Autopsy Round 1, 2017: Ess v Haw, **Ess supporters read the OP** Ban Hammer will be wielded with impunity

[Spursfan]

We just don't have the midfield depth at the moment.

We lack passion, pace and strength in the air.
We might still finish 4 - 8 but the next flag won't come until the team gets an injection of the above from new, young players. Hodge, Gibbo, Burger, Rough and Pop will be gone by then. We should have insisted Gibbo retired and kept Sam or Jordan.
Too many mediocre role players who will be found out in a weaker team. Duryea the worst of them. Along with Hartung there is no one better in the AFL at telegraphing their next move and getting caught holding the ball or hand balling to someone about to be tacked.

Yeah I agree , Gibbo's been fantastic but he should've been exited last year. I could swallow losing Lewis and Mitchell a lot better had got better trade value for them.

 

[hk89]

Rioli did not have 1 disposal in the 2nd half. Not 1.

Clarko said he had a corkie so hopefully that is that and he is back sizzling next week.

Was looking very hampered after the corkie, limping heavily, and probably not easy to get to contests in that state.

 

[tige19]

You know SuperCoach is broken when Tom Mitchell has 37, 9 marks, 4 tackles, 4 clearances and can't break a ton! What does he have to do? Back flips after every possession? Gee give me a break SC

 

[hk89]

Tough loss but it congratulations to the bombers. Great to see them all back together again. The Bomber fans, who've been a through a lot through no fault of their own (other than poor life choices to support the scum in the first place), deserved a little cheer. But what a great comeback for them. Kind of like Bill Cosby getting back into the dating scene.

Or Justin Gatlin lining up for the 100M final in Rio.

 

[muston09]

And to the Essendon fans (including the 2 I spent the night with watching the game) enjoy the win. What ever your attitude to the doping scandal is you did not bring it on yourselves. 4 years of doping shite would suck. Hopefully we never see doping scar the game we love again.

Well said, that part gets forgotten and they didnt deserve that crap! Though i hate the ones that try and justify it!!

 

[wizzard400]

Just got back from the ground.

Solid first official hit out in my eyes. Some thoughts from the game...

Positives:
- Tom Mitchell. By far and away our best player tonight. Will be a terrific player for the club.
- Loved seeing Roughy back. We missed him.
- Good game from JOM from my point of view. You can tell he's still somewhat getting the cobwebs out. He'll come good very soon.
- You'd be forgiven for thinking Henderson has been playing at Hawthorn for the last 5 years. Slotted in perfectly.
- Thought Vickery was solid. Just needs to keep doing his role and keep competing, I'm still confident we can mould him into the next David Hale. Have no idea why Essendon supporters were booing him.
- No injuries.

Negatives:
- Accuracy. You rarely win games of footy kicking 12.19. Just needed to be more clinical in front of goal and we probably would've won. Especially since we won the inside 50 count.
- Umpiring. Not just for us but for both sides. Some horrendous decisions and non-calls.
- You can tell we are still trying to gel with this new game plan. I'll put our somewhat bad skills from this game down to trying to adjust to it. Give it about a month and we'll be right IMO.
- Our back 6 was very ordinary tonight. Not panic stations yet but needs to be sorted as we saw signs of this during the JLT series.
- Langford got plenty of the footy but his disposal is beyond poor. If he fixes this he can be a gun.


All in all theres enough positives to have me thinking we'll have an O.K year. I keep remembering that we don't have a first round draft pick this year so it's hard to not think it's finals or bust. We're definitely not top 4 material but with the other 10 or so clubs vying for the finals. It is only round 1 so I'll look at it as a glass-half-full kinda situation. After all it is a 'transition' year so to speak. Saying it's going to be an interesting season is an understatement.

