Intra Club match

[Marc Shmurf 3]

Quick report from my viewing of the game

AS i mentioned early on in the week, Waite started @ CHF and was matched up by Bower who did and amazing job. As much as some of you don’t like it Waite is much better suited in our back half than in the forward half. He gets a bit lost up there, where as in the back line he can use his instincts more and take the game on.
Houlihan through the 1st quarter was on fire. Silky smooth and kicked goals. Will be a fantastic addition to our forward line this year.

Murphy like Houlihan started on fire then as the game wore on drifted out of the game. TBH i wouldn’t be surprised if Ratts told them to slow down a bit, they both had it that much. I reckon Murphy had the ball in the 1st quarter 10-15 time. It was a joke.

Gibbs got the ball at will, he will just continue to accumulate possessions at will. Silky smooth user and always has time up his sleeve.

Grigg will be a fantastic addition to any AFL dream team. Got plenty of the footy but sometimes as we know turned over the ball. He will get better, but is running harder and was very aggressive at the footy.

Robinson = the human cannon. Now i dont want to sound like an idiot here, but to give you a comparison on how hard he is ill give you one name... GLEN ARCHER. He is that hard at the footy sometimes i had a chill down my spine. Forget Hadley i reckon, this bloke is ready for round one. On one occasion he came for 3 deep at a spillage, threw his body through the pack and released a handball to Grigg. The word WOW came out of about 10 people's mouths that were around me. Seriously guys, this guy is nuts at the footy, something i haven’t seen in a Carlton player in years. On anther occasion, he took a mark running into a pack for a mark, took the mark but Austin ran straight through him (ala Maxwell's attempted hit on Armfield in game 2 last year) Robbo got straight back up and kicked the goal. Fair to say im really excited about this bloke. I just wish that he had a cleaner looking kicking action, but he hits his targets most of the time.

Cloke will be effective up forward. He kicked to goals from set shots. That what we want from him i reckon. He played from 20m - 50m for most of the game

Kreuzer was a bit quiet, but im not worried, He played in the forward line most of the game.

Hampson vs Jacobs = Hampson needs to get some real hardness kicked into him. Early on Sauce was running right through him at the ball up. He looked worried about this but as the game wore on he started to use he leap to better effect. Around the ground i would give the spoils to Hampson, but there was nothing really to get excited about.

Fev, a little quiet but its still Feb. Looked to have played from 30-70 out and got a few opportunities. Was back to his bad self sometimes (yelling abuse at team mates, and not chasing, but its still early on. I can say that Thornton did a great job on him.

Russell was ok, but he is fighting with Wiggins for that hit up HFF and i would give those spoils to Wiggins TBH. Wiggler is hard at it, can hold a pack mark and has reasonable skills.

Armfield/ Anderson = dont know about Ando, his skills are a major worry, although Armfield doesn’t get much of the footy he does his/ their job (shut down roll on small forward & onballer) better than Ando.


Stevo played the sweeping roll akin to Scotland. Im not sure if i like this TBH. Defensively Stevo is well out of his grounds, but on the turn over the ball is in safe hands. I reckon i prefer having Scotland back their as i know he gives a better one on one contest.

Simpson was a little quiet, but when he got the ball he used it well....

Ellard & Hill didn’t show much, Hadley played the 1st half and like i said the inclusion of Robinson will be the end of Bentick and Hadley.

Tiller did a few nice things and kicked a goal. i wasn’t sure if O'keeffe & Edwards were playing... Says a bit if they were i reckon.

enough for now. im buggered and still pissed off with Carlos...

I reckon the club should have given him the flick, but if he comes out a better player from this then the club has done well....

 

[Yubby]

Well this was my first time to a Carlton training session so i'll do my best to cover what i remember from the game. As it was my first time, there were a number of players who i didn't recognise so couldn't name them, apologies.

Two teams of 19 players each, Blue team and Yellow team. On the field they played 5 man backline/forwardlines so there were 16 on the field at any given time and 3 on the bench.

I'm not too sure who actually won but i suspect it may have been yellow team.

