Autopsy Port versus an actual football team

[RussellEbertHandball]

Select people in my circle scoffed at me when I said I was more concerned about last night than Melbourne in a fortnight.

All the hallmarks of failure were there.

• Adelaide Oval
• Red hot favourites
• ‘Perfect preparation’
• A plucky, undermanned opponent with nothing to lose

Compare that to playing in Perth as underdogs. Chalk and cheese.

Tribey I remember last year or the year before you started a list of great expectation games but failure to deliver and the rest of us added to them. Was that a specific thread or in the middle of one. If in the middle I'm going to start a specific thread and list a few and then add to it when others contribute.

 

[philreich]

But… but… 60% win-loss record!

Yeah it's like an Aussie batsman scoring 4 Shield centuries in the lead up games, and then getting a first baller in First Test. The achievements against lesser opposition are very quickly forgotten!!!

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

From SEN app, Rendell names our pretty boys:


While some Port Adelaide players can hold their heads high - namely Ollie Wines, Travis Boak and Riley Bonner - former AFL recruiter Matt Rendell believes that nearly a dozen of their teammates should be “embarrassed” with their effort.

Speaking on SEN’s FootySA, he named the Power players that need to improve both physically and mentally if the side is ever to reach a Grand Final.

“I’m just disappointed in nearly a dozen of their (Port Adelaide’s) players,” Rendell said.

“Whether they’re physically and mentally tough enough to win a premiership with this team, and I’m going to name names.

“They all had disappointing games last night, in the most important game of the year, they were really ordinary.

“(Connor) Rozee, (Zak) Butters, (Orazio) Fantasia, (Peter) Ladhams, (Ryan) Burton, (Dan) Houston, (Todd) Marshall, (Darcy) Byrne-Jones - what’s happened to your form from last year as an All-Australian – Karl Amon, (Steven) Motlop and (Miles) Bergman.

“They all need to get physically and mentally tougher next year if they want to win the flag.

“It’s alright for them to play really pretty football, and they are really good footballers.

“They play pretty football when there’s no adversity and they’re winning contested ball.”

This is why I started the no more flakey flankers thread yesterday. I watched FootySA yesterday morning heard him say that and thought, ok its not just me that thinks more than half the team are flakey flankers.

 

[philreich]

I'm so angry at this club

"But stick with us - we're on a journey together, and the greatness we're striving for will eventually happen."

The Redbacks may win back to back Sheffield Shields before it happens, but please be patient.......

 

[Del165198]

A year of build up, 23 games of footy to get back to where we are last year. And we deliver our worst performance of the entire season.

 

[Cam1870]

What do I want to hear?
How about the club organise a month's penance?

Every day, for a month, one of those 23 players plus coaches plus a couple that missed out, release a video message to us - not a scripted Crows Taylor sorry message - honestly telling us how Sat night hurt, how embarrassed they feel, where they honestly stuffed up in field, whether it was effort, or fumbles, or switched off their opponent, whatever - and how they are going to make amends in 2022. How its gonna burn. How they'll front up to supporters even though they don't want to. How they'll hold each other accountable to those standards. How nothing will be left unturned. No bit of fitness, no extra effort, no momentary drop in standards. How we'll bury teams when they're down. We won't start fights, but we'll end them. Watch the 94 SANFL GF on repeat if you want to learn.
Because we, as supporters, appreciate that flags aren't easy, appreciate what they achieve, but only when they're honest about where they haven't.
"Honourable defeat ONLY happens when playing endeavour is COMPLETELY exhausted."
How many can say that?

End of rant.

Amen

 

[AdamMarrett]

This game is another example of why I hate zone off, unaccountable football. Come finals time it's all about tough hard grinding footy. You can't afford unaccountable crap. It breeds bad habits. Team defence is the same sort of crap. You worry about zoning off to cover players but if you have great ball users like The Bont, Macrae, Hunter, Dunkley etc, go to the stoppage or contest because you are zoning off, you are just giving them a free hit at getting the ball. Happened all night. Dumb sh*t.