 

[cryptor]

You know SuperCoach is broken when Tom Mitchell has 37, 9 marks, 4 tackles, 4 clearances and can't break a ton! What does he have to do? Back flips after every possession? Gee give me a break SC

Supercoach scores take the result of a disposal into account. The nature of his role means that a lot of his handballs and kicks out of packs have a reasonable chance of being intercepted and resulting in an average score.

 

[BlueWaterHawk]

Was looking very hampered after the corkie, limping heavily, and probably not easy to get to contests in that state.

Yep couldn't move.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

 

[Ned Ryerson]

Please can we quit the Gunston experiment immediateLy


Do you mean th Burton who had 5 kicked on him in a qtr by a bloke from the SANFL playing his first senior game? Described by a hawthorn recruiting officer at the game as the most insipid effort by a bloke in our jumper in a long long time. No wonder he lost his round one spot. You are pulling my leg I am sure.
But in his defence.... Burton as with Schoenmakers is not a defender. Never has been. Never will be.
Our attitude at Noarlunga stunk. Last JLT game. We played a completely undermanned and youthful port who were just plain hungry. We were not. We got what we deserved tonight. Coaches playing players out of position and not enough players willing to die for the cause. Mitchell, Smith my exceptions.
It's attitude. Stubbornness from upstairs and players expecting to lift in the final minutes and get up. We lost just about every first qtr last year. Nothing has changed.

Same Burton who has also shown far more signs of being a half decent option down back than both Schoey and Sicily have. It's not like our defenders tonight covered themselves with glory.

 

[Satchel]

Duryea was horrible. But Hartung hardly ever bloody ran. Why else is he in the team?

& when Hartung did try & run Daniher caught him! noy sure what Billy offers any more

 

[Gene Simmons]

Have skimmed over a lot of this thread but I'm surprised I haven't seen anybody mention our clearly subpar goal accuracy. In the past we've been good at it but tonight a number of our players missed frankly easy shots (both from set shots and on the run). Sucks because even though we were pretty dismal in a lot of areas, we still might've actually had a shot at the game but we kicked our way out of it in crucial moments.

You do raise a very good point.. all those games last season that we won by less than a kick was due to accuracy. Take those wins away and we would have been lucky to make the 8.

 

[Gralin]

Please can we quit the Gunston experiment immediateLy


Do you mean th Burton who had 5 kicked on him in a qtr by a bloke from the SANFL playing his first senior game? Described by a hawthorn recruiting officer at the game as the most insipid effort by a bloke in our jumper in a long long time. No wonder he lost his round one spot. You are pulling my leg I am sure.
But in his defence.... Burton as with Schoenmakers is not a defender. Never has been. Never will be.
Our attitude at Noarlunga stunk. Last JLT game. We played a completely undermanned and youthful port who were just plain hungry. We were not. We got what we deserved tonight. Coaches playing players out of position and not enough players willing to die for the cause. Mitchell, Smith my exceptions.
It's attitude. Stubbornness from upstairs and players expecting to lift in the final minutes and get up. We lost just about every first qtr last year. Nothing has changed.

I still don't know what our new game plan is, I didn't see anything new tonight other than faces, unless you count keeping two dangerous forwards away from the forward line

Same Burton who has also shown far more signs of being a half decent option down back than both Schoey and Sicily have. It's not like our defenders tonight covered themselves with glory.

Schoey kills Burton as a key defender, he isn't one but he is physically mature and can compete with mature bodies in a way that Burton can't as yet

Burton last year showed more as a rebounding line breaker than he did as an actual defender.

our issue is that we don't have guys with pace who can kick that are natural defenders so we are playing forwards there

 

[Walshawk]

We just don't have the midfield depth at the moment.


Yeah I agree , Gibbo's been fantastic but he should've been exited last year. I could swallow losing Lewis and Mitchell a lot better had got better trade value for them.

We panicked.

 

[muston09]

Do you mean th Burton who had 5 kicked on him in a qtr by a bloke from the SANFL playing his first senior game?

thats just not correct, watched that game the other day and he had three kicked on him by a 28 year old guy on his last chance of playing afl on a ground he knew like the back of his hand, the guy is no mug. he kicked his other goals on other back men.

