Blue Sombrero wrote:
Aah, I do love it here on TC.
Last week I went on about playing four quarters, Garlett being played out of position, Harry marking too far down the ground, SPS making dumb mistakes, Cripps opting for a couple of dumb options, reverting to the safe option of long down the boundary as soon as the pressure is on and the game plan being out of date. For my trouble, I was tag-teamed by several posters telling me to get back in my box, I was no real supporter, called a troll by someone in his first week on TC and how much I had changed from my formerly balanced self by someone whose insight into the game is always worth reading.
This week, lots of people are saying the exact same things I said last week.
The silence is deafening, because it's all true. There are hundreds of posters on here who have played high level sport or coached or both who don't just write stuff for the sake of it. I sometimes wonder whether the attack dogs have the same experience.
Everybody loves Harry McKay. Harry has taken more contested marks than anybody ever in the first three rounds of a season. That's awesome! He's our Full Forward so they must be generating lots of goals. No, they are mostly between half back and the wing, where he spends most of his time. Can anybody remember the great mark he took at HB, then wheeled around and belted it forty odd metres to the centre circle where there was not ONE single Carlton player near the ball drop? He was in the group of the closest players to our goal on the HBF. DUMB! And then is behind the goals vision in the last, I think it was, where Sydney had a man in the defensive goal square and there was another one cruising our F50 arc. NOT ONE Carlton player was on the attacking side of the centre. How on earth are we ever going to score enough goals to win a match when our forwards live in the defensive half of the ground? If it's to zone off the defensive 50, it isn't working. We see it every game where the opposition ball carrier has a choice of targets standing unattended inside their fifty. PLEASE! make Harry play out of the square where he forces a defender to be accountable and where he can run and jump at the football one on one. Lobbing it on his head where he always has at least two to contend with (often including one of our own) is too predictable.
In the first, we ran, carried, used the corridor, possessed the footy and kicked five, which should have been seven.
In the second we kicked long to a contest, allowed Sydney to possess the ball and we kicked one.
In the third we kicked long to a contest, allowed Sydney to control the footy until the 28 minute mark where we ran, carried, passed down the corridor controlled the footy and delivered to a leading forward for two quick goals.
In the fourth we tried to mix it up, over used handball, kicked to a contest deep in the goal square, had 19-5 F50 entries and kicked 2-6 or something.
We played two quarters of decent footy and one where we at least tried to mix it up and couldn't deliver.
There is a pattern emerging already this year. When we run and carry, we can mix it with good sides. When we revert to the Malthouse plan we get done over.
Personally I think Harry got exposed due to the lack of Curnow and Gov in the second half. You still need a leading forward to link up the ground when coming out of defence, but his leads were mainly ineffective. This is something that he still needs to work on. I also would rather see him running from the square but as yesterday proved he might still have to go up the ground to get touches and risk being the furtherest forward player. This should of been Levi's role also but I think he is cooked at AFL level (let's hope I'm wrong).
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
