Review Port Adelaide vs Fremantle - Trial Match 2 @ Alberton

[Windy Cindy]

I think it was Vic journo Rohan Connolly who suggested our 4 traded players were B graders at best, and C or D graders at worst.

Going by tonight's game he may have undervalued Esava and BZT a tad, but unfortunately he may be right on the money with Soldo in particular, who has been disappointing in both trial games.

I'm still not sure about Sweet though, he does appear to have a better football brain than Ivan but in the long run that may not mean much at all and I suspect we will have to play both of them to be a chance against better oppo than Freo, particularly against someone like eg Max Gawn where using them in tandem will almost certainly be necessary.

The above aside I'm of the opinion both will only be keeping the seat warm for Visentini who I believe has a much higher ceiling than either of them.

Thought the same. Soldo looks a lumberer, Darcy owned him at times by smart body use

sweet looks athletic but I’m not sure he’s good enough

I hope visentini can have a great start in the sanfl, he’s the one we need to become first ruck.

But this stubborn coaching group probably would refuse to play him because it would show up they have recruited 2 duds

 

[Brian McGee]

Not sure in a rea game we can play all of Soldo, Sweet, Dixon, Lord in the same team and maintain the right balance.

Assume Finlayson is in for one of those but will be interesting to see how the selection committee see it.

Finlayson in for one of the rucks and Georgiades in for lord. 1 ruck with Dixon and or finlayson playing the back up.

 

[SureBuddy]

Finlayson in for one of the rucks and Georgiades in for lord. 1 ruck with Dixon and or finlayson playing the back up.

Dixon cannot go anywhere near the ruck this year. The guy can barely move, he’s limping around already and it’s only pre-season.

For the people bashing Burton’s game, I thought he was great. Yes he had a couple of howler kicks and that is what people are remembering, however he played an awesome link up role all night. Constantly was running through the middle for handball receives and bursting through. Couple of nice intercept marks too. 30 touches is the most I have seen for Burton for potentially his entire time at Port.

 

[davesnothere]

Thought the same. Soldo looks a lumberer, Darcy owned him at times by smart body use

sweet looks athletic but I’m not sure he’s good enough

I hope visentini can have a great start in the sanfl, he’s the one we need to become first ruck.

But this stubborn coaching group probably would refuse to play him because it would show up they have recruited 2 duds

Dante was out with concussion this week.
Head knock at training.

Think he would have played over Sweet otherwise.

Soldo should hold 1st Ruck until we start losing but if Dante is looking like he should be playing afl level at sanfl level he'll be getting regular afl games soon enough.

 

[Brian McGee]

Dixon cannot go anywhere near the ruck this year. The guy can barely move, he’s limping around already and it’s only pre-season.

Fair call, then you need to play one of sweet or finlayson. No other options really.

 

[SureBuddy]

Fair call, then you need to play one of sweet or finlayson. No other options really.

I would honestly try the 2 rucks and see how it goes. You can always sub one out half way through Q3 if you don’t have an injury.
Neither Lord or Finlayson look in good form at all. Georgiadies is clearly not going to be rushed back either.

 

[Brian McGee]

I would honestly try the 2 rucks and see how it goes. You can always sub one out half way through Q3 if you don’t have an injury.
Neither Lord or Finlayson look in good form at all. Georgiadies is clearly not going to be rushed back either.

Yeah the preseason looks like that’s what they are leaning towards.

 

[TazD]

 

[1954]

I'm giving Burgoyne an honourable mention for his efforts last night, his attack on the ball or an opponent who may have got to it first is definitely good enough, if he can sort out that rushed disposal issue he has a future at the top level.

 

[ElectricG]

Personally I think our defense actually did look a bit more well-rounded last night. Where normally we give up 3-4 out-the-back goals, I don’t remember any.

 

[PatientMental]

Personally I think our defense actually did look a bit more well-rounded last night. Where normally we give up 3-4 out-the-back goals, I don’t remember any.

Helped almost all of freos first choice fowards were missing

 

[ElectricG]

Helped almost all of freos first choice fowards were missing

Looked to me like most of the usual spuds were there, but I don’t really know their list so you probably have a point.

