Agree with that Johnny but we really need to get the monkey off the back with these guys - the last 7 times is terrible -its worse than Essendon*
Who didnt go to the game expecting the krakouer brothers to be roughed up by guerra et al
we knew judd was going to be hammered -we knew given our first 3 choices to play on Franklin - bower waite and walker were not there that if he got off the leash we were going to struggle

We always struggle against their cluster whilst other teams have mastered it and score heavily against them - they are slow apart from hooper and rioli and we should have been able to exploit it

Sick of being intimidated by them - look at panic when we got within 4 goals in the third quarter imagine if eddie and setaint had done the right thing near the end of the third quarter

Im waiting for the return bout against these arrogant pricks - hopefully not this year which means they wont make the finals - next time we really need to put them to the sword

after winning under those conditions last week against port, its hard to say our team is mentally weak. We showed a lot of mental strength and character to win last week. It was just a bad day at the office today.

Media commentators are just like knee jerk reactionary supporters. They change their attitude week to week. If we still had Fev we would be 1 dimensional when we didn't win. Now we have more options it is the HBF's fault if we don't win.

If we had run and worked harder with Fev we would have won more games than we lose. Likewise with the current setup. No run, no win for most teams, including us.

We are not a Bigman short necessarily, we are are a few big men injured in Bower and Austin. A guy like Buddy is a freak and he will cut you up if he is on. Roughy is a tough to control, just like Josh Kennedy is now and Hendo will be.

Regards Cazzesman

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Ricky Gervais - “Everyone has the right to hold whatever beliefs they want. And everyone else has the right to find those beliefs f***ing ridiculous.”

I honestly think that we need to add some hard tough players to the team. We just aren't physically strong enough or tough enough at this stage. Physically we can get stronger with another preseason or two but most of our players are not what I would call hard and tough and IMHO tough players are worth their weight in gold and we need a couple in the team.

Wouldn't have made any difference today but I thought Judd did quite well to get up and keep going after he got poleaxed. you could hear the collision from the other side of the ground.

Who let the umpires in?

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The way I see it is, if we had won the game today, we would have gone into next week against the Eagles aiming for a fourth straight win, then against Melbourne aiming for a 5th straight win, then against North, for a 6th straight win, and...further down the fixture, against Freo aiming for a 7th. It would make the pressure greater than it needs to be, for games that we're favoured to win already (with the exception of the Fremantle game perhaps).

We know with a young group it is hard to stay up for long periods of time. Hell, we've seen with even the competition's best that it is hard to stay up week after week. Just take a look at Geelong. Would rather us drop a game off the back of two very good wins rather than become over-confident heading into a period of games that we're "expected to win". Further, I would back us in to beat the Eagles next week when we need to bounce back, rather than with a team full of over-inflated egos, pumped up from the media. We were bound to drop a game somewhere along the line of 'fancied' games...please be realistic. We'd all rather win than lose, but at the end of the day, taking the positives out of a loss like today is much better than sobbing and slitting wrists.

If someone had said prior to the season that we'd be 5-4 after round 9, and a red-hot chance of being 6-4 after round 10 and 7-4 after round 11, then they probably would have been carted off to the looney-bin. As others have said, our draw in the opening rounds of the year has been tough, but we have fought through it. Considering the opposition we've faced and beaten, I think the supporters should count their lucky stars that things haven't panned out the way the media were predicting- some said 1-8, and so on. If there is this much sulking going on after we're 5-4 and a real show to be 6-4 next week, then I would really, really hate to see the reactions of so-called supporters if we did go 1-8.

People just need to relax.

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Premierships: 1869, 1871, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1877, 1887, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1914, 1915, 1938, 1945, 1947, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1987, 1995.

"GIBBS."

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THEY LIKE TO SEND UP!!!!!!!!

Until each team plays each other the same number of times, the AFL, as a fair dinkum competition, cannot be taken seriously.

He (Mr Swann) said the honour and pride associated with the club's traditional navy blue jumper was priceless.

Yep, last week the same Ch7 commentators were saying we were top 4 material. IIRC Sheahan said we were the third best team in the comp.

As much as I love Carlton, even I know they are not the messiah. Yet.

The first question to ask - are we better and a more advanced football team than at this stage last year? (My answer: Yes)

Second question - are we capable of consistently competing at our highest level week in week out? (My answer: Not just yet)

But, with each game we play the team is getting better. Even a poor effort like today will help the team identify the areas we need to work on.

As a group our players aren't ahead of expectations and they're not really below expectations.

Today sucked, but so far this year, we have generally bounced back well from a loss. We've strung a couple wins together twice this in 2010, now lets work on three.

