AFL Autopsy RND 19: Beaten by the Crom

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Kelly has been ok last 2, McGrath has had a good year. I ain't throwing them out.

Guelfi, Menzie, Lav, Heppell & Goldy should not be part of moving forward IMO.

Guelfi has flexibility and been good this year. His selection should be role based though.

Laverde also been alright and good for key position depth but should not have played as many games as he has this year. Prefer trying hayes or using ridley as a key if opposition suits it.
 

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That was the one year. Typically under Scott we were awful early (1 round 1 win in his tenure) and improved as the season went on.

That said, Scott is the GOAT at coaching close losses at marvel. I’d be shocked if anyone has coached more. Many of them lost when infront for most of the match.
Except for that one elimination final in 2014 …. 🙁
 
Stringer created position but was crucified by delivery.
We seem to have a major problem picking the ball up cleanly which results in too many turnovers.
 
We can't be playing two ruckman and two tall wingman at the same time. It makes no sense.

The tall wingman are doing the second ruckmans job around the ground.

The opposition effectively has the extra smalls to run away with it.
It is almost coming down to not playing two genuine rucks but also having to not play Langford / Stringer / Wright in the same side as well. So If Wright plays Stringer is redundant or of we play Langford and Stringer then Cox has to play ruck for some time or even Jones and just wing it to use a pun.
 
Except for that one elimination final in 2014 …. 🙁

Yeah amazingly in close finals we did well

After the elimination final we beat the cats by under a kick (still let them come back from 30 points in the last qrt mind you), and beat the tigers in a close one the year after.

But all 3 were at the G.

Close losses at Marvel are Brads specialty
 
We are a very dumb football team.

Yes we are, but so are 95% of teams, 97% of the time. I'm 78% sure of that.

Why do teams on top of the game sit back and let the other team roll the dice when they've controlled the game and have a small lead? While some caution makes sense surely when a team is pushing forward at every chance and over committing at the contest it is easy to score.

Having said all that, despite some great efforts by Caldwell and Durham, Adelaide midfielder hit the contest harder all night, and pushed through more broken tackles than we did. The floating 200cm wingmen has its benefits, but speed, power and agility around the contest is not one of them. If that is to Continue, we need more small nuggety mids playing off half forward pushing up to the contest.

Despite all the whinging, after what happened earlier in the year we kind of deserve this result and our win loss ratio is coming closer to a truer reflection of how we've performed this year.

Long term, we need another KPD so Ridley is more interceptor. We can only play one of Heppell, Laverde or Kelly. We need Martin to play off the half forward line. We need to move on from Goldy and play Bryan. Either he learns synergy with Draper or we trade him out for value and get a an older depth ruckman.
 
View attachment 2053143

Keays and Fog with career games FMD, embarrassing performance from a side that is missing 1 of its best 23 through injury..
Essendon continually make b grade players look like superstars

Trent Rivers, Jack Crisp, Jack Bowes, Elijah Hollands, Ben Long, Zac Fisher have all looked like world beaters when we have played them. Infuriates me I cant trust Essendon to turn up and just get the job done
 
yeah ok but anyone who had hope was a dummy. let's quickly break it down

r1: only beat the hawks because we kicked everything and they missed everything
r2: yeah ok, competitive for a lot of the time against the swans but got blown away either side of Q4
r3: 4 point win against the Saints, who have turned out to be a bottom 4 team.
r4: blown away by Port
r5: yeah a good win against the Dogs, who were probably at their lowest point in the season
r6: 3 point win against a bottom 6 team Crows after the umpire bottled it and didn't pay a free to the Crows to win the game. we did have a lot of scoring shots and we should have been beyond a 2 goal margin
r7: draw against the pies, who except for last round last year, we've been very competitive with every game since 2022
r8: 6 point win against WC, a disgraceful performance
r9: Yep, a very good win against GWS. As it turns out, it's been mostly downhill for GWS ever since
r10: 40 point win over north in which North won two quarters in the game and we were only up a goal at HF. an one quarter performance against a 0-9 team
r11: a 12 point win over Richmond in which the margin was a less than a goal with 10 mins to go against a team that had lost like 7 straight
r12: 11 point loss to GC. we threw this one away. Despite missing a lot of shots, we managed to equal the score in Q4 and then let GC get on a roll
r13: 26 point loss to carlton. they kicked everything and we missed a lot but were only down by 15 at 3QT. they kicked 5 goals in 10 minutes and got the lead out to 41 at one stage. bad stuff
r14: up by 13 at 3QT against WC, helped by kicking 14.5 to that point. went on to win by 30 but it's another game against a terrible team that was still up for grabs for far too long
r15: 45 point loss to geelong. destroyed in the second half.
r16: yep good win against Collingwood...who are now in the middle of a 3 game losing streak and now sit 12th
r17: lost by 17 to Melbourne. a combo of Geelong/Carlton. destroyed in the second half, lead got out to 41 points. junk time goals to bring it back to respectable.