 

[SureBuddy]

Personally I think our defense actually did look a bit more well-rounded last night. Where normally we give up 3-4 out-the-back goals, I don’t remember any.

I clearly remember a few times when Aliir was up trying to defend, it got through and we still had Esava setup a kick behind, was great to see a proper defensive structure.

 

[PatientMental]

Looked to me like most of the usual spuds were there, but I don’t really know their list so you probably have a point.

4 of their top 5 goal scorers were out last night (losing #2 to Collingwood leaves them pretty thin anyway)

Amiss - out
Schultz - traded
Frederick- out
Jackson - out

 

[shewho]

Solid preseason game. Impressions:

Rozee- star
Burton- plenty of it but disposal horrible
Marshall- 2nd gear
Houston- coasting
Farrell- beat Williams for the half back distributor spot. More speed (great chase down tackle) more assured
Burgoyne- getting there
Boak- could work on a wing
Soldo- beaten but that’s no disgrace with Darcy. Solid.
Bergman- quiet
Rioli- electric but those set shots!
Wines- now at 80% (last year 50%)
JHF- starts quietly very often and did again but ended strongly
Aliir- tall backs were great, each playing their part, dominant in the air
Dixon- a monster. I don’t get why people deride him here. Plays PAFC footy- like Grainger without the psychosis
Williams- not best 22
Sweet- capable 2nd fiddle to Soldo
BZT- (see Aliir)
Ratugolea- (see BZT)
Drew- grew into his new role of less CBAs
Lord- not best 22
Evans- skills need brushing up
DBJ- useful
Jones- a seriously good defender. Quick, plays tight, can spoil, tough
McEntee- improving and was actually good
Mead- was very good. Playing 6 inside mids worked, but Butters went down early. His hands and poise against a top midfield were impressive. Can he be our Roger James

Roger James

Age

49

Ht

177cm

Wt

89kg

Pos.

Mid

Career

Season

Last 5

D

16.9

4star

K

10.1

4star

HB

6.9

4star

M

3.7

4star

T

1.8

4star

No current season stats available

D

9.2

3star

K

5.2

2star

HB

4.0

3star

M

2.0

3star

T

0.6

3star

?

 

[VineValerian]

I commented on FB that it was awesome to see we have stuck to the bomb it long to the forwards game plan......

I got this as a serious reply......
"that is exactly the point... Get it in as quick as possible and run the opposition off their feet . Then press forward and lock it in. The plan isn't to mark the ball in the forward 50, it's to bring it to the ground." so the opposition can crumb it and streak away into attack for Joe the Goose goals!

All these years I thought the idea was to get the ball to a forward in space so we could have shots at goal......


Sent from my iPhone using BigFooty.com

FTFY.

 

[VineValerian]

Thought the hit-out was fine all in all for a pre season run. Issue as many have said is we've seen this movie a thousand times before, 80 gazillion forward entries for every score. I do not for the life of me see how, if we don't have any finals success this year, this game-plan and kens coaching isn't finally addressed in the media.

Think the list is in good shape, think the backs looked to gel more and more as the game went on, early days but thought it looked good. Ratagulea grew into the game and looked to tandem well with Aliir, BZT looks that dour, body on the line lockdown, and looked to play that role well. Big potential improvement on the last few years.

Midfield, with Butters back and JHF continuing his growth will be top 5, if not top 2. Not sure whether JHF will ever be a 30-35 possie player, but the 20-25 that he hopefully eventually gets week in week out will be extremely damaging and bring people through the gates.

Thought Rozee had much more a captains game, led the mids, tackled hard....was a solid pass for mine.

Still lacking a serious damaging forward presence. Lord has been a non entity last couple weeks, Georgy would be ahead for me, Charlie is old, sore, s*it kick and is too visually symbolic of uncle festers crap game-plan. Todd should kick 50 and Rioli plays his role very well. But we're lacking something up there.

Would love to see Georgiades break back into the side, and Visentini get game time again this year, huge wraps on him, love what he brings.