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Am I the only Blues fan who hates Luke Hodge for being a sneaky sniping turd who the umpires seem to love?

We never beat these p**&%s it annoys me so bad. They physically bash us everytime.
All ill say is how they were paying $3 for the win is beyond me. Needless to say i was on and collected.

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Matty Kruzer you star!

Hello all, long time reader first time poster etc.

I went yesterday and yes, it was bloody disappointing to see us put up such a poor showing. Especially given that both our rotten games this year have been big home games with a big crowd in attendance! I also had a bad feeling about the game like many of you did as well and could tell it was going to be a stinker in some way.

A few comments:

- I do think there is some mental block there which should be addressed but will probably rectify itself with time and experience. We do struggle when playing as favourites (see Hawthorn and Essendon* games this year), when playing a team with have a poor record with (Hawthorn, Essendon*, in the past St Kilda, Sydney, Adelaide) and we seem to freak out when we get a few goals down and panic. We are murderous front runners but generally poor chasers.

- I agree with the poster who said we could do with some big tough blokes in the team especially given the injuries to nearly out entire defence. It was a very physical game and the Hawks were doing very well at constantly niggling and intimidating our players (yes I think they have some real sniping sneaky b*stards on their side) - I think Setanta spent most of his time in a shoving match and we often looked hesitant. Somethingfor the recruiting team to think about in the future perhaps.

- Setanta needs to be told that if he marks within 20-30m of goal he's having a shot, end of story.

- Overall consistency will be our main issue this season, we're just not quite ready yet. I think we will be awesome come 2011 but this year will be a bit up and down.

Against the Saint and Cats we were the hunters, yesterday we were the hunted and just like Essendon* the last few times we can't handle it yet.

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"We used to sit around and talk about how bad the game plan was." Anthony Koutoufides

Spot on. It's drawing a very long bow to say any of those players inclusion would have made a difference, the team as a whole were not mentally switched on from the captain down and Hawthorn's zoning and tackling exposed that. Perhaps against a lesser side we may have got away with it but Hawthorn came to play and we didn't.

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You want the flame? Give us the marbles!!

It's worth noting that it's pretty clear we have followed Geelong's handball happy game plan this year and the Hawks are the one side who have done okay against the cats during their dominance.

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"We used to sit around and talk about how bad the game plan was." Anthony Koutoufides

If you're referring to times like 2007-08, then I agree. But as for this year, I do not agree that they've been the only team the give the Cats grief.

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Premierships: 1869, 1871, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1877, 1887, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1914, 1915, 1938, 1945, 1947, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1987, 1995.

"GIBBS."

The handballs were killing me yesterday. Every time BAM tackle/free kick/turnover.

Had our chance to give them an almighty shock late in the 3rd term but pathetic kicking for goal and dumb decision making cost us any opportunity of making a game of it... Even Judd is some shocking things today...

Just on the Juddster, has anybody else noticed how bad his kicking for goal is, or how reluctant he actually is to kick for goal on the occasions he's on the run 50 metres out. This is the one area where Ablett Jnr has it all over the Great Man....

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James Hird and Essendon* FC - #FOREVERDRUGCHEATS

Lets just face facts! This is a team that really has the wood on us, they match up really well against us and we have no idea how to beat them at their game irrespective of where they are or we are on the ladder. Its just like the mob from Laxette centre has it all over the swannabies.

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Blueboy forever

Agreed, sometimes doing the team thing is to kick the f%^*& goal.

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"We used to sit around and talk about how bad the game plan was." Anthony Koutoufides

I thought throughout the game we seemed fatigued; playing with heavy boots. Just seemed that way.
We had a lot of peripheral/ developing players in, a loss of 6 of our best 22 from the list, and our 3rd game in 3 weeks, after a stirling come from behind win away with 2 injured on the bench, and that's at the beginning of the game. Moving on, we had lost 2 players before half time and 3 missing by 3/4 time.

We picked a young, inexperienced, developing and light bodied team to go head to head with a team who looked bigger, play dirtier with nothing to lose and the whole world focussed on how they responded this weekend. The team we picked were always up against it, and I was proud to see them fight their way back at the end of the 3rd.

A tired young team fighting in the wrong weight division is what it looked like to me.

We will be much better when we have Waite, Walker, Bower, Austin, Houlihan, Hadley, McLean, all available for selection; even Grigg against the Dawks would have been good to have available for his toughness.

We'll get 'em when we have our best on the field to combat them; hopefully we do a Brizzy 09 on them during the finals in 2010.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue