AFL Autopsy RND 19: Beaten by the Crom

[MiguelM]

The rigors of AFL footy at the business end of the season are catching up with a few.

Stringer not breaking free now, Goldy treading water, Heppell hardly got near it last week, Lav looks out of his depth again. Guelfi has gone awol, etc. etc.

The good.. Draper holding marks and performs better as sole ruck. Cox impressive all over the ground

This is going to sound a bit forward, but we need to start recruiting more naturally good football players like Durham and Merrett. Players that are just good with a football in their hands. Just watch the 2000 era side, they were just comfortable with a footy in their hands.

Enough with the fumbly crap and the not running/leading for ball.

EFC have been the opposite of progress since 2004 and are only now sort of showing signs of coming back to a professional level standard.

I don't understand how some of our top picks are played out of position and seem to get worse over time, that's weird and doesn't make any sense. It shows a 100% disconnect between the coaches and the players in some instances.

I also don't understand how some of our senior players play as if they have never played football before, i mean what is that?? This is not something you would behold back in the 90s/00s so much. A good player was at least consistent even as a senior. You don't just lose the ability to take a grab or to hold onto a ball uncontested unless you develop Alzheimers.

One thing that was a real positive last night was the strong marking by the tall players for the 2nd and 3rd quarter, that's just what you'd expect to see anyway, all the time, but at least they were all doing it well.

Our talls are doing ok. Big improvement in Cox, Jones. Caddy will be great. We will be hard to match up against the way our talls are developing. Good thing is all those 3 can run all day too,

We just need small forwards that can kick 30 odd goals. All the top teams do. this is where we are failing.

 

[Vindicater]

We don't pick Goldy we win that game.

 

[ant555]

We don't pick Goldy we win that game.

I think there where plenty of things you could point at. Goldy sucked but so did plenty of others. Langford make several unbelievably stupid decisions with the ball.

 

[Happyskeret]

I thought that Adelaide throughly deserved the win. I thought they were the better team on the night. We had so many free kicks in front of goal and we still couldn’t put them away. I thought when we were 10 points up at the end we should not have lost it from there but credit to the Crows they fought back. How many times do you see us miss an easy shot only for the ball to zip back to the other end for an opposition score? Team defence was a mess.

 

[JDavey]

I very much understand that by trying to create a loose in defense we give up something up the ground, either at stoppage or at defense.

The problem I have is we gave an extra number at stoppage to their most damaging player (have someone stand on him and create the loose as soligo or something).

And the loose we created was half a kick behind stoppage not loose in defense - he got caught in no mans land.

The no flooding means we can't attack but we're up, we don't need to attack we need to kill 60 seconds of clock and having only 6 men in defense in that game scenario just isn't sufficient.

View attachment 2053069View attachment 2053071


We were in an almost identical situation with two minutes to go. Between the stoppage and the wide view we can see some similarities and differences:

1. Kelly hangs off the back of stoppage [same]
2. Crows create an extra at stoppage [same]
3. Essendon mans Keays, and leaves the rookies/less damaging players free [Different]

Dowling wins the balls and clears i50, we cut to wide view
4. We have 7 defenders [Different]
5. We have a proper spare [Different]

Langford intercept marks here. This is much closer to what we should have been doing. Still not sure we needed Kelly off the back of stoppage as crows hadn't been beating us out the front of it (no Rankine), defensive positioning at stoppage would've probably been enough but I get it as long as we still have the spare out back.

I can understand us not having even more players in defense here given double the time on the clock but at least we've got the out number in D50 with some defensive positioning at stoppage.

Fast forward a minute and we now have fewer players in the defensive 50, no spare, no goal keeper.

Sorry mate you can say there is give and take all you want but this is a pretty big/obvious failure in the last minute and you only need to rewind one more minute to see a better example. Whether its coaching, on field leadership or execution I don't know and that is what I would like to understand.

Fun note: Crows almost got beat the other way with ~30 seconds left doing something similar. They let us go even numbers and didn't put anything back in defense from our forward half wing stoppage. Jake Stringer got a clean i50 to 1:1 contests leading at the top of the square. We just couldn't mark/get it over the back

FootyGuru

Guess I didn't know what I was talking about

 

[Squeaky]

Essendon continually make b grade players look like superstars

Trent Rivers, Jack Crisp, Jack Bowes, Elijah Hollands, Ben Long, Zac Fisher have all looked like world beaters when we have played them. Infuriates me I cant trust Essendon to turn up and just get the job done

And every time a kid debuts against us, he goes alright. The kid from Geelong is the example here.

 

[Jobe Watson]

FootyGuru

Guess I didn't know what I was talking about

Is Kane blind?

"Merrett would hit that kick" ummm, it WAS Merrett, and he didn't hit that kick...

 

[FootyGuru]

FootyGuru

Guess I didn't know what I was talking about

Great vision, it’s pretty much carbon copy of what I presumed happened. They man langers up after the first intercept, Kelly’s man goes into to stoppage because it’s a must win stoppage for the crows, Kelly gets confused whether to sit back or go and gets caught in between. Kelly had to be up or back. In that time of the match in that stoppage if we kick a goal we win, so I dont think the play was to flood or send extras inside the stoppage and if Durham gets an actual kick on the ball when he had possession it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. It’s worth putting this much focus on the fumbles and bad over use that seems to cost us 4/5 goals a week.

 

[eastaugh36]

Dare I say it, North have gone past us?

 

[JDavey]

Dare I say it, North have gone past us?

Looking at the bottom end of the ladder I'd be more excited as both a Hawk and a North fan atm

 

[ant555]

FootyGuru

Guess I didn't know what I was talking about

Using the Volcano as a reference is hardly inspiring confidence

 

[Mercurial89]

FootyGuru

Guess I didn't know what I was talking about

Is Kane blind?

"Merrett would hit that kick" ummm, it WAS Merrett, and he didn't hit that kick...

I was thinking the same thing, just watching the twitter shit vision I'm like but Martin got he crumb how was he to blame for the poor kick inside?

Does show that Merrett probably got greedy trying to go too deep, Martin was a simple simple kick to hit, and if your gonna hit caddy hit it to where he was leading, instead it's to the defender side.
We had some of our top liners make some really really bad errors Friday (Rids the big one that cost us huge). Just got to be better.

 

[Ess2025]

On current form, we lose to saints then freo. The suns game is 50/50. You know what though? I reckon our lads will respond. I can’t remember the last time we played a four quarter game or thrashed an opposition. There’s no room for error. Let’s see what they serve up next weekend.

 

[mike14]

Watching Ben McKay

32

Ben Mckay

Age

26

Ht

202cm

Wt

104kg

Pos.

Def

Career

Season

Last 5

D

7.5

2star

K

3.7

1star

HB

3.8

3star

M

2.7

3star

T

1.7

4star

MG

77.2

1star

D

7.5

2star

K

4.5

2star

HB

3.0

2star

M

2.5

3star

T

1.5

2star

MG

88.5

2star

D

7.0

2star

K

3.4

2star

HB

3.6

3star

M

2.4

3star

T

2.0

4star

MG

67.8

1star

run handball drill tonight and it's very hard not to say anything...

 

[Squeaky]

Watching Ben McKay run handball drill tonight and it's very hard not to say anything...

Let him have it!

 

[ant555]

Have to say I usually watch the game over a few times to review but this week I got to the 20 minute mark of the first quarter and it was yeah nah can not do this.

 

[Kong]

Have to say I usually watch the game over a few times to review but this week I got to the 20 minute mark of the first quarter and it was yeah nah can not do this.

I typically only watch the game after the fact if they win. Have for a few years, save for the 2 yearly elimination final flogging which I watch live.

Saves a lot of time and energy.

 

[Mini Dustin Fletcher]

Positives

Cox might be a forward?? Used his skinny body really well.
Duz was Duz - Bloody hell I love him - Same as Caldwell
Was Zerrett really that good? I felt he got tagged too much and can't seem to beat a tag at the moment - Maybe I'm wrong?
Redman was great - hasn't been the best this year, but he was the best in defence.

Menzie, Goldy need to go back to the 2's - Guelfi is out,
Stringer needs to pull his finger out

2MP needs to come in, Roberts Debut? for Guelfi and Hind?? or ADJ? - feel like we're missing his pressure acts.

Time to bring the HEAT!!! - pressure, pressure, pressure against the Saints.

 

[Squeaky]

Positives

Cox might be a forward?? Used his skinny body really well.
Duz was Duz - Bloody hell I love him - Same as Caldwell
Was Zerrett really that good? I felt he got tagged too much and can't seem to beat a tag at the moment - Maybe I'm wrong?
Redman was great - hasn't been the best this year, but he was the best in defence.

Menzie, Goldy need to go back to the 2's - Guelfi is out,
Stringer needs to pull his finger out

2MP needs to come in, Roberts Debut? for Guelfi and Hind?? or ADJ? - feel like we're missing his pressure acts.

Time to bring the HEAT!!! - pressure, pressure, pressure against the Saints.

We don't bring pressure and we do not handle pressure. It's not in the EFC vocab.