Reading a post on another subject a satement made by "thePsychologist" hit the nail on the head.
"Even after watching the pre season games the importance of our ball use and decision making is our biggest area of concern".

While our depth has certainly improved making it more difficult to select our best 22, its time to stop selecting the poor decision makers. Bower (and i do like him as player), Jamison (never to be played forward), Setanta, Thorton and Joseph (prepaired to give him some more chances) Armfield (does bring speed and aggression to our backline) are some that fall into this catergory.

The ability to know when to take the game on is a skill not everyone has, only those with natural flair should be the ones to attepmt this.

Our greatest improvement this year is going to come from not giving the ball back to the opposition so often and so easy

Agreed, but I think Bower is actually a very good decision maker, with the exception of how he runs his patterns for the ball at times, and we have a bloke in Alan Richardson who seems to be working on this with a lot of players.

If you get the team generally working hard, making position when they don't have the ball and making the runs they need to when looking to receive, decisions for those in possession become a lot easier, and the decision tree for the style of play gets locked into a player's memory bank, so when the pressure is eventually turned up, they generally know how to recreate it, or can quickly do so with simple instruction.

One of our bigger problems during our slump last season was our willingness to run the ball up wide of the corridor, or move it to slowly down the same path. This caused huge issues when it came time to look for a target inside 50, as it was completely bottled up. Worse still, no one was prepared to feed the ball around to shoot from around 45-55m out.

This year, we need to ensure we don't overcrowd our own 50 as we push forward and position well through the middle of the park so we're not going to be left in no man's land on the rebound; be prepared to lead back and double back to the ball carrier as well as break wide to open up the switch on the wing, not just HB; we need to back our long kicking skills to feed players running away from the ball carrier as well as to take shots from 50 and finally, when all else fails, we need to try to steer the ball inside a 20-25 m arc from goal as centrally as possible, and ensure we have a something close to a 50/50 contest on offer.

That might sound complex, but on the surface it's simply that we need to perfect the balance of when and how far to roll down, when and how far to push forward and some of our skill execution.

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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.

So Jamison, Bower, Setanta and Thornton are out.
Just out of interest, who are our key backs while they're playing VFL?

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

In all seriousness, I think he's just poorly worded that rather than suggesting they need to go.

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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.

What, like deciding whether it's Rum & Raisin or Chocolate?

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Just because I'm offended, doesn't mean I'm wrong.

Blue vain you where half right!!!!
A strong carlton team will not have Setanta or thornton in its side. As i suggest Jamison has needs to improve his decsion making and should ONLY be played at full back. Bower, as i said i like as a player but i think sometimes he just start a run with out thinking about where he is running.

As to who to select while these guys are playing in the VFL thats a question of depth.

Thanks Jim. It will save me a heap of time logging on to TC now that you've assumed the role of explaining how everyone thinks and feels.
In fact, we can all take a vacation and you can exclusively hold conversations and counter arguments with yourself.

Be sure to represent me well.
I like to get grumpy at least once a week. (In fact, today is probably one of those days)

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

Touché.

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