Preview Round 5, 2019: Hawthorn v Geelong, 22 April 2019, 3.20pm @ MCG

[tige19]

Yeh Stratts has been ordinary so far this year. Even the latter stages of a 2018 I thought he showed signs of his form dropping away which made the decision to make him captain a bit perplexing for mine. I am not sure that burdening him with the captaincy has been a positive for his overall game whereas if it had of gone to JOM or Mitchell I believe they wod have thrived on the extra responsibility. Mind you this is only an observation from the outside looking in so take it for what it's worth (probably not much!)

Stratts is a 12 month stop gap for Omera if he can stay healthy.

 

[tige19]

Stratton was dreadful and should be dropped??


You lot are loco.

Still one of our most important players, god help us if he doesn’t get up for the forever behind Hawthorn on Monday.

 

[A Cut Above]

The "Geelong Curse" for opposition teams continues! Last year teams who played Geelong lost a vital player the previous week a staggering number of times, the Handbaggers were obscenely fortunate in this regard. With Frawley and possibly Stratton out of the side they get lucky again.

Best part is knowing this will do them absolutely no good in the long run and yet another post-bye exit in the first week of September beckons.

 

[cyrilicious]

So cyril gets done for airys but dangerfield doesnt because it would ruin his Brownlow chances??
What a joke the afl is

 

[Mississippi]

Stratton was dreadful and should be dropped??


You lot are loco.

Haven’t seen one person who’s said he should be dropped. A few (me included) who’ve said he’s struggling or playing poorly and under pressure to lift.
But that s pretty obvious isn’t it?

Are you saying he’s doing well ?

 

[Baz_hawk]

Stratton was dreadful and should be dropped??


You lot are loco.

Mate, he looked lost out there. /s



Will probably have a week off as is the norm these days for concussion.

 

[bringbackthurgood]

Stratts being dropped for form is crazy talk. He is adjusting to captaincy

 

[Argy]

I'm not convinced Smith will play. He did not want to use his damaged hand at all yesterday. Reckon he misses with Frawley.

Sad to say it, but I agree with you.

 

[Brishawk]

Stratton was dreadful and should be dropped??


You lot are loco.

I’m thinking he might miss due to concussion.

 

[westhawk]

Stratton was dreadful and should be dropped??


You lot are loco.

Don’t know about dropped either, but I think he has been poor after round 1.

 

[KOLOKOTRONIS]

Stratton is a very important player to our structure. The criticisms on this board are ridiculous. He needs to play this week. I truly hope he recovers.

I don’t think we will get flogged by any team this year. It isn’t the hawthorn way. We are learning so much about our squad and our youth.

The injuries in game have been uncanny really. We could easily have been 4-0. We just haven’t had anything go remotely right for us in the games we lost.

Geelong are a force again, however they are not unbeatable. Expecting a tight contest.

Some luck would help this week.




KOLOKOTRONIS

 

[hk89]

I thought you were talking about yesterday.
Spot on re the Dogs game. But the week after we smacked North in there and he had 5 Centre clearances. Most on the ground.
He’s a ferken jet. Can’t wait to have him back this week.

Yup, wasn't trying to talk down O'Meara, only questioning whether dominating Geelong's rucks will translate to clearance dominance when it didn't at all against Bulldog's weaker ruck division. While I'm happy with how Cousins and Worpel are going given their experience levels, as a clearance generating unit, we've been pretty poor this year with JOM/Worpel/Cousins as the starting midfield group, especially when you consider we've actually been doing well in the ruck department.

We've won the hitouts every game so far (often by massive margins), and have won the clearances zero times (We broke exactly even against North for clearances, with one extra hitout, so that was our best hitout to clearance ratio game). I fear for the day when we get badly beaten in hitouts , as it reads like we're likely to receive a massive trouncing in the clearances when that happens, and with 6-6-6, that is a formula for a very large loss. The clearance issue is perhaps a bit exaggerated by the in game injuries, especially in the weekend game where the mids get run off their feet after we lose part of our bench, but the doggies smashed us in that area before Shiels and Burgoyne went down.

 

[MasterSamurai]

Errr, hang on a minute , now, I don’t think stratts is flying or anything but both Membrey and Bruce got off the leash halfway thru the 3rd qtr, until then I honestly did NOT even realise they were playing!! Chip and stratts had them covered imo.

