GreatEx wrote:
(cue piano-based commercial jingle) : as a busy dad with a @#$%&! off big mortgage, I don't have the time nor the disposable income to watch daytime Carlton matches on pay TV. So can someone with greater insight suggest why we consistently start so poorly? It seems the obvious response is that the players are not switched on, but is that really likely to happen every week? Surely our coaching staff are not OK with that? Is it more a tactical issue, where we don't assign tags until later in the game? In the free-TV games I do watch, our recovery always seems to involve Ed going onto the bloke who got 15 pozzies in the 1st Q, limiting him to 10 or fewer in the last 3. Are we stubbornly trying to "play our own game", just like Bolton stubbornly stuck to whatever the @#$%&! that was, even when we couldn't crack 50 points in most games? Is it only when being reactive that our quality shines through, and should we take pride in being a fast-reacting side rather than obsess over proactivity (sic)?
IMO it all starts in the midfield.
When the game is at its hottest, its in the first quarter from the first bounce.
The opposition have big midfielders going in hard, breathing fire till they run out of gas.
We put in two midgets Ed and Murph and a skinier version of Colossal Cripps to fight it out.
Cripps is nullified and the 2 midgets get smashed hard in close and overrun trying to win the ball.
When the damage is done, the opposition midfielders rotate out and we are left to adjust in the next quarter by tagging their most damaging player, get Murph out of the midfield and get Setterield Walsh to help out Cripps...and we slowly crawl our way back because we have superior running ability because we are light on our feet.
It might be as simple as starting with a big bodied midfield group such as Cripps, Jack and Walsh and possbily se Ed to tag after the bounce.
It looks too simple. There must be more to it. Breathing fire and an uncompromising attack on the ball and the man may quell the opposition's sense of dominance early enough to avoid the damage of a bad start.
We need a better mid field group, and I have to say its hard to believe but the opposition have worked out ways to nullify Cripps. Its up to Cripps to work through that. He is allowing the opposition to dominate him. He gets no chop out from the midgets.