Oh Jade you did not seriously do this did you?
My take is there appeared to be times at the game against Melbourne that players were not giving it 100%. Having watched the game twice since I'm more of the opinion that the players were very tired.
I have been wondering for a couple of weeks if we are in a period of heavy training load in preparation for the second half of the season. Saturday night has almost convinced me that we are.
Effort was there, but the players were clearly more fatigued than usual.
In addition to this:
- We do not handle wet conditions very well. We need to train with the sprinklers on as Kaiser Power has suggested in another thread. I was thinking the same thing.
- The commentators on Saturday night mentioned that they think Neeld has loosened the strings to allow the players to play naturally a bit more than earlier in the season. While I don't rate the commentators highly, I also thought this at the game. You could argue we let them do this however I would suggest that at least it was both.
- It's been suggested by many people who know Melbourne well that they have been playing poorly and looking like they don't try because the coaching staff there had been training them with pre-season style loads during the season. They have been doing this to try and speed up their fitness base for the next few years as they realise this year is awash. They looked to be running on top of the ground far more than they have all year. With the constant pressure from the media and public I would not be surprised if they have eased up on this the past couple of weeks.
I was far from happy about Saturday night, however there are no knives from me. Talks of flogging the group at training without knowing the background of current training loads, what has been happening with the opposition etc is just old school rhetoric.
If the players were not trying we would not have won the contested ball, had more inside 50s and time in forward half.
I trust Hird/Bomber know what they are doing and will respond in the appropriate manner.
Um, yeah I think he did.No but I asked him if he's prepared his Brownlow speech.