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#23: Lachlan Henderson

The thing is though we've had a lot of bad games. Not just games that we lost, but games that we lost badly.

Although overal I thought we weren't as horrible as the Ess/Haw/North game - if only we'd kicked straight in the first quarter and that friggin ump had called advantage

..shocking display. ..constantly kicking high balls to leading small forwards.. ..certain mids too soft, and need a 'rocket'.... ..Judd and Murph [absense keenly felt] carry too many others..

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..if you can't be good, be good at it..

Missed the first qtr unfortunately.
I'm not about to slash my wrists over the loss. We kicked badly or we would have won.
The things that concern me are:
Judd getting held, scragged, knocked over and blocked from getting a run at the footy reeks of poor umpiring. The whole razon detre of the third umpire was to stop off the ball incidents but that has gone by the board. Some weeks they look for it but not others. Nobody went to his aid from the team or tried to block McPhee at any stage. Why not?
Houlihan played down back again and had little influence on the game. We all know that he has to play forward of centre. Half the reason we didn't take marks inside 50 was the way it went in. Houlihan is one of the best passes in the game and every week he plays forward he shows us that. If there is no room in the team for him up front (and I doubt it), he shouldn't play. I love the way he plays footy when he is in position but he is no defender.
Jacobs needs more nous. Last quarter when the game was there to win or lose, he got a fantastic left handed tap which he put from the left back pocket straight into the ten yard square for a Freo player to soccer through. Basic error of judgement and one we see too often.
Jamison telegraphed a handball to Joseph last night by standing still with the ball on the palm of one hand and his other hand poised at the top of the backswing. It was as though he was posing for a painting of how to handball the football for a skills magazine. The result was that his opposite number just ran to Joseph, tackled him as soon as he took possession and a goal resulted. Basic error.
Waite thinks he is his father and I wouldn't be surprised if he gets rubbed out for the third time this year. He may well be our most important player but he is no good to us in the stands. Play him in the VFL until he learns to control his emotions. At least that way we can learn to play without him.
Lucas is coming along OK as are Yarran and Garlett. We expect too much of them and want them to kick a bag every week. Not going to happen every week.
I am at a loss as to why Gibbs didn't play in the mids as an attacking mid instead of as a tagger. He is too good to be a tagger.
Hendo took a couple of nice marks last night but still lacks the presence of a Setanta. I think we missed the big bloke last night. He is so good at the contest that he brings the small forwards into the game. He also tends to hang around the hot spot a bit more and that straightens us up.
For all his faults, Hadley was one of the main reasons we got back into it last night.
Betts should play more in the mids where he can get lots of contested possessions. He has the tank for spurts there resting up front. That would free up a spot up front for Houlihan.
Kreuzer will be badly missed at stoppages but is not as dangerous around the ground as he was last year. If we can get Hampson to win at stoppages and take a few marks we can cover Kreuzer in this year's form. I hope he has a great recovery and comes back to dominate the competition. It just goes to show how suddenly your life can change. I agree with an earlier poster who said we should have had Hampson or Warnock in the team anyway against Sandilands. It happened last year when we dropped Setanta and put Betts in his place and then lost a tall. I reckon it is nice to have an extra tall available. IMO Setanta will be first picked for the next game.
We go to the break in the eight when all around us predicted we would be about tenth without Fev. Most of us would have taken seventh at this stage of the season had it been offered six months ago. We have a reasonable draw in front of us after the break. We know we can win enough to get into the eight when we kick straight. The rest of it is thereabouts.
I for one am feeling positive because the silly faults of individuals can be rectified from week to week. The team structure is OK. We showed it by beating good sides. Now we have to beat the not so good ones. Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. We wanted top six this year and then top 4 next year. We're still on track.

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Let slip the Blues of war (with apologies to William Shakespeare) (and Sir Francis Bacon, just in case)

I'm scratching my head trying to remember the other time Waite has been suspended this season? He got done for two weeks for the incident in the Port game. When was the other suspension?

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29 different attributes,
And only 7 that you like;
20 ways to see the world,
Or 20 ways to start a fight.

..been reported another time, but got off.. ..possibly commentators getting mixed up..there's also the time he was dropped, maybe thats what they're thinking..

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..if you can't be good, be good at it..

Walls made that comment during the game. As you're pointing out, he's been cited twice, suspended once.

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29 different attributes,
And only 7 that you like;
20 ways to see the world,
Or 20 ways to start a fight.

re: Blue Sombrero's point about Judd.

Yes, I agree. There isn't enough protection for Judd.

How can the umpires justify McPhee wrestling Judd to the ground, holding him down and continuing a wrestling match for more than 30 seconds?

Surely the umpires should be patrolling this stuff better.


re; the players we need going forward...we need speed...players willing to break the lines, create play and that is why I respect Armfield (despite his obvious flaws).... that play in the last quarter sets confidence up even though it was a miskick he broke the lines. Does Grigg have enough speed and accuracy with his disposal? What other options are there?



I am not fond of players who try to slow the game down nearly all the time such as Thornton. Houlihan also needs to regain some form.

So you're saying Carrazzo is a selfish player that rather than doing the team thing, focuses on trying to make himself look better? Wow.

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You want the flame? Give us the marbles!!

Can't dominate a first Qtr and kick 7 points and expect to win, just not going to happen.

Played catch up footy for the rest of the night and it was one of those nights where nothing we tried went right, we missed Murph massively and we have to get someone in the middle to give Judd a chop out, allowing him to be mauled the way he was by Mc pee and not helping him out is unacceptable.

Freo did look a bigger side and we need to have a cup of concrete each, although I thought we were a lot stronger in the last qtr.

