Preview Crows V Dockers

[Mr Fonebone]

As I said in the changes thread:

Ineffectual attack
Fyfe out
Sandilands out
Ballantyne out?
Pavlich cooked
The team winless

If we are serious about making the eight and doing damage in September, we need to be merciless and belt them hard into submission. Send a message!

Crows by 48.

At this stage - with the form and injury issues we have - I would almost settle for a 48 point loss against Adelaide on their home deck.

I am really fearful that this will be a 100 point belting. Still, while there is a pulse there is still hope I guess.

Your forward line should have a field day. Freo's defence has leaked like a sieve all season

 

[Coopers]

Our defence has leaked as well, so there's that.

 

[Red mist]

Windy? We will abide.

 

[AmericanCrow]

Is that midday or midnight?

The time we would usually be heading out for fun back in the day of course.

Now it is so far past my bedtime it is

 

[Rory Walkerfield]

The time we would usually be heading out for fun back in the day of course.

Now it is so far past my bedtime it is

Sounds like you suffer from the same affliction I have, old age!

 

[Jcpdragonx]

No more McPharlin. No Johnson. No Sandi. No Fyfe. This is going to get ugly. If you can't beat Carlton at home then who are you suppose to beat? Essendon and that's about it. Crows by 80.

 

[The Sloane Ranger]

No more McPharlin. No Johnson. No Sandi. No Fyfe. This is going to get ugly. If you can't beat Carlton at home then who are you suppose to beat? Essendon and that's about it. Crows by 80.

Not to mention no Bennell and possibly no Neale or the Pest (still to be confirmed)

Not to mention the Pav looks like he has gone a year to long and Barlow looks incredibly slow

Mundy looks like an inclusion however it's a tough first game back

This week for us is all about attitude

 

[Bovo]

I want the Crows to beat Freo by more than 40 points and for Pyke to say, at the after match interview, "Yes we did win but Freo are not a very good team, are they?".

Very good, very good.

 

[GreyCrow]

This week for us is all about attitude

Spot on. This game could set the tone for the whole year. Win and win well and strong at it will show me we are switched onto the DP game plan ( stop s******ing)

Lazily float around and win by 20 will show me we are still mid range.

 

[6BTS]

Time to put the mockers on us. This game will be over by half time, the things we need to get out of this week is for the lads to capture some form they might be missing and to avoid injuries. Oh, and to give ourselves a healthy percentage boost since the teams we'll be competing against in the eight all have healthy percentages. If Brad Crouch is ready to go, he'll come in, probably for an unlucky Lyons. I doubt they would make any more changes than that and I'm not going into whether I think there should be any more changes or not. Even if Milera is ready to go, I think they'll have him come back through the SANFL.

Easy to say all this, but if we don't come out firing like we have all year, this scenario won't happen.

 

[spexau]

Time to put the mockers on us. This game will be over by half time, the things we need to get out of this week is for the lads to capture some form they might be missing and to avoid injuries. Oh, and to give ourselves a healthy percentage boost since the teams we'll be competing against in the eight all have healthy percentages. If Brad Crouch is ready to go, he'll come in, probably for an unlucky Lyons. I doubt they would make any more changes than that and I'm not going into whether I think there should be any more changes or not. Even if Milera is ready to go, I think they'll have him come back through the SANFL.

Easy to say all this, but if we don't come out firing like we have all year, this scenario won't happen.

We've started well in every single game under Pyke. Even in pre-season. No reason to believe we won't on Saturday.

 

[adelaidecrows]

Time to put the mockers on us. This game will be over by half time, the things we need to get out of this week is for the lads to capture some form they might be missing and to avoid injuries. Oh, and to give ourselves a healthy percentage boost since the teams we'll be competing against in the eight all have healthy percentages. If Brad Crouch is ready to go, he'll come in, probably for an unlucky Lyons. I doubt they would make any more changes than that and I'm not going into whether I think there should be any more changes or not. Even if Milera is ready to go, I think they'll have him come back through the SANFL.

Easy to say all this, but if we don't come out firing like we have all year, this scenario won't happen.

I think they will hit us with everything they have personally but we will just have too much class and get over the top of them. It may not even be a smashing. I just want the four points and no injuries so the % points I don't care about. However history is littered with upsets by teams with their backs to the wall against better opponents. I hope I am wrong and we get a 200 point win. I just want to see us play the same fast paced footy that opens up teams. If we do that and not show boat we should win comfortably.

 

[maxlilly]

We've started well in every single game under Pyke. Even in pre-season. No reason to believe we won't on Saturday.

How good has it been this year with our starts to the game.
No more 3 goals down in the first qtr and trying to get back into the game.
Last week, kicking 7 goals in the first qtr was a very exciting start to the game.

 

[1970crow]

With the form the Crows are in, the form the Dockers are in and their players out injured, this should be a 60+ point win (even if it’s wet). Anything else would likely be deemed underperforming at this point.
We haven’t had a chance to beat on Fremantle in quite a few years now. We need to be a ruthless team, play to our game plan and use this game to build some percentage.

I'm not trying to get us ahead of ourselves, but the really good teams would smash Fremantle with the outs they have and the players out of form. Their outs include:

Fyfe
Sandilands
Bennell
Johnson
Mundy
Ballantyne
C Pearce
Walters (maybe)

That's a third of their best 22 out, including probably 4 of their top 6-8 players. Imagine how well the Crows would go if we were missing these players:

Sloane
Jacobs
Smith
Talia
Lynch
Betts
Brown
Douglas

Now imagine that most of the other good players are in terrible form on top of that. That's basically where Fremantle are at at the moment.

Their out list wouldn't be much different if they were asked to list 10 players they could least afford to lose through injury.

 

[Jarman3]

The biggest danger for us this week would be complacency. But hopefully coming off a loss last week will help reduce the chances of that - if we'd just won 4 in a row including 2 against top sides then there would be greater chance of a letdown.

Looking at it on paper, we should win by a pretty big margin. If it ends up being wet weather then that will probably reduce that a bit, though, but should still at least be a comfortable margin assuming our guys come to play.

 

[spexau]

The biggest danger for us this week would be complacency. But hopefully coming off a loss last week will help reduce the chances of that - if we'd just won 4 in a row including 2 against top sides then there would be greater chance of a letdown.

Looking at it on paper, we should win by a pretty big margin. If it ends up being wet weather then that will probably reduce that a bit, though, but should still at least be a comfortable margin assuming our guys come to play.

Supposed to be a sunny day with rain in the evening. And the rain on Friday is in the morning and clearing in the afternoon and evening so the ground should be dry by Saturday. Should be perfect conditions.

 

[lamby]

This has all the hallmarks of the Round 8 2006.

The Crows were near the top of the table and at the height of the CrowBot era, and Richmond had hardly one a game and was close to bottom of the table. Terry Wallace was under pressure and were huge odds to win this game. Wallace devised a new game plan (that is still in use today) of keeping the ball off Adelaide. It worked. Adelaide had kicked 4 goals to half time and ended up losing 10.9 to 9.12. Richmond had 259 kicks to 172. 181 marks to 102. The high possession 'keeping off' game was born and Adelaide were never really a chance for the flag after that game where we had been 'worked out'.

Does Ross Lyon have a game plan to nullify our current game plan? I think he is clever enough. His career is on the line. Maybe 2-3 players lose in defence? Keep a low defensive zone with Pav the only Freo player past the centre? A wet game, some scoreboard pressure and a restless crowd? Does Pyke have a plan B?

Big test.

 

[spexau]

This has all the hallmarks of the Round 8 2006.

The Crows were near the top of the table and at the height of the CrowBot era, and Richmond had hardly one a game and was close to bottom of the table. Terry Wallace was under pressure and were huge odds to lose this game. Wallace deviced a new game plan (that is still in use today) of keeping the ball off Adelaide. It worked. Adelaide had kicked 4 goals to half time and ended up losing 10.9 to 9.12. Richmond had 259 kicks to 172. 181 marks to 102. The high possession 'keeping off' game was born and Adelaide were never really a chance for the flag after that game where we had been 'worked out'.

Does Ross Lyon have a game plan to nullify our current game plan? I think he is clever enough. His career is on the line. Maybe 2-3 players lose in defence? Keep a low defensive zone with Pav the only Freo player past the centre? A wet game, some scoreboard pressure and a restless crowd? Does Pyke have a plan B?

Big test.

I'm not sure modern presses allow for these tactics to work. Besides, have you seen Freo's foot skills this year?

 

[6BTS]

We've started well in every single game under Pyke. Even in pre-season. No reason to believe we won't on Saturday.

It's more of a case that teams go through periods where they do well and periods where they struggle during a full season. We've been playing a punishing brand of football for 5 games and I'm a little worried we might hit the wall to a degree. You're right that given our attitude so far, there should be no reason why we won't come out hard and fast again, but if you're starting to feel the burn of 5 hard games of footy it can make players be a little bit off their game. I'm hoping we can power through to the bye, but that's a pretty high demand so I'm just hoping we can wrap this game up by half time and maybe save our legs a tiny bit.

 

[lamby]

It's more of a case that teams go through periods where they do well and periods where they struggle during a full season. We've been playing a punishing brand of football for 5 games and I'm a little worried we might hit the wall to a degree. You're right that given our attitude so far, there should be no reason why we won't come out hard and fast again, but if you're starting to feel the burn of 5 hard games of footy it can make players be a little bit off their game. I'm hoping we can power through to the bye, but that's a pretty high demand so I'm just hoping we can wrap this game up by half time and maybe save our legs a tiny bit.

And having seen most games in Melbourne, that is one of the keys. You can tell within the first 5 minutes that the Crows are 'off' in Melbourne and they were off more than on in the past. Pyke seems to have worked out the 'switch' so far. The Bulldogs game will be the test of that - we were so switched off last year.

 

[JennyTalia]

This has all the hallmarks of the Round 8 2006.

The Crows were near the top of the table and at the height of the CrowBot era, and Richmond had hardly one a game and was close to bottom of the table. Terry Wallace was under pressure and were huge odds to win this game. Wallace devised a new game plan (that is still in use today) of keeping the ball off Adelaide. It worked. Adelaide had kicked 4 goals to half time and ended up losing 10.9 to 9.12. Richmond had 259 kicks to 172. 181 marks to 102. The high possession 'keeping off' game was born and Adelaide were never really a chance for the flag after that game where we had been 'worked out'.

Does Ross Lyon have a game plan to nullify our current game plan? I think he is clever enough. His career is on the line. Maybe 2-3 players lose in defence? Keep a low defensive zone with Pav the only Freo player past the centre? A wet game, some scoreboard pressure and a restless crowd? Does Pyke have a plan B?

Big test.

I remember getting an enormous DT score that week entirely due to joel bowden

 

[lamby]

I'm not sure modern presses allow for these tactics to work. Besides, have you seen Freo's foot skills this year?

But that is the point - some coach will come along that will 'work out' the modern press. Every time there is some 'new' way to score quickly or rack up big scores someone finds a way to combat it. And it is normally the coach who has nothing to lose who works it out. The modern press is just a fancy name for a high zone defence - a couple of players out the back and some set plays to get thru the zone can work to score. We sort of do this, but our forwards start high and then sprint forward with any hint of use winning the ball - to combat this the opposition could not press and just go man on man - 18 taggers.

 

[Bernie L]

Everyone going an about how we will win by plenty

This is a danger game. Sure, we are expected to win comfortably, but if we play like we are expecting it to happen, then things might not turn out the way we want them to. Just look what happened to Freo last week.

I'd be happy just to bank the 4 points!

 

[Apsaalooke]

This is not a danger game. Freo are down and out. If we don't win, and win well, we may as well give up on the season.

 

[relapse]

How good has it been this year with our starts to the game.
No more 3 goals down in the first qtr and trying to get back into the game.
Last week, kicking 7 goals in the first qtr was a very exciting start to the game.

It's amazing how just under 12 months ago with essentially the same squad we were insipid most weeks in the first quarter yet this year we have won 4 out of 5 first quarters.