Team Blue
Anderson, Joe
Austin, Mark
Bannister, Jordan
Betts, Eddie
Bower, Paul
Carrazzo, Andrew
Cloke, Cameron
Fevola, Brendan
Gibbs, Bryce
Grigg, Shaun
Hampson, Shaun
O'Keefe, Rhys
Russell, Jordan
Joseph, Aaron


Yellow Team
Armfield, Dennis
Hadley, Richard
Houlihan, Ryan
Johnson, Chris
Kreuzer, Matthew
Murphy, Marc
O'hAilpin, Setanta
Robinson, Mitch
Simpson, Kade
Stevens, Nick
Thornton, Bret
Tiller, Caleb
Waite, Jarrad
Wiggins, Simon
Ellard, David
Jacobs, Sam
Stanton, Luke

Did Not Play
Bentick, Adam
Browne, Steven
Fisher, Brad
Hartlett, Adam
Jamison, Michael
Judd, Chris
Scotland, Heath
Walker, Andrew
Warnock, Robert
Yarran, Chris
Garlett, Jefferey

Given there were 19 on each team, there were another 7 players who played in the game but the strange thing was i've listed everyone from our senior and rookie list except these 4 below so i'm thinking maybe scholarship players played?!?

Edwards, Jake
Bentley, Greg
Hill, Lachie
Pfeiffer, Darren


A few things i remember from the match...

• First quarter collision between Robinson and Austin where Robinson was completely up-ended with a big hit in the goal square. Austin was 2nd man in and running square at Robinson just as he marked with his eyes on the ball. Robbo got up straight away and kicked the goal.
• Lightning quick movement from a yellow team kick in, the ball was moved from full back to the forward line where a goal was kicked in a matter of 30 seconds.
• First quarter Murphy dominated possession for Yellow and kicked 1 goal, maybe a 2nd. For blue, Gibbs struggled to get a touch however Grigg had 5 or 6 solid possessions and looked blues best.
• Second quarter, Robinson switched the play from a break way to a team mate inside the 50 on his own with a deep and accurate kick. Good vision.
• Number 27 for blue, not sure who he was but i was impressed with some of his play on the wing. As blue team were bringing it up forward from a static position on the bank flank, he was running in the direction the ball would be going and was blocking/sheparding for the leading forwards as they would lead for the mark. He did this 3 times in a row with the last time taking Thornton out of the equation so Fev could take an uncontested mark about 70 out from goal.
• Joey Anderson had the ball around about the centre square and ignored an easy handball to his right to a free player with space in front of him and instead rushed his kick and turned it over to a yellow player on his own. Fev could be heard yelling to him to let him know that he was on his own in the forward pocket had he looked up.
• Similar situation as the last point but this time Grigg delivered a kick to Fev who had 2 opposition players coming to spoil from each side. The kick was to his advantage, behind him so that he got the mark and fired a 5m handball to Eddie who was in the goal square unmarked. Good team work from Fev and further proven by his 40m run to pat Grigg on the head.
• Carrazo's injury - it looked bad. All i saw was him running off the ground with a trainer with his jumper pulled up from his waist so that he could rap his forearm in it. From his elbow down you couldn't see anything but he was being careful to not move any part of his arm or shoulder.
• The fight - i was sitting about 50 metres away from it on that wing and only saw it as they were both holding each other on the ground. As most of you have seen the footage you know what happened but the hit did look bad from my angle and the kick was very petulant but almost appeared like he withheld his full anger from it as he started to realise what he was doing. The kick itself was not heavy but showed disrespect. I was sitting next to the bull ants coaching staff (no idea of names but Martin Pyke was there) and they were pretty disgusted with what happened, mainly the kicking part, but also agreed he held back on the kick. I also overheard them pointing to a guy in the stands saying he was a Nth Melbourne spy.
• At the end of the game when the boys were doing warm down laps, all the camera crews and reporters tried to get vision of cloke as he came past their area. He just said no comment, smiled and ran away from them.

Blue Team Best: Gibbs, Grigg, Eddie
Yellow Team Best: Muphy, Sauce, Robinson, Simpson, Houlihan, Wiggins

Goal Kickers (i think)
Gibbs, Murphy, Eddie, Robinson, Sauce, Wiggins, Tiller, Fevola, Cloke, Simpson... some of those players with multiples


Individual players...

