Gerard on 360 Tonight

[scooby1279]

That doesn't surprise me. Mike always praises us after a win and hammers us after a loss. It's his default setting

Mike just has high hopes for us and gets disappointed when we lose. Like all of us. He truly loves us

 

[GarnerSmash]

We fielded the 5th oldest team and the 6th most experienced on the weekend. Overall, our list is the 3rd oldest and 4th most experienced.

At the end of 2016 we're every chance to lose Harvey (if he makes it that far), Petrie, Dal Santo and Wells. If we don't win a flag by then, we won't win one for another 5+ years.

I'm also concerned about the lack of talent in our reserves.

The time for this group to be hitting their peak is right now. There are absolutely no excuses.

I'm not arguing that we shouldn't be pushing now, moreso that we are not going to crash and burn if we don't. List averages mean squat, especially when you have a bloke like Harvey in the team who skews the data. There is generally very little between the list profiles of most clubs.

If you look at us against say Port for example, there was 1.2 years difference in the average age for the weekends game. That sounds like a bit but the breakdown of player ages isn't too different at all.

18-23
NM: 9 Port: 11

24-27:
NM: 8 Port: 8

28+
NM: 5 Port: 3

For that year difference in age there was only 13 games difference in the teams average experience, with Boomer play 96 more than their most, Kane Cornes. I reckon that if you took both those blokes out of the equation there wouldn't be much in it at all.

As for the reserves, taking the senior guys out of the equation, Jacobs and Dumont are performing well at NB, Wright and Wood re doing a good job at Werribee, Harper coming back from injury, Garner injured, Tarrant injured, Brown injured, Delaney injured, Curran injured, Daw tore it up, before moving to the seniors. Most of those guys have clear seniors potential.

Then you get Wells and Swallow into the seniors and two players drop back, for example McKenzie and Bastinac. Reckon they go pretty well at VFL level too.

It's not all doom and gloom.

 

[DarkPhoenix]

We fielded the 5th oldest team and the 6th most experienced on the weekend. Overall, our list is the 3rd oldest and 4th most experienced.

Weren't we one of the youngest/least experienced last year?

I remember articles at the start of the year saying picking up Dal Santo has really messed with our age/experience averages.

Wouldn't read too much into stats like that.

 

[apollo_creed]

He basically said our best will come in the next few seasons and people have been impatient to expect so much of us this season.

Inconsistency is to be expected on the way to the top.

except our best should be coming now and we haven't improved much in three seasons.
we changed our style this season and we look completely limp in attack as a result of it.

the side has improved marginally under scott and unfortunately it has not been a consistently upward trend. which it should be considering the age of the list when he took over

 

[Hearts to hearts]

except our best should be coming now and we haven't improved much in three seasons.
we changed our style this season and we look completely limp in attack as a result of it.

the side has improved marginally under scott and unfortunately it has not been a consistently upward trend. which it should be considering the age of the list when he took over

He should have done a Hardwick and been more shit to start off, then his trend would looks better. As a newcoach backing a young midfield, over performed early.

 

[apollo_creed]

He should have done a Hardwick and been more shit to start off, then his trend would looks better. As a newcoach backing a young midfiel

the side was better last season. people will point to the freo game - which is fair enough.
but the sydney game was with 20 less inside 50's. you'll scarcely ever win with those discrepancies.

our side looked better and more fluent last season. we pushed hawthorn twice. definitely should've beaten them the first time on the MCG.

the style we're playing now will get nowhere near hawthorn. I think we have made changes to the game style when the main problem was fitness. not the style of football. and I think our list is better suited to the free flowing, risk taking type of football we played last season.

we'll see come the end of the season anyway.

 

[naturally north]

Gerard is usually spot on, but I'm not buying that as excuse to get smashed at home by a club playing its 73rd game.

I remember being very freaking angry after a certain game at Optus Oval way back in 96.

My anger proved to be unfounded as it turned out to be just one of those days.

I can still remember North getting great praise for playing well ( 80's) but not being able to win! That's when you need to be worried.


Oh, that day at Optus oval in 1996 Sydney 24.8 152 defeated NM 10.13 73