The journey ends, but hopefully another begins.

The game for me was a microcosm of our whole year. Superb talent on display for all to see, and impressive play from our young players. But all brought undone by a lack of coherent team structure, set play nous, and corridor protection. This has caused us to yet again drop a game that should have been won.

The lessons from this game, and the year, need to be corrected. It seems this coach will be given a chance to do it - I hope he succeeds.

Summer starts tomorrow for Carlton, and it must all be about three things: Structure, Structure, and Structure.

PROS

1. Heath Scotland and Andrew Carrazzo deserve plaudits for standing up in the clearances. As secondary midfielders, they were great.

2. Gibbs dominated early but faded badly

3. I honestly don’t know who the guy wearing number 2 is but lock him in for the next 8 years at HBF. Andy McKay eat your heart out. I wonder where Jordan Russell went?

4. Our ruckmen got beat today, not because the other mob were better, but just older bigger. I like both 8 and 22 and with more size they won’t get pushed out of contests. Matthew Kreuzer has been asked to do too much this year, but gee he has done it well.

5. We have talent, we have the opportunity to build something great, I just pray those in charge can get our boys playing organised, impressive footy.

CONS

1. The Corridor - we concede it too easily, and use it too infrequently. I don’t know what our coach’s plan is, but this part makes no sense. They cut us up through the middle.

2. Team defence is poor - the ball streamed in with ease. We don’t play whole team defence. To become elite, we need to learn

3. Forward structure again - Compare their goals to ours. They kicked good solid lead-mark goals - we relied on the ball scummily falling over the back of a pack. There was some stat today about us being efficient when we enter forward 50 - I can’t reconcile that stat with what I observe in our forward play.

4. Some bad clangers by the fringe players. Wiggins, armfield, Cloke, Garlett. They all did some good things, but they did some shocking things too. Are they up to it? Well, Armfield just shouldn’t kick, the others need people to grab their spots.

5. If we’re still playing this type of footy by midyear next year, I think things could get nasty. Match Committee changes are obligatory over the summer, surely.


Well done to the boys for bringing Carlton to September. I’m proud of them.

But being in September is symbolic - you have to do something in September to give it meaning. And we must start working to that tomorrow.

The Carlton Football Club fights on.

Cons:
Upgraded my membership this year for gauranteed access to finals tickets!

Simpson - gone missing
Stevens - played 1 quarter of football
Our Defenders - beaten quite badly
Grigg - not ready to play

Pros:
Fevola
Russell
Gartlett

Cons:
At the end of the day, you live & die by your output. In our 1st finals game for 8 years, the following players should be disappointed in their output:
Judd
Murphy
Gibbs
Kreuzer
Betts
Simpson

Just another example of not being able to lock down a match. That was the worst qtr of football ive seen in a long time. I didnt see one good effort of any sort made by our midfield in the final 15mins. Basically handed the game to them on a platter.

Just awful.

Waste of text.