If Garlett doesnt play on.

Not a lot between the two teams. We would need to be cleaner with our ball handling and cutback on the mistakes.
No Collins, Betts and a fitter Henda could give us the edge.

Love you too .

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Feel for Hammer

He got himself in the right positions today, but the number of times when he got his hands to the ball only to be spoiled by his own teamates trying to take MOTY was mindboggling.

Surely our forwards need to have more awareness.

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I see you watching me watching you.

I think the main problem is our "bomb it high to the hot spot" is nbot the way to play with our current players. When we are scoring we either run the ball into the 50 or kick it to a hard leading player.

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TC suffers from the social media illness - the death of respect and constructive discourse by keyboard.

Hampson is a dud, has always been one and will never be otherwise. As soon as people on this site realise this the better.

We can't wait until Kruzer is back to rectify this serious issue. I only hope Sentata plays well tomorrow as he, in reasonable form is far more appealing than Hampson.

If they play him next week then be prepared for more of the same and a loss this time.

Not the way the Crows are playing atm. We have to be pretty bad to lose to them.

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TC suffers from the social media illness - the death of respect and constructive discourse by keyboard.

Just returned from the game ... first time I've seen the boys live this year.
My opinion differs from most here. I walked away thinking that we are very close to being
a serious contender. Every team gets the yips and we had them bad in the first quarter - I can't remember
the score line but it was one or two goals and heaps of points. We were pretty even with them in general play
but found ourselves four goals down. That situation is game over for a lot of clubs a lot of the time. But not us today.
We worked our way back into the game and damned near pinched it. If we had of kicked with even reasonable
accuracy I reckon we might've had 'em by half time. We didnt today; it happens.

Question for the critics. What's a reasonable ratio of "smart" or "good" play versus stuff ups versus not really being in
the game? What do you expect? Armfield, Lucas, Ellard, Kruezer, Bower, Thorton ... sheeet ...I've even heard calls for O'Halpin to be rushed back on the grounds that we're a "dumb" team. Have all these guys stuff ups been erased from memories or something?

Collins was playing because he was BOG in the Ants a fortnight. He came on as a sub last week and struggled to pick up
the pace. I thought he still looked well out of sorts again today, but to bag the MC for playing him this week is ridiculous.
Players have to be given a chance and hindsight's always easy. It would've been ridiculous not to play him.

I could go on, but I suspect no one cares.

It would depend entirely on the selection committee.
Walker starting in the 21, Army and Lucas/Ellard in for Carrots and Collins, we'd win.
Couldn't possibly play that poorly again.

Nope

Most of the shit that set us back today is the same shit we've been doing for years. I doubt they'd learn from their mistakes in a week.

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WADA medical director Dr Alan Vernec describes Essendon* FC drug case as biggest scandal in team sport the world of sport has seen. #WC2WB

#GUILTY

Yep, good decision . If we're picking green players to play on the MCG in the two biggest games of the year based on Bullant form, why the @#$%&! didn't we recruit Iacabucci? He's slayed them for years!

He should have been brought in against a lesser side like the Crows etc where the pressure is lower. Let him get his feet slowly. We had too much inexperience today. Collins was just a part o that problem - which is not his fault.

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i'm not really stressing it now that i've had time to ponder.


I really hope the MC have the balls to drop some under performing players.

Starting with Betts and Carazzo, give me ellard and armfield any day.

Collins will clearly be dropped as well.

need to persist with hendo and unfortunatley hampson (while we wait for kruzer).

Duigan was pretty good today, he's slowly improving, he's going to make the odd dodgy decision or cruddy disposal but thats okay while he's finding his feet.

without seeing any of the bullants i'd like to see something like:

OUT: Collins, Carrazzo, Betts
IN: Bower, Ellard, Armfield

maybe drop walker if someone really steps up in the twos (lucas/mclean?)

Crows will be breathing fire after their 'slowdown'

Why?
This is a fansite. If we all agreed on this it wouldnt make any difference.

good insight kev.

Who actually coaches us on match days - watches the game unfolding, assesses the oppositions set ups and tactics and changes, responds or makes changes to give us a lift? Because Ratts, sitting in the back seats of the bench, couldn't be able to see anything that unfolds more than 20 metres away. is Reilly our match day coach. Do the guys in the box tell Ratts what was happening at either end or the other side of the ground so he can address his players? I just don't understand how he can hope to have a handle on all that is happening in the game sitting on the bench.

