if they are using the swarm in midfield it becomes a dogfight over who gets their hands on the ball we become overwhelmed by our lack of midfielders. therefore the runners and ball carriers are suffocated.

we have been a flaky football team because we are not contested in close.

that's one thing flanker types won't do as well!

first thing is get your hands on the ball!

Personally, I think the playing group is mostly okay, we're never going to have a perfect list, but so far as midfielders go the guys we have should be strong enough and capable of winning contested footy. Indeed the stats say we won the contested ball against the Saints. Just didn't look like it at all on the night.

I think the bottom line is our guys aren't hungry enough. They can keep telling us they are, but until it's displayed on the field for all to see, then it's pretty meaningless.

You can't tell me that Ryder, Bellchambers, Watson, Stanton, Lonergan, Howlett, Hocking, Jetta, Zaharakis, Colyer and Melksham have more ability and muscle than Kreuzer, Hampson, Judd, Carrazzo, Murphy, Curnow, Robinson, Gibbs, Ellard and Lucas.

Footy is played between the ears. It's workrate and not responding to their efforts to shut down our game plan. Richardson said that even though we lost the clearances, Monday night was the first time the Saints have been outscored from stoppages. It could have been different if we had put scoreboard pressure on and hit our targets. Get that right and we can go all the way.

This is exactly whats happened, teams have worked out how to beat us. Crowd the stoppages and apply plenty of physical pressure.

Has nothing to do with forward structures so swapping Waite and Hendo wont fix a thing.

The other thing thats been shown up is our inability to handle small forwards. We need to go back to last years format with 2 tall defenders, a medium tall and the a mix of smaller defenders and guys who can use the ball. I don't think we can play Jamo, Hendo, Bower and Laidler...let alone Duigan as well.

Better we got found out now than Wk 1 of the finals.

I have faith we'll adjust and get it right soon.

Exactly what i have been saying about our backline TBB. We need two talls and the rest onballer types with clean hands and composure. We will see what we mean when the MC put gibbs back with yaz. It will be completely different when the ball hits the ground and our attack from that point will have more zip and creativity to it.

This does plays into what Synbad is saying about us not having enough onballers. If we play too many back we wont have enough for actually on ball. Its an issue.

No major deck reshuffling is required just yet as long as we get the mix right. From there it is attitude and willingess to engage in the battle that will happen in a clogged stoppage.

We have been playing to risky when this tactic is applied to us. We need to reign it in a bit and enjoy the fight. Dont let it out of the bubble unless on our terms is golden rule. A rule we have been far from sticking to.

We can fight out way out of this if we want it bad enough. We have won dogfights before when we really set ourselves for it. The attitude we took to sydney last year has to be our attitude from this point on.

we win dogfights?

when?

Freemantle, the team you picked as the big improvers this year, that was a dogfight and I could have sworn we won that game.