Based on the same list with improvements, the same strategy, i could see us as finalists again, even top 4, finals success?? Depends how scared we are


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

Scary comp, so......................

 

[Macca19]

Meady was great. Has probably worked his way into the side R1. If he plays like he has the last two weeks he'll have a future.

Mcentee was really good as well. Hard running, used it well. Lord was a bit disappointing. Need more from him.

I liked Jones game. Defensively he was very good. Burtons kicking was atrocious. Rat and Zerk worked well together. Its nice to have three decent sized defenders now.

Soldo and Sweet, neither really stood up and dominated but I didn't mind eithers game.

 

[VineValerian]

Mead has to play round 1.

I know midfield is by far his best position and we're settled there (Butters, Rozee, Drew, Wines, JHF with Houston rotating through as well at times).

However, he was near on best on ground last night.

Unbelievably clean, tough and should have for sure put his hand up for a round 1 selection with this preseason form.


21 disposals
95 % DE (best for Port)
8 contested (5th most for Port)
8 marks (5th most for Port)
5 tackles (2nd most for Port)

Some of his handball work in tight was something I haven’t seen sans peak Wines or Butters in the last 5 years.

Yes his hands are cleaner, more one grab than most of our guys, who were snatching and double/triple grabbing at balls last night.
Disposal good in close and a couple of lovely weighted kicks to the forwards (Ken better get that out of his game quick smart).
Deserves a spot for the first month of the season proper.

 

[Ford Fairlane]

I liked the way we kept moving the ball around to set up clear air running forays forward. It can be risky but it shows we weren't honey-potting too much and were spreading to provide options.

The tall defenders looked assured down back, Ratugolea much improved on last week and BZT reads the flight of the ball well. They are improving at reading each other's games and gelling more each week.

The forwards all brought great pressure so SPP wasn't missed much in that respect, but a couple of his freaky goals would have been handy.

Mead another good blue-collar midfield effort, Really knocking on the door.

Jones looking much more confident down back, his pace and power are scary.

McEntee surprised me, looked like he belonged, genuinely solid game.

Thought Sweet was the better of our rucks on the night, Soldo seemed to try and jump around Darcy and reach over him too much. Genuine A-grade rucks will be a challenge for us, but we will be competitive at least. I would play both of them in the real stuff. And we still have the killer midfield.

The breeze was very fluky and kicking to the end where I was on the shed became increasingly challenging as the breeze gusted up late in the game.

Overall we were clearly the better team and that's what you look for as a foundation. We created plenty of scoring opportunities and were reasonably miserly down back. Freo's scoring mostly came from getting out the back of our high press where our defence was disorganised. Even then some good individual defensive efforts saved us.

Lights were great, parking was insanely bad. Thank goodness for the median strips. There were only 4,500 there, can't believe how packed the surrounding streets were.

 

[VineValerian]

Yeah, well…

View attachment 1917408

Could say the same about McStay, Hill, Frampton. Worked out ok for the Pies.

Rohan's left eye looks a little droopy there!

 

[PatientMental]

I liked the way we kept moving the ball around to set up clear air running forays forward. It can be risky but it shows we weren't honey-potting too much and were spreading to provide options.

And yet they still found a way to target dixon 2xs more if not 2.5xs more than any other forward.

 

[ElectricG]

Rohan's left eye looks a little droopy there!

Well just in general he’s no f**ken oil painting

 

[rogerjames]

I DONT CARE HOW MANY MINUTES HES JUST GONNA NOT BE HERE

Whatever ken was trying to say there.

He's incapable of saying anything logical. It's like he speaks in another language when answering a question or providing a game day comment. There is NO other Afl coach like him, I find it infuriating. How has he got away with this for so long?

 

[Port85]

My random thoughts:

Liked the slow play from the back before giving it to hard runners with good disposal by foot.

Forward line congestion makes the game a bit of a slog to watch.

Esava looks huge, which is something we obviously missed.

Wines being basically on-ball only should help him.

I liked Burgoyne and Burton but no idea why Burton had the worst game by foot for years. Everything else about his game looked great.