To progress much beyond last year we need some genuine stars to emerge. Yarran and Garlett are, and we have a host of good ordinary footballers but I doubt the top end quality is on the list to challenge for a flag soon. Next 5 weeks will give us a better view of where we are at.

I agree our forward structure is awful, but we have very few quality tall options to make it much better. Big K fit will make a big difference but we need to resist rushing him back or expecting too much of him this year.

Vigorous co-sign.

Classic case in point - Hendo steamrolling a pack instead of protecting the bloke in front (think it was Jeffy?) who was pole position for a mark. All he needed was protection - but no, let's smash into him. I think a forward line of Waite, Hendo and Hammer as the key targets would be the lowest footy IQ forward line in history.

This I agree with. At ground level it's bloody hard to see the whole game from an advantage point like the coaches box. He should get back up there and look at it from a different angle. Put Reilly or Brown on the bench.

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Go to http://www.snoutslouts.org/ for a look at the mighty GFC...

And contary to what many believe, I would piss on you if you were on fire.

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A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" -Winston Churchill

L.M 35-06

THE SKY IS FALLING. THE SKY IS FALLING.

Honestly, if we scrapped to a draw today with Judd dragging us over the line in the last quarter, and the usual suspects leading the way for 3 quarters, I could see why we're pissed off.

Instead, our two best players today were Curnow and Duigan. Two blokes who this time last year, were barely on most clubs' scouting lists, let alone their best 22. On top of this, Judd had five fairly ineffective touches in the last quarter, Murphy and Gibbs had minimal influence, Garlett only kicked a couple all day and Betts was non-existant......yet we still broke even with Dwayne Russell's wet dream.

That first quarter we played today was up there with any bad quarter we've played for the past 10 years. Yet we went in 16 points down.......through no effort of our own, and certainly to no credit to Essendon*. They pretty much outplayed us for most of the second quarter too, up until Fletcher's goal, which seemed to stir us into contention. We slowly clawed our way back into the game, when we could have easily been blown out of it by the 20 minute mark of the first quarter.

More importantly, I've seen us play Essendon* many a time in the past few years, and I've seen my fair share of Ray Chamberlain specials. Cheap free kicks that aren't just pulled out of thin air, but places that you would need to pay hundreds of dollars in hallucinagenics to reach. Alwyn Davey specials. Angus Monfries specials.

And yet we survived that last 5 minutes whilst doing our best to do ourselves in anyway. Was I the only one waiting for a free to be plucked out of thin air to Monfries should a stiff breeze hit his back with seconds to go? In the end I actually thought we had the rub of the coin today with the umpires, and almost felt bad about it, when I thoguht we were going
to run away with it, thinking our win would be tarnished by poor umpiring decisions.

On top of that, we started the game with a one man handicap. Forget Winderlich. Forget Dempsey.

We went in with Andrew Collins. The same Andrew Collins who has now played arguably the worst two consecutive games for the Carlton footy club in many a year. Ricky Mott-esque one may say. May he never get another go at it, but at the same time, surely there's some irony if he plays next week and is BOG at Etihad Stadium. Another Collo not wanting to play at the G for Carlton perhaps?

Out of the 22 who played today, the form shown was fairly consistent with what we saw last week. The annual PR related ommissions will be out in full force this week, and at least they'll be fairly done. Just bring back Lucas already...

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BLUES 2010: PAV AND JUDD = FLAGS. DOING IT FOR THE LOVE OF DICK PRATT.

HAVE YOU SIGNED UP FOR TALKINGCARLTON SUPERCOACH 2009 YET?

Rhino,

Much of your post assumes that the scum are a half decent side.

I'm not sure that they are.

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THEY LIKE TO SEND UP!!!!!!!!

Until each team plays each other the same number of times, the AFL, as a fair dinkum competition, cannot be taken seriously.

He (Mr Swann) said the honour and pride associated with the club's traditional navy blue jumper was priceless.

Have to disagree. Grigg was a hard player who would actually go in and get the ball. We need more of these type to give off to Judd and the outrider to beat all outriders Gibbs. No Grigg was actually a loss to our football club in my estimation. His kicking was not the best but a better kick and handballer than Carazzo!