going into last night, we were 5-1-1 in games decided by 12 points or less. that's half of our 10 wins. close games are a coin flip. every sport shows that. the umpire blows a free-kick, a player misses an easy shot. some teams get on an insane run in close games, like Collingwood for the last 2 years and the Hawks a few years ago, and that's just luck and going into tomorrow, we don't know how that team will go in a close game. we don't. our 3 best wins are all against teams struggling to make the 8 themselves. meanwhile we've consistently showed that we not much better than the clear bottom 6 teams, and now we've finally lost one after flirting with losing one all season
 
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this is what kills me each week and season

When it looks like we have turned a corner, I hope we turn up in a game that is 50:50 and we turn to water

wash, rinse, repeat for 20 years
200w.gif

Best tip I ever got . You can not put too much weight in life to things you can not control. I am as flat as a pancake after last night but I walked away from the ground knowing it is what it is and the reality is this is another attempt to fix up several previous failed attempts in the last twenty years and this one has no guarantees either. Maybe I got a good lesson from my late step dad who was a Fitzroy fan who's lot in life was not simply about winning as a football supporter. Take the wins when they come .
 
Essendon continually make b grade players look like superstars

Trent Rivers, Jack Crisp, Jack Bowes, Elijah Hollands, Ben Long, Zac Fisher have all looked like world beaters when we have played them. Infuriates me I cant trust Essendon to turn up and just get the job done
The poor defensive player of the Dodoro era. Makes these guys look better than they normally are.
 
It is almost coming down to not playing two genuine rucks but also having to not play Langford / Stringer / Wright in the same side as well. So If Wright plays Stringer is redundant or of we play Langford and Stringer then Cox has to play ruck for some time or even Jones and just wing it to use a pun.

How about Stringer as the Grigg style ruck. Stringer without close checking around the stoppage is a nice thought.
 
Guelfi has flexibility and been good this year. His selection should be role based though.

Laverde also been alright and good for key position depth but should not have played as many games as he has this year. Prefer trying hayes or using ridley as a key if opposition suits it.

the only reason Laverde is given as many games as he is, is because Reid has the body of a 50-year-old racing horse
 
The Good:

I’d already booked my September holidays.

Caddy: he just has it; the leap, the mark at the highest point, the desire to keep competing. He’ll be a star.

Durham and Caldwell: Our most promising mids in some time and it’s easy to forget they’re both 23. Let’s see how they are tracking when they’re 26-27.

Jones and Cox: worked well as wingers and we got goals and contested marks out of them. Still floating in and out of games but they are still young. A major caveat on it being a Marvel game, certainly didn’t work as well in the wet last week.

The Bad

The inability to stop momentum in the second quarter and hold on to a lead in the last five minutes.

Perkins: Every time we concede a stoppage goal in the D50 it’s because Perkins has put no defensive work into his opponent. See Crisp, Keays etc. I’m not sure where he fits into the team but he certainly is not a mid. Trade bait?

Goldstein and selection: Two rucks don’t work (see Carlton last week) and Goldstein has clearly finished. Wrong week to drop Wright.

Menzie: I just don’t see it. Idk why we extended his contract.

Panic merchants in defence: I’m looking at Kelly and Laverde here who struggle badly with any form of pressure. McKay and McGrath aren’t much better but McKay is there to stop forwards kicking bags and McGrath somewhat makes up for it with his agility.

Learnings

We absolutely need some smalls in the forward half of the ground, the balance is way off at the moment. Having access to Kako will be a godsend.

Even if we make the finals we’re nowhere near doing any damage. Let’s see how some of our young guys go. Hayes looks assured in the VFL backline (which is no easy feat if you watch us) and Roberts looks classy. Let’s give them a go. Tex has had some good games off half back, let’s see if it translates in the seniors.

Draper was ok. I thought he marked pretty well across the ground last night be he still severely lacks any footy IQ. I’m not sure what to do with our ruck situation.

Just on McKay. Last night was the first time a player has kicked 5 goals on us. Yes McKay’s disposal leaves a lot to be desired but no KPF has got hold of us all year and you can hardly blame McKay for Keays.
 
I think we tried to put the players on notice by dropping

P.Wright
Heppell
Perkins

That was the leaver i was talking about

But we also played Martin on a wing early and it didnt really work
Yeh I’m more saying we didn’t real change the make up of our side with the changes, if anything we got slower.
And if they had any balls Perkins would’ve been dropped all together. He came on and just wasn’t up to it
 
...

Learnings

We absolutely need some smalls in the forward half of the ground, the balance is way off at the moment. Having access to Kako will be a godsend.

...

This really stood out, again. Our talls were generally competing well in the air but we hardly ever had anyone in a front and centre position for the crumbs. Adelaide were so much better at this and it was probably just as big a factor as the ease with which they moved the ball from their D50.

Probably a really fun game for the neutral but the ebb and flow of it was frustratingly predictable for us.
 

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AFL Autopsy RND 19: Beaten by the Crom

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