Some observations:
- North Melbourne couldn't miss in front of goal, 87% scoring accuracy = very rare
- We were gutted by the umpires last night, unbelievable that Aaron Joseph lay on the ground knocked out and we did not even get a free kick!
- Defense is leaking holes all over the place, seems we didn't have a well structured backline to me.
- Shouldn't have taken Jamison off Petrie, even though Petrie was starting to get on top, don't think Jamison was at fault at least for the first one.
- Gartlett needs to be dropped, so out of form its not funny. How was that fumbled sitter in the forward 50 that ended up going out of bounds!?!
- Gibbs is a worry, I don't think he is a backman at all. Everytime he is one on one, he regularly gets beat. Send him in the middle or anything, not down back please Ratts.
- I think the decision to hold onto Bower and let Setanta go was a mistake, at least Setanta could of provided a contest and an opportunity for the crumbing forwards.
- We have no one in the forward line that can clunk a mark, it's an embarrasment. Need to get Waite back and have someone coming out of the goalsquare like Levi
- Injuries have ruined us this year but don't think it is all about injuries. Having reactive coaching and players are badly out of form.

It's all doom and gloom for 2012 unfortunately, wish it wasn't but that's just the way this wasted year is turning out.

SHould be an interesting week here and around the club

Killed by umps -some of the worst umpiring I've seen for a long while

Injuries have played a role
- loss of simpson + hampson
- loss of touhy pre-game
- loss of walker in the first 1/4
- loss of joseph before half time
- murphy 1st game back, patchy performance. Got the ball but minimal impact, skills down

Rucks and other strucures
- kreuzer isn't 100% - even last week. For proof, just look to see how 'high' he is able to jump
- hampson injured + warnock stupid enough to get suspended
- watson has hardly rucked before and we got smacked whenever he went in there
- henderson probably SHOULD have rucked but coming back from injury they may not have wanted to test him there
- casboult/mitchell not ready due to injuries,
- waite injured
- rowe unavailable

Other thoughts
- For the record, whilst I wouldn't mind seeing thornton in the team, he would not have had any impact in the ruck/clearances
- duigan should have been moved out of forward line a lot earlier
- thought lucas/curnow/garlett/jamison were poor
- better players were Judd, scotland, gibbs, collins, joseph (pre-injury), armfield (despite mistakes), mclean servicable - not much else after that.
- Fast paced game early on, with 2 players injured relatively early we were always going to struggle with rotations. We fell away as the game wore on

FMD - the ants have ANOTHER BYE - how the !@#$%& do we get fitness/conditioning/game time into casboult, mitchell, davies & white?

You can't control injuries

I have watched the replay 4 times

Ratten is a reactive coach.
He is overly defensive.
He tries to neutralise situations not win them.

Hes the dumbest coach going around.

Imagine bringing in Guus and allowing him a month to understand footy.

He would revolutionise football.

such a basic game... and Ratts cant understand it....

The amount of byes for the reserves and their occurance every three or four weeks is ludicrous. Mitchell for example could have had 6 or 7 games under his belt by next week instead of 4. Lack of contionuity must be hurting some of the marginal players build some form and or press their cases. 18 sides playing eachother one and a half times together with a nuff nuff reserves scenario = Rubbish competition. Doesn't alter the fact that we are not good enough.

there are some basics in winning football matches consistently, which includes having a genuine marking target up front. Ratten has not cottoned on to this and after five years he will never learn. Midfield type players will only get you so far. Moving Henderson to the back line was a shocker. Keeping Duigan in the forward line was also plain wrong. It's short term thinking that impedes progress and doesn't allow your game plans to evolve and set you up for success. I think apart from our inability to stop soft goals (ie defensive pressure), our biggest problem is our terrible forward efficiency. Generally, our percentage of possession is quite good, but our inability to convert is woeful. This primarily comes down to a lack of system going forward and an inability to take marks in the forward 50. Needs to be rectified urgently. Relying on ruckmen or midgets to kick goals is fraught with danger and never stands up in finals anyway. Although, I am not a big fan, Thornton should have played last night.

Synbad please get off your Ratten bashing for once and have a look at the game for what it was, there was absolutely nothing he could do with the personnel he had available once the ball was bounced.

We went in short in both defence and forward, once we lost Touhey and Walker that compounded the situation, surely you can see that, please enlighten me with the moves that could have been made that could have stopped Petrie and who we could have used as a genuine forward option, can you also tell me how we could cover the loss of Walker and Joseph prior to half time and still be able to keep our run up, please just give me a reasonable and logical analys of what could be done from the box to rescue the situation,just for something different, rather than pushing your dislikes.

Synbad please get off your Ratten bashing for once and have a look at the game for what it was, there was absolutely nothing he could do with the personnel he had available once the ball was bounced.

We went in short in both defence and forward, once we lost Touhey and Walker that compounded the situation, surely you can see that, please enlighten me with the moves that could have been made that could have stopped Petrie and who we could have used as a genuine forward option, can you also tell me how we could cover the loss of Walker and Joseph prior to half time and still be able to keep our run up, please just give me a reasonable and logical analys of what could be done from the box to rescue the situation,just for something different, rather than pushing your dislikes.

Come on Sticks make the call surely you could see tonight that Ratts and he,s coaching staff have to go .It was there poorest and dumbest performance i have ever seen from the coaches.

They were well coached... well drilled and nullified out strengths from the week before

I think as many others have said, Ratts isn't entirely to blame, but is far from blameless, he is one of the factors of why we are where we are.

In my view in order our problems are:

1. Sticks/the board
2. List Management/recruiting
3. Ratts (which ties into number 2 as surely he would have big say)

I know things went wrong with injuries last night, but Ratts even thinking we could replicate our setup of last week with no KP forwards was stupidity of the highest order.