AFL Autopsy RND 2: Loss to the Lions

[Mini Dustin Fletcher]

Neither Carlton nor Richmond are in the top 4

I stand corrected. I'd argue Sydney over Richmond in recent times.

 

[eth-dog]

I stand corrected. I'd argue Sydney over Richmond in recent times.

No where near it for me

 

[Mr Mojo Risin]

Stewart misses a spoil on the line. Lions goal.
Redman handballs to I think it was Ridley at his feet amoung 4 lions players. Lions goal.
Ump picks out 50m penalty that is rarely paid (it was there, but there are a few more of those a week than the 1 every 10 games we see). Lions goal.
Hep puts an absolute shocking effort to get the ball out. They goal.

Francis misses easy shots.
Parish misses shots he probably should hit.

How many times did we handball it over a team mates head, past him, behind him, at his feet or to his man as we ran into our attacking 60m?

At the end of the day after all that we lost by 22 and the media focus on Neale winning them the game.
No the difference is we aren't good enough yet, we turn it over too often with silly little things.
I think even Rutten touched on it.
It's little things - a basic handball, a basic spoil, sticking a tackle, kicking straight, getting body on their players around a contest.
Get those right, Neale could have had 60, we were still in that game to win.

We can whinge all we want about list construction and drafts and trading but end of the day this team just does basic fundamental football poorly.
They cleaned this up last year, and it meant we stayed in games or were at least competitive but it was still the reason we lost most of our games and couldn't stop a run on when the opposition had momentum.

If nothing else changes but we could suddenly get these little things out of our game by end of the year I'll be happy.

Quoting to ensure this post gets more space in the thread.

Spot on.

We are a developing team playing one of the flag favourites and we were right in it despite missing key players and lots of basic errors.

There is a lot of positives in there when you think about that and the difference in effort from the first week.

 

[faible]

Berry is getting way too much credit IMO

Zach ended with 31 Disposals and 1 goal and 500m gained. A very very solid game.

We lost this game due to 1 simple stat. Set Shots.

Lions kicked theirs, we missed ours. at one point Lions were 8-1 for set shots whilst we were something like 3-7.

We had the chance to put the game almost out of reach early in the 2nd qter and just botched it repeatedly by missing regulation set shots.

You will not win many games of footy kicking 20% more points than you do goals.

Merrett was torching them early, would have had far more metres gained if Berry hadn’t gone to him. Still got the ball but forced him to dispose of it less effectively.

But yes, we generated more than enough scoring shots to have won this one but poor accuracy killed us. Convert those chances in the 2nd and we might have broken the back of the game, instead poor conversion kept Brisbane in it and meant not getting reward for effort.