AFL Autopsy R20: Smashed by the Saints, and the season is cooked.

[Petrify]

So many players in our best 22 need to be delisted or traded at seasons end.

Heppell, Laverde, Wright, Stringer, Hind, Shiel, Kelly.

All over 27. No improvement left. Shiel might get some trade value, Kelly maybe could stay another season, rest need to go.

 

[Schnitzengruben]

We're going to make some massive changes next week, really move the magnets around to freshen things up.

I'm thinking Heppell, Wright out. Goldy, Kelly in.

 

[Call Me Cake]

Basically it's this simple.

Don't agree it's that simple. Season's been tighter than any in memory and Collingwood had a shit % all through 2022. It isn't an excuse. Yes I know we aren't the Pies pre-flag, the point is it isn't always a clear indicator nor should it be a barrier now or any time in the future.

The real simplicity of it is we weren't expected to be where we are and people's forthcoming unrealistic expectations as a result of that have bled it's way into the overall analysis of the team.

It's our fault as a supporter base for not being grounded (literally had people talking about Top 4 a few weeks ago, I was dumbfounded).

We as supporters need to be more self-aware about the road ahead, note the little wins and give it time.

 

[Happyskeret]

More importantly, how did we go in the expected scorecard?

I think Dylan Shiel got more than expected.

 

[BomberManU]

I would hope so. But I wouldn't take us without at least a 5 goal headstart.

Richmond would spank us, if we played next week.

 

[rumply]

Take 2 players - Perkins & Langford - & where we are now from just a couple months ago.

Langers, maybe theres an injury there, if so then it's club mismanagement, dont ****ing play him.

Perks, loss of confidence seems the most obvious but no, lets keep running him out there or sub him. Sub a player with confidence issues, mkay, makes sense how?

Some weird shit going on.

 

[Phone]

That's all good and I agree - but why not 'play the kids' (I hate that saying)?? What do we get by persisting with a) players who are done, and b) players woefully out of form?
The way it's going, this will be worse than last season and I really don't think that was part of the plan.

Do you think a post where I've said "we're not a good team and you're dumb if you ever thought otherwise" would also have me saying "don't play the kids". I understand there's a tricky balance between playing all the kids and keeping all the vets in the team, so I'm not going to be up in arms when say Heppell plays, but I wouldn't lose any sleep if Nick Bryan played the rest of the season and Draper didn't. Same with Tsatas. We're already playing Nick Caddy who, let's be real, isn't best 22 yet.

 

[eastaugh36]

I hope brad Scott gets the arse

 

[Bjchan13]

Add Kelly, Goldy and trade McGrath hes Heppell mk11

To continue on our conversation from the game day thread, yes we know 20 plus years and so on but that is the past and has nothing to do with who is now here running the show. Judge Brad, Barham, Vozzo and Rosa on this off season and moving forward. They are not responsible for the last 24 years. I'll be dirty as you if he does not debut some kids and give some others like Bryan and A Davey another run. The season is officially shot now and even if he/we knew it a month ago, the fact the players put themselves in the top 4 for so long unfortunately meant some that need to be moved on had bought themselves more time.

 

[Jobe Watson]

More players have gone backwards this year than we've had improve. Just another wasted year overall.

 

[MiguelM]

Doesn’t matter who’s on the list. If you keep changing your coach and strategies every two years you’ll never have success.

It takes time and you need to see it out.

Knights
Hird
Bomber
Hird
Worsfold
Worsfold / Rutten
Rutten
(Wild goose chase for Clarkson)
Scott

Essendon could blow the list up but they’d just change tack after a couple of years. They can’t stick to it.

The only one who got a decent amount of time of the above was Worsfold… and he was a dud.

• Find the right people
• Give them the time

It’s the only way.

Hate to break it to you, it is the players. Coach can only do so much.

We are mentally weak and overestimate out talent. There is a reason Scott doesn't over celebrate wins.

