Sue me. I'm tired from posting to the Couch Coaches who have it all worked out from the comfort of their lounge room.

Regards Cazzesman

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Ricky Gervais - “Everyone has the right to hold whatever beliefs they want. And everyone else has the right to find those beliefs f***ing ridiculous.”

Yazzamatazz, I am pretty sure Ratts said that Yaz pulled a hammy last year so they didnt want him to do one again so when he sensed tightness they took him off as we had a backpocket as a sub to replace him. I think molsey just made a typo.

Got Elllard right but nearly lost the game by leaving White and Laidler hung out to dry vs Walker and McKernan.......we got lucky through the great efforts of Curnow and Murphy in the last quarter and denied supply to the Crows tall forwards but that was all that saved us.
Not having options for the Crows tall forwards was a mistake that nearly cost us the game.

Walker is not a run of the mill forward and is a very talented unit IMO and will be hot on the GWS recruiting list of targets...towelled up Jamison in a preseason game and we had zero options for him with no plan B.

Bower, Henderson, Santy, Watson and Thornton is a list that should have provided one or two options regardless of form and fitness so we had some options on the bench.
Jamison and Waite as the only two KP players is not good enough for the better teams and the MC have to do better and find some decent structure

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"When you have the attitude of a champion, you see adversity as your
training partner."
- Conor Gillen

Elwood you can't have it both ways. On the 1 hand you are happy to say Taylor Walker is a very good player who is probably in the sights of GWS and then you want to play players on him who are out of form (Hendo), not fit enough (Bower/Santy) or not experienced enough (Watson). That would leave T-Bird as the 1 who could have come in.

White and Laidler did a solid job last week on their respective opponents in Ryder, Hurley and Crameri so obviously the MC wanted to keep them together with a view to having them form some back 6 co-ordination with Duigan, Yazz and Jammo.

In actual fact it was 30 scoring shots to 19 and inside 50's were 54 to their 42 so if the kicking boots had been on and the skill level at a respectible level the 6 pt margin would have been 36 and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

It was the disposal that almost cost us not the team selection.

And now we are back to square 1 again. Hendo really struggled this week, Bower looks to be injured, Setanta struggled to impact, Watson was servicable and T-Bird okay and the best of the 5 in patches.

Regards Cazzesman

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Ricky Gervais - “Everyone has the right to hold whatever beliefs they want. And everyone else has the right to find those beliefs f***ing ridiculous.”

That makes a bit more sense....thanks.


How is he looking for the swannies cazz??

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Circumstance has no value. It is how one relates to a situation that has value. All true meaning resides in the personal relationship to a phenomenon, what it means to you.

According to The Age he is "in doubt"

Yarran's hamstring worry ahead of Sydney clash
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/y ... 1dt13.html

Reports Bower injured his quad (again...)

Yeah its good. No point wasting energy running around like a mad man after a goal. Its too important to have that energy for later in the game.
Sure a celebration can help spark the team but it is more a one off type thing. Better to get a "lets get back to business" attitude and encourage the players to feed off that.

Simple really. The flooding teams dont seem to win. They just get close to winning. Like the Crows against us. We found a way.

Good post Cazzesman I agree the MC are getting most of the calls right. I think the MC are trying to get some stability in the back half so we can develop some cohesion. I too think we won the game hands down, it was just our disposal and shots on goal that let us down really badly. Hopefully tight games like this one will help us become a more composed and confident team.

I also agree with your informed comments on Gibbs, previous page. He is not our wrecking ball. That is the role of others. He has turned into an outside mid and a pretty darn good one. He is not a super star yet but he is a fine user of the ball and provides an outside option for the likes of Judd, Murph and others. There is a place for these sort of players in the modern game as our hard ball getters need to feed the ball out of congestion to someone. If that someone is Bryce Gibbs, who has silky skills, then that is fine by me. All these 'experts' calling for his head, who takes his spot? I will take the 'Pepsi Challenge' that his skills will pants anyone who comes in for the outside mid position. Roll on Gibber!!!

