Yes Cimm, thats because we had no "hit up" targets up forward as they were all up the ground dragging defenders away.
A serious question, what would you like the midfielders to do when they have the ball and are under immense pressure?
Theres nothing wrong with kicking long into the forward line if you have a half reasonable structure to capitalise on it.

The recruiting does need addressing and hopefully the addition of Williams will make a difference.

I thought the picks of Temay, Graham and Menzel were good but I dont get the pick of Cachia. Handy player but does he add to or improve our list?

Someone like Colquhoun or Garlett would of been better. Rookies should be for talented kids with a spot for a Mature Aged ruckman. How many of these kids step up and become good players?

Duigan, Cachia, Curnow, Joseph can go. Add nothing. Big decisons on McCarthy, Watson, Mitchell, OKeefe, Davies, Collins, Dale & Ellard.

Personally I don't care if they all go.

Need to go after some talented young guns via trade if we can and hopefully stockpile some picks for the draft.

Too defensive and inflexible in the first quarter. As much as I hate saying it, Hird and Thompson have had the better of us in the box 2 out the past 3 games.
Our decision to use Betts, Armfield and Garlett to drag Baguley, Hibberd and Fletcher up the ground backfired badly.
They sagged off their opponents and had 21 possies between them in the first quarter.
The stupidity is we absolutely controlled the ball and had 18 inside 50s for the quarter. To walk away with one goal was a disgrace. We should have expected 4 goals minimum from that sort of dominance.
T\Adding to that, the coaches need to understand that if the opposition have a loose man in defence, taking numbers away increases their advantage.
3 against 2 is far more effective than 7 against 6 yet we allowed them the advantage by vacating the forward line.

For those who talk about us failing to run out 100 minutes, nobody can. The game is to fast and too highly paced. The key is to capitalise on your opportunities when you have momentum and we failed to do that. Essendon* went into the game with a plan to shut down our switches of play and to leave a goalkeeper behind the ball. It took our coaches a quarter to address it and unfortunately the opportunities presented by our early dominance were gone.
To see the ball continually hit the deck without us having front and centre crumbers was doing my head in.

As I've said all along, we have the personnel to play finals footy but we're just going along at the moment. Our form is virtually where it was at the start of the season and we need to find the key accelerate our improvement.
Its not about cutting the guts out of the list at the moment. Its about getting the maximum output from the personnel available to you. We're still not doing that.
Lastly, I'm not a great Warnock fan but I wanted him in the team this week to capitalise on Ryders lack of height and support and the non selection was an error IMO. In the last quarter, their mids received silver service at the stoppages.
Too focussed on limiting their strengths instead of capitalising on ours was the biggest mistake.

We played a very good team last night.