Bottom line is that the footy Gods were against us last night, you could see the boys trying to get something going but nothing worked, there were a lot of mistakes made but it isn't tragic, I think a lot of the guys are tired as we do play a taxing brand of footy when we are up and about, the break is a good thing.

I put the whole game down to shitty luck, which sapped confidence, a couple of things go our way early and it's a different game altogether.

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We are the maybe blues

Ratten's press conference

http://sportal.com.au/mediaplayer/audio ... -good-8387

Loves his stats

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"I had to eat"

No. I would say he has been lazy with and without the ball in a team sense over the last two games. He has become far too single-minded for a senior player, and it's cost us fluidity in ball movement at key moments. He certainly wasn't closing down Pavlich away from stoppages, either.

And to clarify, by looking good I refer to taking too long to ensure clean possession when the knock-on is an option, or trying to thread a pass that isn't on, eg. kicking to a Betts lead in a tight zone.

You talk a lot about bias Hellas, but you make it painfully clear who your favourites are.

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29 different attributes,
And only 7 that you like;
20 ways to see the world,
Or 20 ways to start a fight.

He was selfish last night because 19 of his 26 posssessions were uncontested when it has been shown time and time again he lacks the ability to hurt the opposition when he has the ball in space. So why would he have so many uncontested possessions? The disappointing thing is he played the team role very well last week, holding Harvey for most of the game. So you really have to ask what would make someone who clearly would know he has massive limitations go and chase the cheap footy. The footy world knows he's not the man you want getting handball receives and kicking inside 50 yet so often that's what he did last night. He could have played a more team based role but decided not to, to the detriment of the team.

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"You are being watched. The government has a secret system. A machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because I built it." - Finch

Really so who stopped from Pavlich from accumulating? Also you say he's been lazy and single minded over the past two games how is that? He's taken the prime mover from both sides and done a reasonable job on them. You've tried to pick apart his game but you could do the same thing for every player out there. At least Carrazzo was accountable to a player, possibly the best and most influential one out there and he curbed his influence enough for us to win the game if we were good enough. Oh and he picked up 26 touches himself!! What a selfish S.O.B.

Your post portrayed him as a selfish type whose playing style is detrimental to that of the whole side. You could not be further off the mark. You point the finger at me about being biased but it's quite easy to see who your favourites aren't.

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You want the flame? Give us the marbles!!

This is one of the funniest posts I've read today. When he has the ball in space he hurts the opposition more often that not. He sacrifices his natural game every week to stop the oppositions best ball mover and does it successfully. Do the names Dal Santo, Harvey, Hurn, Davey, Mitchell Pavlich etc. etc. mean anything to you? To get those uncontested possessions he must gut run ONCE he has made sure his opponent hasn't won the ball. Do you understand this? It's not hard to comprehend. it's called ACCOUNTABLE FOOTBALL, something that's a huge weakness in our side. You want to criticise a player for gut running to space to provide an option for his teammates? I've read it all now. I can just hear Brett Ratten saying "Carrots, we want you to stop your man but under no circumstances are you to try and run off him and hurt him going the other way. When we win the ball back I want you to run away from any position that you may be able to provide an option for us to kick to." His 69% efficiency was 10% above that of the team's in total and no worse than any other mid.

Fair dinkum, THINK, THEN POST.

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You want the flame? Give us the marbles!!

LOL and to think if we kicked straighter for two of our shots at goal we wouldn't even be hearing this tripe!! It's certainly a fine line.

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You want the flame? Give us the marbles!!

Disappointed with last night's result, but don't put it down to lack of effort.

Losing Kreuzer early didn't help, and we put pressure on ourselves by not kicking straight in the first half.

People here forget that Fremantle is not the crap team they were even as recently as last season. The fact that we could make so many mistakes and still only lose by nine points indicates that we're on the right track. Freo is in the top four because they're a good team, so this is hardly a game which we should've expected to win such as the one against North Melbourne.

For me, this season was always going to be about inconsistency. Many of our key players are still young, and I have no doubt next year will be significantly better.

Last night our guys played with the right intensity and resolve, but as mentioned before, we kicked ourselves out of the game in the first half.

Keep things in perspective people. Last night wasn't as bad as some are suggesting.

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"The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, and the young know everything." Oscar Wilde

Carrazzo is actually one of my favourites.

Pavlich regularly pushed forward and looked dangerous, but our defensive players were the ones on his tail and trying to tackle him at that point. Carrots is one player on a decent list of names that should be ashamed of their output, particularly over the last fortnight.

It's as simple as this: Freo were dropping numbers back, yet finding loose men forward of the ball. Do you think we were working hard enough if they could manage such cheap forward 50 entries?

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29 different attributes,
And only 7 that you like;
20 ways to see the world,
Or 20 ways to start a fight.

For some reason you seem unable to deal with any criticism of Carrazzo. I don't understand why you are getting so fired up about it. If my argument was a blanket I hate Carrots post then fair enough but I mentioned in my previous post that he has a role to play (such as on Harvey last week). It's when he goes and gets uncontested possessions that he loses value. I'm not sure why that is so hard to understand...when you have the limitations that he has you should be giving the ball off to players who can deliver the ball inside 50 instead of doing it yourself.

This comment


is incredible. As Jimmae he tries to pinpoint a pass to someone inside 50 when he simply does not have the ability to do it often enough. He has shown time and time again that he can't do it yet so often he tries to do it - that is selfish footy and not knowing your limitations.

Why do you think no one goes near him when he has the ball in space - the opposition couldn't give a flying @#$%&! if Carrots is the one kicking inside 50 - he gets no attention at all when he has it in space...have you asked yourself why? Compare that to a Gibbs or Murphy who will hurt the opposition.

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"You are being watched. The government has a secret system. A machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because I built it." - Finch