 

[FisherHawk]

Stratts being dropped for form is crazy talk. He is adjusting to captaincy

Maybe. There was talk of dropping Finch before the 3rd cricket ODI v India, and look how that turned out.

 

[WWSD]

One positive from the loss to the Saints was the combination of Sicily and Scrimshaw. They had 51 disposals, 18 marks and also took 6 contested marks combined which is very impressive considering they are half back flankers. That was probably Scrimshaw’s best game for the club. I just wish Birchall was out there to see how they would work in tandem. A half back-line of Birchall, Sicily and Scrimshaw would be insane.

 

[driftyhunter]

Stratton is a very important player to our structure. The criticisms on this board are ridiculous. He needs to play this week. I truly hope he recovers.

I don’t think we will get flogged by any team this year. It isn’t the hawthorn way. We are learning so much about our squad and our youth.

The injuries in game have been uncanny really. We could easily have been 4-0. We just haven’t had anything go remotely right for us in the games we lost.

Geelong are a force again, however they are not unbeatable. Expecting a tight contest.

Some luck would help this week.




KOLOKOTRONIS

Really can’t see how it could be a tight game with potentially Stratts et al on the sidelines. Will be good to watch though as have zero expectations and an unlikely come from behind win at the death would be quite something

 

[hawkguru]

In:The way we played against the crows
Out:The way we played against the saints

 

[hk89]

One positive from the loss to the Saints was the combination of Sicily and Scrimshaw. They had 51 disposals, 18 marks and also took 6 contested marks combined which is very impressive considering they are half back flankers. That was probably Scrimshaw’s best game for the club. I just wish Birchall was out there to see how they would work in tandem. A half back-line of Birchall, Sicily and Scrimshaw would be insane.

Yup. Would also be interesting to see how Clarko would use Impey if that happened.

 

[HODGEYROAD]

I'm thinking KB will come in for Chip and Jaeger for someone, only expecting the two changes. We're really going to rue our losses to the Dogs and Saints come the end of the season.

 

[tige19]

One positive from the loss to the Saints was the combination of Sicily and Scrimshaw. They had 51 disposals, 18 marks and also took 6 contested marks combined which is very impressive considering they are half back flankers. That was probably Scrimshaw’s best game for the club. I just wish Birchall was out there to see how they would work in tandem. A half back-line of Birchall, Sicily and Scrimshaw would be insane.

Implementing birch would be a waste now imo, only makes us older and takes experience away from others...

 

[tige19]

I'm thinking KB will come in for Chip and Jaeger for someone, only expecting the two changes. We're really going to rue our losses to the Dogs and Saints come the end of the season.

Surely smith doesn’t play.. couldn’t grab the footy at all and took a few mark like he was hugging a teddy bear.

 

[Pessimistic]

The defenders call themselves the ‘misfits’

With porkins passing to the other guy in the goal square we haven’t seen quite this level of floggery since.....2008!

 

[MasterSamurai]

Wouldn’t be surprised if Smith missed more than a week tbh. Wrists can be upto 4-6 weeks!

 

[LRobbo]

Hate to burst anyone’s bubble here but Jiath isn’t debuting on Monday.
Out defence is settled at the moment and if Stratton gets up it’ll just be Brand in for Frawley.
The game was comfortably in hand until we got crushed by injuries again to the same line of the ground.
Let’s not all freak out, we should be 4-0, unfortunately we are 2-2 and you can put that down to injuries at critical times when we were well on top. The new 6-6-6 rule is just heaping pressure on sides with an injury mid game.

Man for man Geelong have us covered, midfield particularly but our system is very sound.
Give us a sneaky chance

 

[KOLOKOTRONIS]

I'm thinking KB will come in for Chip and Jaeger for someone, only expecting the two changes. We're really going to rue our losses to the Dogs and Saints come the end of the season.

Any early news on Stratton. Chip whilst solid and important is somewhat more replaceable than Stratton. Not undermining his value by any stretch, however our captain is our captain.

Re the losses you mention, I can’t agree with you that we are really going to rue them. If we made horrendous mistakes and dropped our bundle totally then I could understand this. We simply have had zero luck!

To drop two players in a game twice is just massive. Not to mention the early withdrawal of our best midfielder behind Mitchell and a chunk of experience in shiels, Burgoyne, and our captain being concussed. The losses have been incredibly irregular. On both occasions held four to five goal leads when we had 22 fit players.

I’m not convinced that we are a bottom 8 team as many mention.


KOLOKOTRONIS