Murphy - dominated in midfield for his team and spent up time forward as well. Distribution was excellent and setup some great plays. Quietened as the game went on mainly due to spells in the forward line.

Gibbs - quiet first quarter but the 2nd and 3rd he was excellent. Managed to find time and space for himself even amongst packs. 2nd Best on ground for me.

Robinson - a lot has been said about him but it was great seeing it first hand. He is hard at it, plays tempo footy and has the versatility to get the footy anywhere on the park. He did make a few mistakes but made up for them, as evident when he gave away 50, forgot to run back to man the mark as Russell moved 50 metres up, umpire blew the whistle and robbo dragged him down as he sprinted to get him when someone yelled about teh mark. All up 150% from him, kicked 2 maybe 3 goals and BOG.

Sauce - a few people have said they thought Hammer won this duel but i saw it completely the opposite. From a ruck perspective it looked pretty even with only maybe 2-3 hit outs to advantage from either ruckman. Around the grounds though sauce dominated with Hammer picking up only 2-3 or possessions compares to Sauce's 7-8. In the last quarter someone had a kcik from outside 50 and Sauce filled a space about 35 out pretty much straight in front. Hammer had left his man and was jogging to get to him after sauce was on his own for about 10 seconds. After he got there, he then left him on his own to go to the goal line and teh ball was kicked to sauce still unmarked.

Kreuzer - quiet game from him. He contested well and played against Austin most of the day but didn't take a mark inside 50 i think. He did take a good contested mark on the wing in the 2nd quarter though.

Stevens - quietish day, although i was expecting him to dominate. Each time he got it he used it well with 3 or so questions off HBF in each quarter.

Waite - almost to the end of 3 quarter time i had to ask myself if he'd had a possession yet and couldn't remember one. He got a few in the last quarter with 1 being a bad turnover although did a great job of avoiding an oncoming tackler by side stepping and raising the ball over the play with his hand.

Fev - didn't get a lot of service and looked frustrated at parts. He and eddie were first to setanta after the incident and did a good job in telling him to get off the pitch and trying to calm things down. Good goal somewhere in the 2nd half.

Houlihan - good solid game from him today and played forward, middle and back. Had a few decent clearances and would definitely say he is in teh starting 22 and maybe a handy supercoach pick for the 09 season

Johnson - quiet game and didn't see anything special, will continue to wait and see.

If anyone has anything else they want to know, by all means, please ask!

Oh one other thing, in the 5 mins of warmup before the game, in the centre they were doing an interesting ruck drill. It was Hammer vs Kreuzer where they would go to contest a ball up except kreuzer would try to influence Hammer's tap without jumping and instead would aim to rove the tap every time.

 

[Juddy88]

Why didn't Yarran play?

 

[Warsaw]

Why didn't Yarran play?

Indigenous All Stars.

 

[blues4flag]

Thanks for the reports, guys. Cannot wait for the footy to start - two weeks til our first hitout.

 

[Carlton Kid]

Just I question on Walker but I htought the tests came back negative and that he'll be playing NAB and won't miss any games. Why wasn't he playing? Haven't read anything about it as the last I heard was that he was comfortably doing push-ups a few days after the initianal report of him missing tyhe season. Any help would be great.

 

[Will.B.Worth.Da.Waite]

People are talking about who won the batle between Hampson and Sauce, but my question is, regardless who won the battle, are either of them AFL ready? Are either good enough for round 1? Can you see either playing many games in '09?

Also how did Bannister look?

 

[TerryWallet]

Thanks for all the reports Guys/Girls.

Threads like this are great for all us who can't get to games or training. It is also good to see lots of different people giving their reports.

The season is now underway. The anticipation is back. Feels good.

cheers

 

[Jeremias]

Just I question on Walker but I htought the tests came back negative and that he'll be playing NAB and won't miss any games. Why wasn't he playing? Haven't read anything about it as the last I heard was that he was comfortably doing push-ups a few days after the initianal report of him missing tyhe season. Any help would be great.

I can't speak from fact but I would imagine that Walks not playing would be completely precautionary.

