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Very hit and miss game, but happy to get 4 points given that we played a man down shortly after the sub and with Eddie feeling a bit sore after getting crunched by four Dockers.
Ellard was much better in his play today (i.e. more link work, less being 3rd man to the ball), but only managed 73% game time despite all that happened. He was non-existent in the first half, and a decent part of the reason for that seems to be he was on the bench.
Armfield and Joseph relished the opportunity to play more of a midfield-esque role instead of purely locking guys down. Their disposal looked in good shape.
Davies was sharp with the ball, but didn't win much of it and was schooled a couple of times in his defensive work. OK game.
Hendo's last two games have easily been his worst in defence. If he has been locked in as a defender for the season, he's in danger of losing his spot. Thornton may still miss the one game, which could open the door for him up the other end if the club feel Setanta needs more time.
Robbo won a lot of ball but made some very costly errors which essentially cost us 3 goals.
Duigan was used much more sparingly today, which is a start as he did need some rest time. Suspect the Tuohy sub move and bringing in Armfield (played 91%) was part of this.
Jeff was a great support to midfield, but his snaps on goal were horrible. He had two in a row at one point and he sent them about 30m up and 10m towards goal both times. There was a third one also, so it in effect cost him 2 scoring opportunities.
Warnock & Kreuzer were both patchy, but both also played 88% game time, which is a fair old ask for either one. Thornton going off hurt them the most.
Walker needed to be freed up after all the patchy kicking to his leads, and relished the chance to get a clean run at the ball from clearances. Four quarter effort from him even though it doesn't show in the goal tally.
Carrazzo was patchy, but did enough and was probably on track for a 30+ possession game. Some silly fumbles though.
Murphy, Judd & Gibbs were outstanding, while Scotland really worked over Crowley, who pulled out all the stops in an effort to distract and stop him.
While there were 6 rushed behinds, it was still a tragic display of how to deliver the ball to forwards and when to take your shots. We play like Geelong of '09 up forward, except with the intelligence knocked out of it.
Sandilands (4), Silvagni (3) & Fyfe (2) combined for 9 contested marks, which is how much Freo won that stat by (16-7). Another one to pay attention to is the number of goal assists to goals, i.e. how much your team mates are moving the ball well into and around within the forward line. Freo's numbers were 10/12, while we pulled in 9/16.
I think those two sets of statistics highlight one of our key problems at the moment: our positioning with and without the football. We look good in defending kick-outs, but down the other end we look shaky and miss reads for playing on and looking off the opposite flank when there's too many numbers on the other. Worse still, our forward press can be easy to beat at times because it can be quite disorganised from around the forward edge of the centre circle onwards. We've seen a lot of goals scored not just on the counter, but with ease, and today was no exception.
With Jamison set to appear next week either in Red or Blue, Lucas & Kerr putting their hands up along with Houlihan, McLean & Setanta, there's some difficult choices to be made for next week. We're over the hump but we've got to stop playing the waiting game with player's form and back our depth to do the job.
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......only got kicks in junk time.....weak as .......Ballantyne........ 