 

[LuckyHawk]

I can understand the guarding space bit but not 30 metres from the nearest opponent.

 

[Ned Ryerson]

I still don't know what our new game plan is, I didn't see anything new tonight other than faces, unless you count keeping two dangerous forwards away from the forward line


Schoey kills Burton as a key defender, he isn't one but he is physically mature and can compete with mature bodies in a way that Burton can't as yet

Burton last year showed more as a rebounding line breaker than he did as an actual defender.

our issue is that we don't have guys with pace who can kick that are natural defenders so we are playing forwards there

Fair call, but that's the position I had in mind for Burton to play (because we had bigger all rebound tonight) and I want Brand to come in as a key defender.

 

[Billyc]

I put aside some real pre-season concerns on the basis that it was just pre-season. Can't do it so easily after seeing the exact same problems against a very mediocre opponent tonight.

I think we are in trouble. Our midfield depth is abysmal and we seem to have lost that killer instinct - Essendon were ripe for the picking early in the 4th but we squandered chance after chance.

We have been spoilt beyond belief over the last decade but the signs point to a difficult year. Not feeling brilliant about having traded our first round pick out.

 

[bradburygold]

You know SuperCoach is broken when Tom Mitchell has 37, 9 marks, 4 tackles, 4 clearances and can't break a ton! What does he have to do? Back flips after every possession? Gee give me a break SC

Didnt he score 116? Mcevoy 106?

 

[Gold Member]

I've never seen so much noise and elation derived out of a win in round 1. What a crazy atmosphere that was.
**** me, those bombers supporters are something else.

It's quite sad when you think about it. Imagine if winning tonight, or any H&A game for that matter, meant that much to us.

Watching us win all those premierships while they suffered so immensely must've been rather hard on them.

You miss Rd 1, 2016?

 

[Woodside Hawk]

Duryea was horrible. But Hartung hardly ever bloody ran. Why else is he in the team?

Billy getting run down by Daniher was just plain embarrassing.

 

[Jaeger]

You miss Rd 1, 2016?

it was that x100

Our performance was similar.

 

[Gene Simmons]

There was one passage of play in the last quarter that infuriated me!

I think it may have been Hartung or Langers running through the centre and in our forward line were 3 players just standing there flat footed pointing... WTF?? What I wouldn't give to have a f#&ken forward leading towards the player with the ball...

Why the hell when we have Roughy, Shoey, Vickery, Gunston all on the ground, we are kicking to Tom Mitchell 1 on 2 in a vacant forward line??

I don't dare bag out Clarko, and I know that he is an innovator but what we came up with tonite was pure crap! Let's just hope that it was an off night in the office all round because we looked more boring than Freo

 

[MasterSamurai]

schoey looked really good in the last qtr in defence..at least he went for his marks and took them. frawley at FB and Schoey at CHB with Whitecross to take Duryea's role.
We have more problems then just a poor defence though. it's going to be a interesting year, that's for sure.

 

[Grumblez]

The way I saw it Essendon won their 18 month long grand final, we are warming up and adapting a new game plan, we were always going to lose.
Good thing with a rebuild is we are always going to win some and lose some and when we win it's gonna feel great. The last 4 years we have become accustomed to winning games. Now it's going to be 50/50 which actually adds to the excitement of watching games and not knowing if we will win.

 

[Gralin]

the worst part of that game for me was the bombers fan in the row in front, the longer the game went on the more drunk and chirpy he got

he actually didn't stop talking for the entire second half about Cyril gifting goals or not being able to kick a goal like Fantasia or how we only got goals because the umpires gifted them, that not a single free we got was there and that the bombers were winning in spite of the umps favoritism

kept banging on about how Rough was getting sympathy from the umps and a free ride too

been a long time since I've wanted to kick someone down the stairs at the G