 

[mxett]

People will meltdown over this round and last round. Another late season collapse. Are we not fit enough. Did we start getting over-confident. Folks, all season, this team has clearly not been much better than the established bottom 6 teams. Rounds 11 and 12 were enough to know this wasn't a serious team. You had no excuse other than being delusional if you thought otherwise. We were lucky to beat these teams when we played them earlier in the season. These loses are, in the end, probably good things because now we can't be delusional. We've still got a long way to go and as far as I know, the club itself doesn't think much different. But winning games can sometimes lead to you drinking your own bathwater. We've got no reason to do that now, and that's good. I'm not smart enough to pinpoint the exact problems and the exact solutions beyond "we need better players because we're not a good team" and that's as true today as it was 4 weeks ago when we were third on the ladder.

For most of the season, there's been a clear bottom 6 teams. That has been slightly shaken up recently, but I don't think that's disrespectful to those other teams, which are the Hawks, Crows, Saints, Eagles, North and Richmond. So how did we perform against them?

R2, we only won against the Hawks due to an insanely good goal-kicking performance, and a bad one from them

R4, we won against the Saints by 4 points. Close games are coin tosses. It's been proven in nearly every sport, and the AFL is no different. A team's performance in close games is, essentially, not a predictable feature going forward. A team can win a bunch of close games one season, and the very next season lose them all. This was also a game that at 3/4 time, we had kicked 8.5 to the Saints 8.12. We were clearly the better team in the last quarter of that game, but we were lucky to still be within 10 points by that point of the game.

R7, we won against the Crows by 3 points. This was of course the game where Sam Draper was not pinged for something that he should have been and allowed us to win it. So the obvious example of how close games are coin tosses. We got the lucky call. Now, we should not have allowed the game to be close, we had kicked 8.14 to 3/4 time but in the end this is another game against a bottom 6 team that we were lucky to win

R9 against West Coast, we won by 6 points. I have spoken enough about this. This was a disgraceful game that plenty of people refused to admit was a terrible performance because we won.

R11 against North, we won by 40 points, but got outscored in two quarters by a winless team. This was basically an one quarter performance. Again, I still some people try to defend this by saying well North have been better since that point. They have won two games for the season.

R12 against Richmond, we won by 12 points against a team that had lost 8 straight or whatever to that point. The gap was one point with a couple mins to go in the 3rd quarter and 5 points with about 10 mins to go.

R16 against West Coast, we won by 30 points, albeit with Q4 junk time goals. The Eagles were within 10 to 20 points from about the middle of the 3rd quarter to the middle of the last quarter, before we finally broke through. This was after we were up by 23 at HF only for them to close the gap to as little as four points during the third quarter.

R20 and R21 against the Crows and Saints. Well we lost.

If you spend all season just barely beating bottom 6 teams, and then you start losing to them too, that's probably a good sign that the team isn't much better than those teams.

We've been through this ride for the last 15 years. Sack a coach, make the finals in that coach's first or second season, get pumped in that final, get over-confident and think the team will do even better the next season and when that doesn't happen, sack the coach and do it all over again. As far as I'm concerned, thank god we're not wasting our time in the finals again and we can confront what's been obvious all season

so maybe Scott has got more out of this list than we give him credit for. We look like sub-par list that squeezed out a number of close wins early, but when the time came to push for finals we resorted back to our true capability

 

[Call Me Cake]

Don't agree with the season done tag in the title with 4 games to go. Poor form and fairweather. I get the frustration but leave that to the posts.

 

[div12ressie]

Hate to break it to you, it is the players. Coach can only do so much.

We are mentally weak and overestimate out talent. There is a reason Scott doesn't over celebrate wins.

mate if you pay attention to the selections at least, you'd know brad scott is a bit to blame.(not to mention his later years at North)

 

[Sporno 4 Pyros]

Missed the game…what happened to Ridley??

 

[Kong]

 

[Beerfish]

Missed the game…what happened to Ridley??

