Normally I'd agree. I didn't expect to win considering the relative strengths of the two sides.

...but failing to score for an entire half? This can't be blown off as 'just a prackie match'... surely questions need to be asked, especially of the fringe players.

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“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.” ― Richard Feynman

Winning pre season games when the top liners are rested breeds confidence right through the playing list. The fringe players now would be thinking that they are not good enough at this level without the likes of Murphy, Jamison & Kruezer to fall back on when the going gets tough.

Players like Robinson, Jamison, Walker & Duigan are all underdone and should not play round 1.

Failure to score just means we couldn't be bothered. No real problem pre-season. We played 3 1/2 decent games even though we didn't win any, which really is irrelevant. Beaten in the last 60-90 seconds against Adelaide, Port and the Dogs, the first two especially have really taken the NAB Cup seriously. Means we're getting a good hitout mostly with 2nd and 3rd string teams.

Not only that it's the second time in 3 weeks we've in hot/humid conditions. It is possible we went through the motions in the second half looking at recovery.

We were a bees u know what from beating bulldogs, Port and Adelaide.

Lets just see more next week and judge then.

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Supporting the Blues No Matter What

Nope, Synners has some hair and some of his own teeth.

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2002:> "In their Masters Chambers
They Gathered for their Feast
They Stabbed us with their Steely Knives
But They Just Can't Kill The Beast!" <2016

THE BLUEBAGGER BEAST IS BAACKK!!

half of us haven't received our membership cards yet so we've nothing to blend!

Don't think anyone should be too fussed with the loss/performance.

For mine - positives were the form of duigan & waite coming back from injury, lucas getting the ball, mclean continuing to impress, collins in the first half

OK.

The NAB Cup exists for the purposes of the AFL. It's about revenue raising, profile and helps clubs with memberships.

For clubs, this time of year is about preparation for the season proper. The clubs that have performed better have done so simply because the games they have performed well in happened to coincide with a point in their program where they hoped to have their team functioning closest to how they want their team performing in the season proper.

Right now it's painful for us to watch our boy's (particularly if you made a trip or paid money to go watch) get beaten by sides that are TRYING TO WIN, but that's just about timing.

Obviously our preparation schedule has us peaking at a different time to other clubs and until we start playing for real we won't know if our program was right.

Gia from the Dogs said that their preparation last year meant they were cooked when it mattered, lets just trust Ratts, Richo and co have their calendars marked correctly.

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I hope Essendon* folds.

True, the club needs to get a virtual blender up on line for this purpose.
C'mon Blues, innovate!

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I agree. Most disappointing thing this pre-season is that we haven't seen any new or fringe players step up and demand selection. We've seen some gradual improvement from a few. But no one has shown that they're ready to take a quantum leap forward (like Gibbs was being spruiked to do). Obviously it's still early, but you can't help wondering where the necessary improvement is going to come from to help us to really compete with the top 4.

Disappointing preseason results, but plenty to look forward to.

Obviously the opposition took it more serious than we did, and just 5% off our game means a loss anyway.

I think it's been great to have seen the likes of Dale, Carter and Buckley in the preseason.
Really glad to see McCarthy and Bootsma comparing their wares against senior AFL bodies.
Injury didn't allow us to see Mitchell and McInnes, and that's the only negative...and Laidler.

Adding a dozen seniors to yesterday's team will make a huge difference to the quality.
Playing for 4 points and that's when we need to turn on the intensity.

Just because we haven't seen it in the preseason doesn't mean our first 22 against Richmond can't turn it on.
I think they're smart enough to know that they will have to turn it on against Richmond to beat them.
We're good enough to beat the Tigers.
In Ratts I trust.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

Our second tier was asked to be our first tier against Brisbane.

Lions would have been smashed if they had gone into that game minus Leuenberger (Kreuzer), Rich (Murphy), Rockliff (Robinson), Redden (Gibbs), Adcock (Scotland), Polkinghorne (Carrazzo), Merrett (Henderson), Maguire (Jamison) and McGrath (Laidler).

Collins showed more zip than I knew he had. Looked good after he came off the half back line to win it and run out of heavy traffic like a pro.

I am a nervous nellie so I am concerned all the time

Thought the first half was ok but obviously the second half was quite awful.

Guess we have to trust that the club, mc and coaching staff are looking at the big picture and managing the pre season accordingly.

Evidently we are treating next week as pretty much a full dress rehearsal so will reserve judgement until then. Another poor showing and I will be officially concerned.

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We are on our way back...

He is a pro


Been a professional sport for decades

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Live stream a big hit


I wonder if they counted unique visitors, or page views. If there's 500 people refreshing the page for a working stream, kinda bumps up your numbers...


No it didn't, Ian. It was Australian viewers only, and your own department confirmed this.


No it wasn't, Ian. A significant chunk of your viewing audience missed most of the first quarter due to technical issues, and I presume quite a few of them switched off in disgust, along with those who couldn't dicern players who were comprised of about 60 pixels.

The additional infrastructure, a 4G modem, was positioned in the one place, short of the change rooms, where the signal would have been at its worst, and was tested as successful before approximately 4000 additional mobile phone signals descended on the area. To deliver a 256 kbbps stream in the middle of the biggest 4G coverage area in Queensland is a systematic failure to understand what you were undertaking in broadcast your coverage.


They absolutely are well equipped to succeed, as shown by last year's coverage of the John Nicholls medal, and the new wireless broadcast equipment. Sadly, they got it wrong here in what would have been a showcase event for the clubs' multimedia, IT & social media units. To top it off, we put in a bad shift on field, so the whole event was a PR nightmare, hence this rubbish puff piece.

The club only has to look at the slowing up of membership uptake over the last 3 weeks to realise they are sacrificing revenue in the name of preparation to too great a degree due to an unwillingness to spread senior talent more across of our matches, and they've now hammered home the sentiment with slapdash production work.

A convincing performance has become surprisingly more critical for membership figures and good press, and by extension the confidence of staff and players. I sincerely hope the club are not dismissive of what a win offers them in the way of PR control, especially given our split revenue agreements in three of the first four matches of the season (luckily the value of an 11 game membership won't have diminished greatly at that point).

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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.

wonder what the geelong supporters were thinking after this game


http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/p ... 6016170763

Thank God for some commonsense Reading the posts during the game (from the same old flowers too) was hilarious stuff Just too many first 22 players missing (and Judd, Walker etc were only there for the run) for the game to mean anything. Sure, would have been nice to save face and kick a few in the 2nd half - but no biggie.

Instead of nitpicking, jimmae, why can't you just be grateful that you were even given the opportunity to see the game at all? Sure, it wasn't perfect, but it was much better than nothing, and the club deserves credit for showing the initiative to even attempt to stream the game live when it certainly was under no obligation to do so.

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Formerly Blues-Back2003.

My stream was so crap it didn't even pick up ANY of our second half goals

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#DonTheStash

I couldn't believe that Brissy were $2.50 head to head on Friday .....couldn't help myself

great initiative

shocking effort though

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*(grow - fun - gah)

Yeah but whatabout your whataboutism.