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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

It's a bit of a worry when Mike Sheahan has a firmer grip on reality than most Carlton fans.

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I AM DISENFRANCHISED

Yes hind sight is wonderful be at 7 and 4 with easy games ahead supporters had a right to adjust their expectations

I dont go for this we set goals at the start of the season and we are tracking towards them - situations change daily and goals should be adjusted to suit

I was a bit dissappointed with Swan saying we are about where they thought they would be-
Shouldnt you enter every season with an eye on the grand prize - why set your goals so low

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If you allow the Government to change the Laws in an emergency
They will create an Emergency to change the Laws

I agree SB.
Hawthorn won an unexpected flag a couple of years ago.

Why the hell shouldn't we disppointed with last months efforts?
Why the hell shouldn't we be demanding that the team play at their best every week?
Why the hell shouldn't we demand finals at a minimum every year with top4/GF the only successful KPI?

Anything less is just un-Carlton and we should let others keep thinking differently not us!!

Totally agree.

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31-3-2015 - R.I.P AFL, corrupted lying pricks
12-5-2015 - Go WADA
18-8-2015 - Suffer Hird* u lying flower
12-1-2016 - CAS goes bang, happy new year.. Drugcheats forever..

Mike Sheehan is way off the mark. Our reaction isn't knee jerk. We haven't beaten anyone for 2 months. The lack of intensity has been evident over 3 or 4 games. What about forward structure? Do you really think Gibbs, Murphy have improved much this year

No doubt Mike will be writing the complete opposite next Monday should we lose to Sydney.

According to Mikes article we're-

1st for clearances, 4th for disposals, 4th for effective kicks, 5th for inside 50s, 5th for goals, 1st for scoring accuracy and 4th for tackles.
It all sounds good yet we've won one game out of our last 4.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

Just when we need to be flogged in the media, Sheehan goes and writes a semi-balanced article

The Bullies copped a nice caning and responded accordingly, ditto Hawks a couple of months ago, and the list goes on. Damn the Bummers for grabbing the limelight this week

While our averages may look good (how the flower are we the most accurate team ), the trend is very much South

Time to respond this week boys.

Agreed re: the Bummers in the news, damn them for being shittier than us this week!



Brett will be thanking Mike for providing him with stats to reel off in his post match press conference this week. Particularly if we get flogged again. "But we're 1st in clearances and 5th in inside 50s, so we must be doing OK".

What are your thoughts on our current form slump BV?

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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

THIS.

Cleary we're brilliant at a lot of important things...so clearly hopeless at plenty of others.

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"I had to eat"

I can answer that.

Because if you set goals that are unrealistic then ultimately the outcome is a sense of frustration and
disappointment. Self-belief and confidence in the future go out the window.

IMO Carlton is about where they should be - based on the quality of their playing list. The question no
one seems to be able to answer, myself included, is which players on that list will continue to develop
and improve and which ones have reached or near reached their maximum potential and will never be part
of a premiership team. We all have our thoughts and opinions, (and discussing these I think is a lot of fun),
but none of us knows.

IMO, we're playing dumb, lazy footy and our forward entries and structures are all over the shop.
As a result, our mids are constantly caught out on the transition which places our backs under enormous pressure. Cooney, Boyd and Griffen had 23 inside 50s between them. Gibbs, Judd and Murphy had 12. Our confidence is down which impacts on our ball use. To see players like Bryce Gibbs have 6 clangers, a disposal efficiency of 58% and miss targets without any real pressure reflects that.

We have always struggled when the opposition push numbers back due to the lack of game sense training in previous years and it once again came back to haunt us on the weekend. To allow Brian Lake to play his natural game was a disaster and his 10 marks compared to the combined Carlton total of 5 inside 50 marks was a farce. We should have played a totally negating player on Lake. Setanta should have concentrated on spoiling Lake and blocking his run at the ball. The problem wasn't so much our long bombs to the 50, it was the lack of contests when it got there. Eddie, Garlett and Yarran cant feed off the crumbs when there aren't any.
I would have played a negating player on Lake and hit up the other tall at every opportunity. Once Lake was allowed to control the air, their running backs played off their men and zoned our forwardline. Had we created a contest, we would have demanded accountability from them.

Just as importantly, once Lake marked and their running backs rebounded with the ball, it drew our mids which created space for Griffen and co. to recieve and pinpoint inside 50 without pressure. It was a domino effect from the full forward line.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

Thanks for your thoughts BV - one more question; why are our mids always caught out on the transition?

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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

2 reasons, turnovers and a lack of forward structure.
Firstly, once a team wins the ball, you want your players to spread and create running options. If you give it back to the opposition, there's little opportunity for accountability on the way back.
Secondly, if you allow the opposition to run the ball out of your forwardline unimpeded, you're mids are sitting ducks. Either they are drawn to the exiting backmen which allows their opponents to recieve the easy ball down field or the're caught in a 2 on 1 situation which inevitably results in a free opposition player. AFL players are trained to utilise a numbers advantage more than any other skill.
It's no conincidence that when our forward line supplies effective defensive pressure, we often win the game.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

Obviously not BV, but I'd like to add my thoughts on this one.

For years we have had the issue of over-committing to forward thrusts and early on the season we seemed to have it under control save for the Essendon* game where we collapsed into a heap almost identical to that of last year.

By pushing up from defence and even midfield too quickly with numbers or too slowly by ball movement, the opposition zone or wall becomes compressed and each zone assignment is quite easily handled by the up to 14 players involved. This also allows the opposition to place a man on any key threats like Betts, Waite, Judd, etc, while maintaining a tight zone.

The other effect this has is those transitioning it forward find it difficult to get it past CHF, and often resort to running from CHB almost right up to CHF when numbers have overcommitted, or running it sideways when things are too slow. While attacking runs are great to initially wrong foot those set up in the zone, if you're taking 2 or 3 bounces, you've generally eaten up about 7 to 15 seconds, plus the journey of your kick, and the ball will have only travelled up to 150 metres lengthwise. A reasonably structured side will be completely in place and ready to shut down your 50 if you're going to try and kick into it.

By going for the mark when the opposition are happy to crowd the aerial contest, the inevitable happens and the ball is turned over, at which point a quick kick to about 60 m out puts it over the top of about 12 of the 14 guys sitting up there. If they have 6 blokes in what is known in other sports as the underneath zone - in this case around the 50 arc - these guys can quickly push off and create options on the flanks and through the corridor to take advantage of the 1-on-1 contests available forward of the ball.

Even when we do make it down in time, we either seem to be too exhausted, too stupid or too soft to make a play on the incoming ball. The net result is wasted energy trying to push forward and back all the time for little gain, while opening up huge counter-attack opportunities for the opposition. North are rubbish and they made us look second rate because we weren't prepared to be smart with our running and ball movement. Whether this is a relic of the Pagan era or a limitation of Ratten's abilities is debatable.

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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.

Got to disagree on the second point to an extent BV, I would argue it's how we structure in midfield that creates the perception of a lack of forward pressure. The more a player is forced to run and carry, the more their options will dry up, and the greater chance there is for a player to run them down.

Yes if you're in the vicinity, you need to chase, harass, and be involved in 50/50 contests, and they do regardless, but if they're in space, you're going to be busting a nut for little gain if the boys up the field aren't covering the options.

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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.