our major "worry" is our extended depth, we may have 6-7 players who are capable of AFL football outside of our best 22, but our depth seems to be not as deep as most people thought.

I've always said we have a very good young list, but that we lack that middle aged player group who wins premierships. This group will be coming of age in 2-3 years, and the coach next year (whether it's MM or not) will have a very good promising list, with most of the dead wood removed by the time the draft comes around this year.

We should load up on young kids in this years draft and rookie draft, we wasted 2 picks this year on Corrie and L.Brown, so we cant afford to do that again in the last "uncorrupted" draft.

The future looks bright, the present a little bleak.
 
On the first point I don't think it is a rotation policy.
Macaffer earnt his call up and wasn't poor not great for a week or two but after a run of 3 or so weeks clearly wasn't having an effect.
Dick came in and was pretty ineffective for a couple weeks in a row. His again getting close to earning a call up.
Reid is clearly one they are trying to get some games into he played poor, went back to the VFL played well and was again given an oppertunity when it was avalible.
Goldsack is a player who seems to be in favour and Stanley out of favour. Cook's oppertunity has come through an injury depleted list. Beams has been in and out with injury etc.

On the disposal point I think there is a difference between what is AFL standard and what is exceptional. We have a fair few average kicks and not enough great kicks. A lot of people you listed are neat enough field kicks but not great, O'Bree, Swan, Barham, Toovey are the ones you listed you are not AFL standard kicks. Of the others most of them are neat but not excellent. Some of those have their disposal further exposed by making poor decisions or not choosing options within their limitations.

I agree our gameplan is further exposed by the lack of physical key foward pressence. L Brown and Bryan are not the answer. There is a bit of a waiting game at the moment to see how the foward line develops. We have all talked about the option we had with our fowards going foward it is now time for them to start stepping up. It is also in the mean time to start playing to our strengths which are are more medium sized fowards in Anthony and Medhurst. Get the ball in quicker to give them more space to lead into and more chance of getting a one on one.

The gap between our best and the rest has a lot to do with the gaps in experince.
 
Tigers_Rulz04 said:
collingwood uglist team out.
Click to expand...

back to kindergarten for you!

looking at your name (tigers - 2004) you would've loved the fact back then that you were about to get terry wallace and about to draft some "awesome" players and that your new coach had a guaranteed 5 year plan to get a premiership on the back of Tambling, Simmonds and Deledio. Others like J King, Pattison, White and Oakley-Nicholls were guns too.

now 5 years later and still NO FINALS or premierships you are a very disenchanted individual. it's understandable.

now go back to tigerland and vent over there, say to yourself "terry wallace will come good" over and over again it may just come true

good luck with that.
 
I agree with the OP that some of our players have average footskills although I think you have overstated it regarding some players. The real worrying signs for me (and they lead back to the bad footskills point you make) are:

1 - Our archaic wide gameplan. It's supposed to hide our poor footskills by minimising costly turnovers in the corridor but as far as I can tell all it does is exacerbate them. Our slow ball movement allows the opposition to flood back and guard space in our F50, and because we move the ball along the wings we limit our options in the F50 making finding targets alot harder. This makes our footskills look worse than they are.

2 - The laziness of our players to provide targets and do the one percenters. We never have any options to kick to because our players are not running and presenting targets. Eventually we have to kick the ball long to a contest - usually on the boundary line - where we more often then not turn the ball over and get punished through the corridor by the opposition team, or have it thumped out of bounds for a congested stoppage. It is absolutely unacceptable that the coaching staff and the players to let this occur. We also don't put in enough blocks and shephards to give the ball carrier and his options room to move. All these things make our disposal skills look much worse than they are.

3 - Some of our players with good disposal skills are in bad form; some have been missing through injury; or some not picked to play. Shaw makes a big difference to the team when he is playing well and Didaks and Medhursts absence really hurt. It doesn't help when spuds like L Brown get picked or guys with poor footskills such as Toovey, Goldsack, Cook and Barham among others. Eventually you'd hope guys like Dick, Blight, Cox, Round and Wood overtake these guys and cement a place in the team ahead of the guys with poor disposal skills.
 

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