I wasn't at this game but I was at the first four (including Gold Coast). A few points of note:

- Loved him as a player, but if Brett Ratten is coaching this team to a premiership, I will be staggered. I am happy to eat my words, my hat and some humble pie, but I cannot see this man being in charge of Premiership 17. Am I being too harsh? I just think his gameplan only works because we've got such a brilliant midfield. We smashed them in the first quarter because we allowed the game to be open to our liking. Craig countered Ratten in quarters, 2, 3 and 4. What did Ratten do? Go about the game the exact same way. We did almost kick ourselves out of it, but we also allowed ourselves to be exposed defensively. That's right, allowed it to happen. Also, why doesn't he wear a head set and receive advice during the game? Is he worried about his hair being ruined? Is he arrogant? Is it Brett's way or the highway?

- Jamison appears to have gone up a notch this year. Great player. Also love Duigan and Laidler.

- Has Russell been moved to a different role for Yarran or have opposition coaches worked him out? I figured that Russell was outstanding as a rebounding defender last year. Now Yarran has been moved into this position, but, like Collingwood has with O'Brien and Shaw (ie. multiple rebounders), I feel that Russell could still have a purpose, and that has suffered a bit as a result.

- Gibbs. What's going on with the boy? He is playing worse than when Tony Romo was dating Jessica Simpson.

- The talent is there to put these teams away. Happy with 6 points, but I'm sensing a worrying trend for the last two weeks. Unless this is a blip, Sydney will put us to the sword next week.

- With Bower gone, White has to be the man now. He still has the jitters big time out there.

- Got to love Kade Simpson's response to last week.

- More so, got to love the way the midfield took the game into their hands when behind in the last. That character is what the whole team needs for four quarters. It's what made Geelong, Collingwood and Hawthorn the premiers of the last half-decade. They CAN beat pretty much everyone out there. They just need to keep at it.

- Finally, as a staunch critic and non supporter of Andrew Walker, he delivered last night. If he becomes Mr. Consistent, then I'll need to STFU.

HEadphones are in his hands most times the camera goes on Ratts and he talks to upstairs regularly it just not shown on telly.
He made changes as the game went on and i believe your observations are off and with the amount of chances we were creating and fluffing Ratts was well within his rights to stick with the plan. The other option would be to go the uber flood ourselves and cause a stalemate but in the long run that would not get us anywere. We need to learn to work through our difficulties and in the end we did and walked off with the points.

One thing Ratts is 100% right on is the swings in momentum in games is much much greater with this new interchange and sub rule.
He mentioned it in round one and so far in each game i have seen it has been true.

Was just going to post the exact same thing, word for word (except "this morning" instead of "tonight", but's that just being pedantic).

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"You can't polish a James Hird"

Crows still lack key area speed and strength

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/cro ... 6044219834

Intersting read from the other side of the fence

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Cheats never prosper (except in the AFL)

I was happy with our structures.
If you focus more on the statistics of the game than the scoreboard to get a sense of our performance and improvement, you'll see we were all over them in all areas apart from the goal conversion. The same as the Richmond game who we should have beat by 100 points.

If we can gain some confidence with our goalkicking, we'll see a big increase in our winning ratio/margins.

With regard to Hampson, I've been a positive advocate of his but his second efforts have gone out the window of late. He taps the ball and stands back and spectates the play. He needs to get his hands and knees dirty again to be of value.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

i have watched last 1/4 twice and we have def improved this year in a very important area and thats the one on ones in a contest, we seem to be getting the hard balls out to our aqdvantage and maintaining better pressure , i guess that comes with experience and another pre season under their belts

I watched the game on TV and have since watched the last quarter again. I was very impressed with our guts to come back from almost two goals down with not too long to go.

I actually thought Gibbs did some really good work in the last but before now was to hesitant to say so given the number of critics on TC. Did you notice that also?

Have you ever thought to think that Ratten may not be the match day coach


He doesn't appear to be calling the shots to me - he appears to be mentoring and barracking from the box

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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 like Carlos and he would certainly add more pressure at ground level. But not sure he'd add a whole lot more in the aerial contests. He's tall, but he plays like a small crumbing forward. And his ruckwork is pretty poor.

And for mine Warnock has been outstanding (other than his goalkicking the last couple of weeks). One of the in-form ruckmen of the competition.

When I was watching the game I turned to MW in the last and said "I bet Judd gets 3 Brownlow votes for this game, but I reckon he's been pretty ordinary. Half his possessions have gone straight to the opposition."

Will be interesting to see what happens Brownlow night.


If we kick that badly for goal against the Swans we'll be done by 5-6 goals. We were on top everywhere apart from the scoreboard.

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"One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds." - Frank Zappa