Same reason why Judd wasn't out there either.

 

[Salaryman]

• I also overheard them pointing to a guy in the stands saying he was a Nth Melbourne spy.

.

Pretty sure that would have been their assistant RM, Bryce....it's ok, I had a go at him for being there ...nice enough chap and I hope his employers aren't reading this , but he didn't take any notes and left at half time

 

[Juddys_navy_blues]

Thanks everyone for the great reports.

 

[Yubby]

Pretty sure that would have been their assistant RM, Bryce....it's ok, I had a go at him for being there ...nice enough chap and I hope his employers aren't reading this , but he didn't take any notes and left at half time

Not too sure if it was the same person as he constantly had a pen and paper in his hand and left at the end of the 4th quarter.

Will B Worth - Just my opinion but unfortunately, no. I don't think either would be ready to finish the game on top of most ruck opponents from both a hit out and around the grounds perspective.

 

[blue gunslinger]

Bad day for the wablues!
You would have thought with the attention Cloke might have mentioned us at some point but alas no.

Great summary from you all - thanks for the honesty
Disappointed in Ellard. I know he did the hard work in the off season but he really needs chances like this today to put his hand up and force himself upon the selection staff. With some others not playing he had to grab this opp to present a good argument. What will be will be

HBF - it would appear I may have to say sorry re: Hoops!

Good that the WA boys are looking good
Bower, Browne, Army will all be key players for us

Today had some disasters but I think it will solidify the leadership group and the entire team in a positive manner.
Lets hope we can get momentum going and not get distracted
Carlos must be sorted quickly one way or the other
Carrots will just need time
They are but 2 players in a good squad. There is a lot of talent there still!

 

[Salaryman]

I think a move to Tasmania may be prudent Guns

 

[blue gunslinger]

just to be closer to Bee and her old style cooking?

 

[Will.B.Worth.Da.Waite]

Not too sure if it was the same person as he constantly had a pen and paper in his hand and left at the end of the 4th quarter.

Will B Worth - Just my opinion but unfortunately, no. I don't think either would be ready to finish the game on top of most ruck opponents from both a hit out and around the grounds perspective.

Thanks mate, unfortunate to hear

 

[The Old Dark Navy's]

i went along with a few carlton supporters who are mates, as we are going to as many matches as we can to any team. russel was good without being outstanding, playing HHF and on the ball to give the onballers a chop out. the standouts for me were, houlihan: roamed around getting the ball and boy he sure is damaging.
murphy: was very good early on, smashed joesph and eddie betts in middle.
Grigg: dominated around the ball, dishing it out to gibbs and russel on many occasions. also tackling hard and winning a few free kicks for being in first. looks good when he linked up many times and has a superb long left foot kick. set up about 4 goals and kicked a good goal himself. prob most touches today. (the one to watch)
Gibbs: class act in everything he does.

Some great write ups from a few but I always like it when an opposition player takes the time to observe and post positives about other teams.

 

[prettyboy65]

i went along with a few carlton supporters who are mates, as we are going to as many matches as we can to any team. russel was good without being outstanding, playing HHF and on the ball to give the onballers a chop out. the standouts for me were, houlihan: roamed around getting the ball and boy he sure is damaging.
murphy: was very good early on, smashed joesph and eddie betts in middle.
Grigg: dominated around the ball, dishing it out to gibbs and russel on many occasions. also tackling hard and winning a few free kicks for being in first. looks good when he linked up many times and has a superb long left foot kick. set up about 4 goals and kicked a good goal himself. prob most touches today. (the one to watch)
Gibbs: class act in everything he does.

Thanks mate
Is always good to have my belief that there are decent opp supporters out there
cheers

 

[thylacine60]

vindicated

 

[Spudregus_87]

Kreuzer looked good and so did Cloke. Cloke will play CHF. Looked strong before he copped a few from Carlos.

Understatement anyone....?

 

[The Old Dark Navy's]

Understatement anyone....?

No, he copped a few, two hits and a kick.

Do you want everyone to mention in passing that he was savagely and brutally accosted by that maniac Setanta? Would that suit your flair for the dramatic?

 

[blue gunslinger]

In with the good - out with the bad!