5 player kicked goals for us. No mids, no HBF, no wings.

You can’t expect to beat top sides with an over reliance on so few.

Cottrell was playing wing wasn’t he?

ˆˆ i'm not sure we can apply the pressure to lock the ball in (for 4 quarters) with the tall team?? even the gws win, we dipped to 145 pressure rating in the 2nd qtr

don't forget... we're not dominating stoppage and clearance either. we're the 16th ranked team from conceding from stoppage.

It has bugger all to do with the size of the player - It is who the player is and the effort they put into tackling and pressure
Cripps 8 games 45 tackles
Hewitt 8 games 42 tackles
TDK 8 games 30 tackles 3rd
Acres 8 games 29 tackles
Harry 8 games 28 tackles = 5th with Newman
O Hollands 7 games 21 tackles
E hollands 6 games 14 tackles
Owies 8 games 15 tackles
Fog 4 games 19 tackles
Orazio 7 games 9 tackles
Carrol 7 games 9 tackles
Cunners 3 games 10 tackles
Charlie 8 games 8 tackles
Durdin 7 games 15 tackles
Weiters 6 games 16 tackles
Young 5 games 2 tackles
Gov 5 games 10 tackles

Its the cattle you have on the park and the effort they are prepared to put in not the size of the cattle

i wish i could be this hopeful & optimistic. we all agree footy is about winning. not how it looks, and individual stats or any other parameter. just winning.

our record with two rucks over last season and this is:

regular season 2023 lost 9 won 1 - won two finals.

and this season we've lost 3 of the last 4 with two rucks. melbourne abandoned the whole thing and they had no semblance of a forward line, and gawn is a much better forward than tdk. and grundy a much better ruck than pittonet. and they scrapped the idea. bcos. it. just. doesn't. work.



what we all skip over is the bit about how much harder the rest of the team has to work & run when you start the game down one runner in favour for a tall. we've completely stopped running out games. pies ran us off our feet after quarter time. crows rebounded all game long and put pace on the ball and we couldn't keep up, and the cats suffocated (and then spread) the immediate area around the stoppage after we'd won it and shut down our options bcos we couldn't chase for 2 hours.

and that's not even getting into BV's excellent piece about the stoppage game relies on individual performance, over a turnover game which is a team system where everyone plays a role. the turnover game wins premierships, and the stoppage game doesn't.

pies play the latter and really if we're all honest here, they should have won by 4-5 goals. cats should have too, if not for that late burst of goals we scored bcos they were down a midfield rotation (danger) and fell away in the last half of the 4th.

Harry played a great game, won't hang him on that moment. Ran 14kms, that's crazy for a tall forward.