Review Positives and Negatives from Round 3: Geelong

[Dicky_Knee]

Positive: Grundy, will only get better, just needs to learn, stacks of Upside.

 

[domus]

Grundy's massively overrated. Still young but no where near as good as some make him out to be. Still a chance he'll not make it as an elite ruckman.

Unbelievable! He has just played his 11 th game and was up against two monster ruckmen. I thought his hands were sensational-he rarely fumbles and will continue to get better. Your criticism of this BOY are ridiculous. God knows what you would have thought of Peter Moore and James Manson in their first couple of seasons. I seriously thought Manson played like he was handicapped and Moore was like a headless chook. One went on to win two Brownlows and the other a premiership.

 

[lozza63]

My overall impression of the game was that they outclassed us - yet we never dropped our heads so overall i'm feeling positive after a loss.

I know that i probably bore many people with stats and they dont tell the full story - but really Geelong outmuscled us tonight especially around the contests. Not only that but they had guys outside the contest while we seemed to be sucked into freeing them up. It frustrated me seeing the likes of Stokes and Duncan seemingly free mopping up at will.

138 to 129 contested possessions
65-55 tackles
55-42 inside 50s
They used the ball better than us and had it 29 more times.

For me losing across the board as we did i find that being up on my feet in the last quarter with 3 odd mins on the clock with a real chance of winning was a massive positive.

For this i really must congratulate our back line who simply did an outstanding job to restrict Geelong to 87 points - Frost Langdon H and Maxy all put in massive shifts. They did seem to struggle with the yips at times though which didnt hurt.

As for Trav - beaten by Loners on the night - still he didnt have that much supply to be fair - he sent the ball inside 50 4 times himself! I would have thought he deserved a free near the goal square when he was mauled to the groud by three Cats? Was that in the 3rd?

The main negative is our disposal.

 

[RuFiO]

Grundy's massively overrated. Still young but no where near as good as some make him out to be. Still a chance he'll not make it as an elite ruckman.

What?
Grundy probably shouldn't even be playing as our main ruck.
If we weren't so shit at drafting ruckman he wouldn't have to do all the work by himself.
Poor guy was stuffed in the 2nd quarter already.

 

[SpongePie]

65-55 tackles

This was something I had noticed during the night. We are fairly poor at sticking our tackles. A good deal of them the player just breaks free and our player is lying on the ground as the opposition runs away.

 

[Dicky_Knee]

Yeah we seemed to go to ground quite a lot last night, when staying upright would have turned out better for us in a lot of situations

 

[Captain Embubry]

A big positive for me was that despite having very little impact from Swan, Pendles and Cloke and having Reid and Brown out, we kept fighting and were still a massive chance at pinching the win with a couple of minutes left.

My negative is selection. While it may not have helped us win, I find it a little bit hard to see how Bucks can claim this as a rebuilding year when the two guys I see as crucial to our redevelopment (Adams and Kennedy) are either playing in the reserves or starting sub each week.

 

[Mame]

Lynch - failure, but given his acquisition allowed us to move Dawes on for a first rounder, can anyone honestly say that Dawes' output in the last year has been better? A first-rounder better?

Young - failure. I hope we're not paying him too much.

Armstrong - seems a long shot but cost us only a spot on the list.

Russell - failure but given he had put a very good season together was worth a flier, and cost us bugger all. Technically a trade.

Adams - looks good to me, and should give us nearly ten years of service whereas Heater probably had a couple left. Good result for mine.

White - very promising to my way of thinking. If he was a FA I'd say he was our best acquisition to date, but he was also a trade.

So yes, our FA pick-ups have been terrible, but they haven't cost us much and our trades in that time have been good. Sometimes you have to throw some mud at the wall and see what sticks. Had we gotten involved in picking up valuable FAs last year we would have diluted our D Thomas compensation anyway.

Yeah and in reality we don't have all the information. We don't just get every FA that we target. I remember rumors about us going after Dylan Roberton the year we got Russel. Roberton had a better year but was at the Saints; only a rumour sure. Didn't Riewoldt just turn us down? Would have been a great get. It's not as simple as people are making out. We've plugged holes so far but one day we'll land a big fish.

 

[Vicky Park]

The performance of Langdon and Frost keeps coming up as a positive. To put it into perspective, these two boys have played a total of 8 or 9 games between them. And they have stood up under pressure, against good to very good sides. That is an outstanding effort.

 

[THATSGOLD]

Adams

The use of Adams hasn't been used well by Buckley so far. Whether it's a management thing I'm not sure but he's capable of a lot more.

 

[Pedro]

Adams

The use of Adams hasn't been used well by Buckley so far. Whether it's a management thing I'm not sure but he's capable of a lot more.

I thought he looked just desperate to have some sort of an impact when he was brought on. Probably trying too hard because he only had a quarter to make his presence felt. He needs a couple full games imo to settle in.

 

[THATSGOLD]

A big positive for me was that despite having very little impact from Swan, Pendles and Cloke and having Reid and Brown out, we kept fighting and were still a massive chance at pinching the win with a couple of minutes left.

My negative is selection. While it may not have helped us win, I find it a little bit hard to see how Bucks can claim this as a rebuilding year when the two guys I see as crucial to our redevelopment (Adams and Kennedy) are either playing in the reserves or starting sub each week.