Yeah I know you have to do it sometimes but it should be like having to do a left foot torp or drop kick if you are a right footer. You have it in your arsenal to pull out when you need it, but its not what you use most of the times.

The utter frustrating part of Saturday night is we bought the required physical heat against Geelong and they crumbled, what was required on Saturday night was exactly that, and it was nowhere to be seen from any of our players until it was to late, and to be honest if at all.

We never bought the heat to the contest that was required to win a big final.

 

[hilling]

Players clearly weren't up for the fight, could be due to key players celebrating too hard after the cats win. a number of players were reportedly on the beers for a number of days after that friday night game. preparation prevents piss poor performance.

 

[edgie]

Let's not forget the claims of using last year's heartbreak at motivation.

We were only 11 goals less competitive.

Sent from my Nokia 7.2 using Tapatalk

 

[Powerade 08]

What do I want to hear?
How about the club organise a month's penance?

Every day, for a month, one of those 23 players plus coaches plus a couple that missed out, release a video message to us - not a scripted Crows Taylor sorry message - honestly telling us how Sat night hurt, how embarrassed they feel, where they honestly stuffed up in field, whether it was effort, or fumbles, or switched off their opponent, whatever - and how they are going to make amends in 2022. How its gonna burn. How they'll front up to supporters even though they don't want to. How they'll hold each other accountable to those standards. How nothing will be left unturned. No bit of fitness, no extra effort, no momentary drop in standards. How we'll bury teams when they're down. We won't start fights, but we'll end them. Watch the 94 SANFL GF on repeat if you want to learn.
Because we, as supporters, appreciate that flags aren't easy, appreciate what they achieve, but only when they're honest about where they haven't.
"Honourable defeat ONLY happens when playing endeavour is COMPLETELY exhausted."
How many can say that?

End of rant.

They can't make amends because there is no gameplan and nobody capable of implementing one.

This sounds like a horrible idea btw, I would pefer to not hear from the coach or the president again while we wait out their time at the club.

 

[GremioPower]

View attachment 1233958

Changing the subject completely, I hadn’t noticed before that the quote from the headline above (“I’m sorry, SA!”) was said in 1989.

Since I have read it for the first time, I feel that it summarizes the meaning — the spirit — of the Showdown. Being from 1989, it just makes such feeling of mine stronger.

We aren’t South Australia for them; but a foreign enclave. We are obviously from South Australia, don’t get me wrong, but we would be so distinct from their self-understanding, that they cannot recognize us as such.

That’s the core of the rivalry for me.

—

It goes without saying that there are probably Crows with a soul that resembles ours, and also Port people whose spirit is closer to theirs. Those things aren’t written on stone. I just want to highlight the risk there is for us to lose our identity.

Lucky for us, it may not be written on stone, but we have the antidote written down:

We just need to put it into use.

 

[GremioPower]

the corruption is mentally exhausting

It has never stopped us before. Why now?

 

[tribey]

We aren’t South Australia for them; but a foreign enclave. We are obviously from South Australia, don’t get me wrong, but we would be so distinct from their self-understanding, that they cannot recognize us as such.

When John Halbert (244 games with Sturt, 16 state caps) was giving his induction speech at the 2017 Hall of Fame dinner, he was reminiscing about the famous win over Victoria at the MCG in 1963, and at one point misspoke and referred to them as ‘Port Adelaide’.

Probably the rawest example of the scars upon their psyche and what our club represents to them.

 

[edgie]

We don't need to be better (well we do vs the WB umpires even if we didn't have to on satdy).

We, like Brisbane, just need to not **** it up. We don't need to be 30% better or whatever to beat the Victorian odds, especially this and last season. I'll give last year a pass as I think the prelim was the real grand final and we lost to the best team since the Hawthorn threepeat.

The AFL does favour vics, but us, Brisbane, GWS, West Coast, and Crows all shit the bed recently. Only Sydney can claim it was properly rigged out of a flag.

And Sydney still shit the bed in 2014, but that was the Hawthorn threepeat.

Sent from my Nokia 7.2 using Tapatalk

 

[Jojay]

Players clearly weren't up for the fight, could be due to key players celebrating too hard after the cats win. a number of players were reportedly on the beers for a number of days after that friday night game. preparation prevents piss poor performance.

Yeah, didn't sit right when they gave them 3-4 days off after the Geelong game

 

[hilling]

Yeah, didn't sit right when they gave them 3-4 days off after the Geelong game

yep the players went on holiday before the most important game of the year

 

[Janey]

Call me cynical, but when someone starts an account specifically to post exclusively to start rumours about players drinking while on a break.

 

[Portmagpies36]

yep the players went on holiday before the most important game of the year

Unfortunately they never came back.

 

[FightForYourRight]

Players clearly weren't up for the fight, could be due to key players celebrating too hard after the cats win. a number of players were reportedly on the beers for a number of days after that friday night game. preparation prevents piss poor performance.

Old, young or a mixture of players?

 

[GremioPower]

The Geelong game gave us false confidence. We saw against Melbourne how cooked they are.

MEL-GEE was PRIOR to our game. That was another reason to NOT get into the PF with a relaxing mentality.

—

So I've done the numbers on this. Only using H/A games and using ladder positions at the end of each H/A season, here is the ladder of win % against top 4 teams since the start of 2017 (teams have played 24 +/- 3 games against top 4 sides in this time)

1​	GWS	31.4​
2​	Geelong	31.3​
3​	Richmond	30.0​
4​	Sydney	29.4​
5​	WCE	27.6​
6​	Crows	25.0​
7​	Hawks	22.6​
8​	Lions	22.2​
9​	Melbourne	20.7​
10​	WBD	20.6​
11​	Pies	17.9​
12​	NM	17.9​
13​	Saints	16.7​
14​	Freo	13.8​
15​	Port	12.0​
16​	Carlton	11.1​
17​	Essendon	10.7​
18​	GCS	4.3​

For Port, that's 3 wins from 22 matchups.

needs to go in the Hinkley stats thread.

It’s in the Hinkley’s stats thread already. I had posted there. I have the data since 2013.

 

[Harlott]

Changing the subject completely, I hadn’t noticed before that the quote from the headline above (“I’m sorry, SA!”) was said in 1989.

Since I have read it for the first time, I feel that it summarizes the meaning — the spirit — of the Showdown. Being from 1989, it just makes such feeling of mine stronger.

We aren’t South Australia for them; but a foreign enclave. We are obviously from South Australia, don’t get me wrong, but we would be so distinct from their self-understanding, that they cannot recognize us as such.

That’s the core of the rivalry for me.

—

It goes without saying that there are probably Crows with a soul that resembles ours, and also Port people whose spirit is closer to theirs. Those things aren’t written on stone. I just want to highlight the risk there is for us to lose our identity.

Lucky for us, it may not be written on stone, but we have the antidote written down:




We just need to put it into use.

I speak to people who still use “the team for all South Australians”

 

[LeoMessi]

Call me cynical, but when someone starts an account specifically to post exclusively to start rumours about players drinking while on a break.

Well, proof is in the pudding I guess. There’s gotta be something as to why they just did not rock up on Saturday

 

[GremioPower]

Yeah, didn't sit right when they gave them 3-4 days off after the Geelong game

yep the players went on holiday before the most important game of the year

With a bye week, that shouldn’t be an issue at all.

The problem is that they seemed to have never gotten back from it. They had plenty of time after that to switch back into Finals mode, but they didn’t.

 

[hilling]

Old, young or a mixture of players?

young and single players. do i daresay repeat offenders from 2020 covid breach?

 

[Janey]

Well, proof is in the pudding I guess. There’s gotta be something as to why they just did not rock up on Saturday

I just don't buy that a few players getting plastered ten days before the game, and with a full week of training and preparation in between, could account for what we saw from all but about half a dozen players on Saturday night. I'm also sceptical about the poster's credibility and motives as much as anything.