Hip

 

[naraku]

Our last two losses where against 4th worse team going into the game and both games we lost.

Players don't seem to give a shit.

Scott seems scared to drop Heppell and co for kids

We're still at ground zero

 

[ant555]

Didn’t we lead the Swans with 8 minutes left in Sydney this year?

They suck and they are one dimensional, any side worth their salt will shut down the running game and make them do something different.

Round 2
Saints lost to the top side a few weeks ago. Went under to the third side by 2 points recently.
Their recent form has been okay.
At least 10 lengths in front of ours.
We are not any side worth their salt.
I have been right . We are years away.

 

[jannissary]

Hawthorn says hi!

hawthorn, richmond, sydney, bevridge, even hinkley, all have been long term coaches that have some finals wins.

all because they had long lasting coaches, shocker!

 

[Seb78]

Surely we just play the kids now that season is done.

Hayes, Bryan, Roberts, Tsatas, Davey & El-Hawli (when ready) continue with Caddy as well.

Don't want to see, Goldstein, Heppell, Kelly, Laverde, Menzie, Stringer again. I'd be dropping Perkins as well. Draper ain't as good as people make him out to be.

 

[mike ross]

Hate to break it to you, it is the players. Coach can only do so much.

We are mentally weak and overestimate out talent. There is a reason Scott doesn't over celebrate wins.

Finally. Its his second season. Lots of pain ahead in order to cut the mental softness out of this team.

 

[Mercurial89]

Take 2 players - Perkins & Langford - & where we are now from just a couple months ago.

Langers, maybe theres an injury there, if so then it's club mismanagement, dont ****ing play him.

Perks, loss of confidence seems the most obvious but no, lets keep running him out there or sub him. Sub a player with confidence issues, mkay, makes sense how?

Some weird shit going on.

Throw in dropping Wright for a single week and then bringing him expecting him to perform.

We have watched him play for years, what about his mental makeup makes you think he would respond well to that?
He became the player he was when he was made "the" man, when the club embraced him as the guy. Text messages from the captain, kicking a big bag in a game.
That suspension ****ed him mentally and he's been shit presence wise since.
Just player mismanagement.

Playing Ridley as a key, Martin in the back only to wheel him forward as your coaching swing move.
Playing Tsatas on a wing and subbing him.

Put your players in a position to succeed. It's a basic concept and should be core to what your doing as a coach.

Now the players we have aren't good enough, our good players are league average in other teams and we have 1 star in this lineup.
That's our shit drafting coming home to roost.

Do we play the kids and build standards by entrusting them with the future of the club?
No, we top up with older players, play senior guys who have been losers their whole careers and we make excuses that this is somehow building a winning culture.
No, it's being stagnant, and when your stagnant in professional sports your dead.

 

[Blind Turn]

Where is our Jurgen Klopp?

WE WANT TO BELIEVE

FFS get Brett Kirk or Nigel Lappin to help develop the kids

Some of the vets need putting out to pasture

Need some leaders to SHOW THEM HOW TO WIN and how a real team prepares, trains and performs like Hodgey

I called for this years ago being a big LFC fan. Klopp’s available now, let’s get him here

In all seriousness though, the thing about Klopp was that he understood the fans, embraced the city, and he knew that a successful club needed more than squad focus but also an entire cultural change to the extent of changing the belief in the stands and in the streets. He is a big personality with a genuinely good heart and everyone picked up on it. Scott is trying to change the culture but he’s a bit of a robot. One thing Klopp can never be accused of is being a robot. He wore his heart in his sleeve, backed his boys in, and brought levity to intense moments. Is there anyone in Australian footy with the personality to culturally elevate a demoralised big club? Probably not. Also, culturally, EFC is displaced. We abandoned our Anfield and our ‘people’ are not a community like Liverpool. When you think about it, leaders like Klopp are unbelievably rare.

 

[YEMOC NAYR]

Pathetic from the top down, this football club. Just not a serious team. Suck the fun out of footy.