motts wrote:
Lots of talk about injuries in the press this week and especially the impact of how players are pulling up after playing on the rock hard Gabba.
Our performance against Essendon* after playing at the Gabba the week before was flat and totally different to how we've played every other game.
Do you think this had an impact on our performance?
It would be nice to blame the Gabba, but the Dogs won after playing up there and on a similar turnaround to us against Port. Although it was Adelaide they beat.
I think we were just as nervous as all hell. Coaching staff down. I think the intention was there to take the game on when we had the chance, but we just couldn't execute. Walks very early in the first steamed through the centre to pump it into the forwardline, Sugar took a mark at CHB and played on straight away in traffic with his first possession I think, in senior football, which I think indicates the instruction was there to be proactive. Unfortunately we just kept on coughing it up and any momentum we were buliding was continually stifled.
The continual mistakes also led to a number of players going into their shells. It is damn hard to win a game of football with a disposal efficiency of 65% and it was worse at halftime. Ten players were in the fifties with Waite at 35%. Army in the first half does all the hard work and then storming towards goal misses the lot. Walks, Sugar and Yazz all under little or no physical pressure miss targets by twenty or thirty metres and kick it out on the full. That is the indication of a tense team that just weren't relaxed enough to execute their skills.
The workrate wasn't there either. The Bombers were much better than us with their defensive pressure and we continually seemed to be outnumbered which is generally a good indicator of which team is working harder. Offensively our little blokes (although no Garlett) weren't getting to the feet of our big blokes who couldn't catch a cold, which made it even more important. Forty two inside fifties isn't high, but we won with thirty six the next week against the Crows. Our execution on the night was deplorable.
As much as I hate to say it the Bombers have to be given some credit. They counter attacked against us very well. It wasn't the usual shootout they have used to beat us in the past as they actually used the slowplay more than they usually did up until that point in time. This was a reaction to them being criticised for not being able to stop a team with a run on and to stop them running out of legs in the last quarter as they had in the previous two rounds. If we had played them the week before the game would have looked very different IMO. Some of the elements of our game that worked against St Kilda, for example, weren't possible against Essendon*, because of their faster backs. The also have a mental hold on us, as Port do against them and we do against Port
We really need to win our next game aginst them. Just to show that the coaching staff weren't totally with it on the night either, late in the third just after the Bombers had used their version of the slowplay keep possession signal(refreshingly a raised clenched fist
), we when we won it back then used our own version. Why did we do this when it was obviously what the bombers wanted?
It was just a really poor night for pretty much all concerned at Blueland. This is where I totally agree with Rexy
the personnel changes over the coming weeks allowed us to execute how we wanted to play a bit better. The main inclusion being Judd
The kick up the backside to senior players who performed badly also sent a strong message about acceptable performance levels.
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