Spot on. The game might've been lost at the selection table.
A full 120 mins from Adams and Kennedy so 240minutes of running.
Take out Fasolo who was slow and unfit and maybe Keeffe who gave SFA

 

[Da Main Man]

I thought he looked just desperate to have some sort of an impact when he was brought on. Probably trying too hard because he only had a quarter to make his presence felt. He needs a couple full games imo to settle in.

came on 5 mins into the 3rd qtr.

 

[THATSGOLD]

I thought he looked just desperate to have some sort of an impact when he was brought on. Probably trying too hard because he only had a quarter to make his presence felt. He needs a couple full games imo to settle in.

The bump on Selwood was great. Definitely want to see him play full games.

 

[Pedro]

came on 5 mins into the 3rd qtr.

My point remains the same. The sub is on a hiding to nothing imo.

 

[Maggie5]

The good:
Elliott
Maxwell
Sidebottom
The Caff
Lumumba
Grundy
Langdon
Beams
White

The not so good (looking more at senior players):
Swan - surely must be carrying an injury but still his endeavor is still there and has plenty of credits in the bank for me.
Pendles - injured? But has set the bar very high for himself and us.
Blair - not his best
Fasolo - ?
Our outs - really desperate now, hopefully we can get a couple back soon.

The bad:
Confusing umpiring - don't like the way the game is currently being umpire, just got used to the other way. Game looks bad with scrimmages, deliberately out of bounds, all over the man going for the mark (Cloke).

 

[Da Main Man]

My point remains the same. The sub is on a hiding to nothing imo.

fair enough.

not too many teams (outside the bulldogs) have really worked out how to utilise to sub effectively.

gia comes on and kicks 2 goals in last qtr almost every game.

 

[fpm84]

Commiserations guys, I was impressed with your fight.

It's funny how much things change. We met in a grand final less than three years ago. Here are the players who played last night who didn't play in that game...

Geelong - McIntosh, Horlin-Smith, Guthrie, Simpson, Sheringham, Murdoch, Caddy, Rivers, Burbury, Brown, Blicavs.

Collingwood - Elliott, White, Langdon, Frost, Young, Grundy, Macaffer, Keeffe, Dwyer, Adams.

Half our team and almost half of your last night!

 

[Stripes B and W]

Yes we had a crack but it's similar to the fat kid in junior football who has no skill but runs and tries all game and gets a trophy at the end of the year for participating. Not going to win you games or premierships.

Sure, we all acknowledge we had a crack, which we surely did.
Given our expectations, resources and existing player assets having a crack simply isn;t enough and we should never be satisfied with it. Acceptance of that will only lead you to a place you don't want to be.

 

[Pedro]

fair enough.

not too many teams (outside the bulldogs) have really worked out how to utilise to sub effectively.

gia comes on and kicks 2 goals in last qtr almost every game.

Yeah, agree with that. Gia has been very effective. I feel that for the most part, the sub is just a wasted player who very rarely has a major impact. I've never liked the substitute player rule

 

[Da Main Man]

Yeah, agree with that. Gia has been very effective. I feel that for the most part, the sub is just a wasted player who very rarely has a major impact. I've never liked the substitute player rule

blight on the game and should be removed without question. and if they do decide to lower the interchange cap to 100/80 whatever then there should be no reason we cant have a 4 man bench. the sub is just another player who doesnt get match fitness as he liekely cant be used in the vfl.

anyways moving on

 

[Pedro]

Positive was being able to have a laugh at Stevie J. Spent the whole night sooking and moaning about being tagged. Even after a Geelong goal at the Punt Rd end, his first reaction was to cry at the umpire about the treatment he was getting.

 

[Stripes B and W]

Bright side. Still have freeman, scharenberg, kennedy, reid amd brown to come back into the side. I feel all those mentioned will play come september.

Add JT, Sinclair,Broomhead to the mix, maybe Williams at some point and Seedsman; there is still a bit to work on.
Some of the players mentioned help the general mix, others are simply better players than what we had on the park last night, while Reid is a vital player structurally ( he goes along way to solve the use of a Ruck and a sometime forward/sometime ruck ) as well as being in our best 3 or 4 players and is our best long kick to advantage.

 

[Angelus512]

Negatives:
Cant seem to take contested marks (might be confirmation bias but it just seemed that Geelong players were taking contested marks far easier than ours were)
Still have a seriously leaky forward setup despite having supposedly zippy forwards there to "lock it in".
Travis.......seriously every year this happens for a few weeks/months and suddenly he gets back to form. Its tiring.
Chris Dawes. Still can't believe we let him go. I really liked Dawes.

GAMEPLAN:
I'm not a fan of this run and carry and handball. Looks fancy when Geelong does it but we clearly can't execute that. Improve your kicking and marking and goal skills which end of the day are the FUNDAMENTALS. I thought bucks was all about the fundamentals? Which ironically is an area we seem to suck at.

Postiives:
Lots of heart + what other posters said.

I am however a little fed up with a team running on "heart" the days of Big Heart Licuria should have been long over by now. We used to be skilful.

 

[Markfs]

And for the most part it worked out. How is trying too much a negative?

Because it's always a negative with Heritier... you need to get with the program. I cant remember the last time that he did something positive.