Nice to get a win again. Dion Prestia & Toby drove the win with 16 clearances between them & as i have said before, our fate will almost entirely be driven on how well we can compete in that area. In games like today where the opponent field an entire Ruck, Followers, midfield & wings of kids - we should always win easily. This week was another example as well that no team has relied on its 1 superstar more than we have with Dusty. The guy was a gift from god.
The goals we leaked to nearly lose it at the end were a definite downer to the game & overall, much like last week - it was a game we should definitely be winning without any trouble - the Hawks had ELEVEN players 23 or under to our 3, including their entire midfield fleet. That along with them losing Gunston early in the game - we really should have won by far, far more.
Each week we see the dual forward role of Jack & Tom is our best option, they are in fine form together. Our fate is still completely dependant of older or injury prone players like Prestia, Dusty, Lambert, Cotchin & Jack. Our results are improving but unsure if our future is. Baker down back is a beast, 12 contested possessions, 20 pressure acts - 10 in the defensive half with over 300 MG's + 7 tackles- the guys is a legit 2 way machine. So much better down back than up forward, this also allowed Dan to spend more time up the field as noted by his 3 scoring shots + 8 score involvements, the 3rd highest on our team.
The backline is still insanely leaky and unreliable. Its a massive concern to me that even with us smashing the clearance and midfield battle. How we can let a bunch of kids get a score every >2 times in their forward 50 while getting a whopping 55% efficiency should have alarm bells sounding off, a good team will beat us by 100 at some point i feel. It completely debunks all the horseshit that this was happening purely due to our midfield lacking work rate pushing back - the problem is CLEARLY a breakdown in our backline system. It is not working & once we play a better, more experienced team it will show.
Best quite easily for me - Prestia, Baker, Dusty, Bolton, Lynch, Toby
Still not seeing any reason to think we are better than 7th-12th - we. are only beating teams that are loaded up with kids, or completely our of confidence. Based on that, i expect us to take care of the Bombers who definitely have a "lil of Column A, a lil of Column B" in that area.
With Balta likely out i would be probably brining in Tarrant & Gibcus. Tarrant is slow and not ideal, but will be needed against Peter Wright. Without Balta we run the risk of him kicking a bag. A part of me whats to roll the dice and allow Biggy a crack at him instead, give the kids a boast in his development
A balanced post but we can only beat who is in front of us. Melbourne in their first 8 games have only beaten 1 top 8 side and that was the Saints. Tomorrow they play the eagles, and next week they play north. So that's 10 games and only one top 8 side played. When they beat us we weren't top 8 only made the top 8 last week after beating the pies.
We left a couple of games on the table that we could've won. Round 1, we gifted Carlton 4 goals by 50-meter penalties and lost Prestia end of the first quarter. That's the game right there. Against the saints we were 25 up at the end of the 3rd quarter and we lost grimes and king gets off the leash. Let's not forget that we had dusty, prestia, vlustuin, jack and lambert out that night. The crows in RD 5, once we hit the front towards the end of the 3rd qtr they then received the next 12 frees straight, 33 to 13 overall, enough said.
It wasn't until RD 7 V Eagles that we made some changes, Balta and Baker to the backline, shorty to the midfield, Added in a small pressure player Maurice Junior and we looked a hell of a lot better. Plus many of our injured players were coming back into the side. I must also say we are so much more attacking (2nd highest-scoring team only behind the Lions). We seemed to have found our mojo again and our pressure seems to have come back.
Richmond at full strength I don't fear any team!