Thanks Wookie.

For those of us outside Australia, these are gold. Many thanks Wookie

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"our electorate seeks less to be informed and more to be validated." Sad times.

This

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Let slip the Blues of war (with apologies to William Shakespeare) (and Sir Francis Bacon, just in case)

Don't forget, we are his third club. He's never been a bad player, he's never had as good a run at, with backing, as he has now.
Nowhere near his ceiling.

Mind you, I get that impression with a few lads in the side.

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We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.

Players like white dont have the speed of awareness and execution and skill to overcome their oppositions space closure when we were playing old school footy and the opposition were on team defence. But now we have structure we also buy ourselves time and composure and simons skills now seem adequate ( same for ed curnow) so now whites toughness and hardness is really shining, as his skill levels dont really detract anymore.

just watched the replay. Think we were pretty lucky in some respects - their poor kicking both for goal and in the field stuffed a lot of their attacks. We got killed in the middle. Turnovers from them made us look better than we were. We did have some good players. Robbo thrashed Gibbs (although he gave us a couple) and despite Cripps we couldn't get a clearance. Essentially we had to wait for them to have a shot and when they turned it over we attacked from the back 50. Very happy for the win but glad Bolts wasn't carried away. May get away with it with the saints (and the bombers) but wouldn't have beaten many other teams with that. Missed murph (and a non-concussed Kruze)

Agree, but I can't help feel that 12 months ago all those things you mentioned about Brissy would have applied to us. Nice to be able to play crap and win for a change.

Agree.

Close to our worst game of the year.

Once we lost Kreuzer in the ruck we were slaughtered (and he's not very good in the ruck, anyway).

Pretty obvious Casboult is not allowed to go into the ruck at the moment.

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"You can't polish a James Hird"

We were absolutely pole axed in the contested ball situation around the stoppages, lucky for us Brisbane went backwards for 50% of their possessions.

That's a credit to our positioning defensively though so it's not all bad

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"I will rejoice in their anguish, delight in their failure and revel in our success"

We are Carlton, @#$%&! the rest !!!!!!

I've watched the replay a couple of times.

We got smashed in the ruck before Kreuzer got concussion. The whole first half he was soundly beaten.
West went in to jump at the ball and ruck whilst Kreuzer walked into the ruck and watched West.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The 197 ruckman West easily beat our 200cm Kreuzer ruckman.
I know what Kruezer brings to the table as a ruck rover, but 2 disposals and being well beaten in the ruck before he was concussed are not the numbers I like to see.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

Good to win ugly and a sign of maturity when everything doesn't go to plan and not playing well but still win - compare this with last years effort at Etihad against Brisbane - possibly our lowest ebb - Essendon* game this year was our worse performance for the year and we won but against a sub- standard team

The good thing about our recruits is that the plow sumner lamb kerridge gorringe -all have significant upside and young enough and inexperienced so should all improve- all had very limited exposure to AFL footy at their formers clubs - also byrne graham Docherty weiters and cripps all should improve further as well - let alone the improvement/development in McKay silvagni Curnow Cunningham and hopefully Jaksch in the future

Future is bright but development and improvement wont be linear so expect peaks and troughs

They're playing a numbers game while managing Kreuzer's knee until the bye.

It won't beat the best sides, and it won't win finals, but it works against most. Do we even know when he copped the head knock? There's also a pretty hectic flu going around.

Our scoring accuracy readily reflects that we were playing completely off our counter-attack, and against an opposition who were bundling their execution, that's a smart move if we want to conserve energy.

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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.

SEN reporting that Kreuzer is expected to pass a concussion test and play this week and Sumner is also expected back.

replay on foxtel now

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*(grow - fun - gah)

Yeah but whatabout your whataboutism.

I'm not commenting on the big K's ruck roving or his management.
He was in the ruck nearly 100% of the first half and won 2 disposals, but the point I'm referring too (for several weeks now) is question marks on his ruck work. Something is missing in that department, and hopefully we don't need to do anything about that, but from my experience, in a GF, the ruck advantage has some merit.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

He missed one game with a knee injury bondi, he was never going to come back in and leap around like a 20 year old. He dominated at the stoppages the week before, and I've already shown you that picking two pure rucks is a huge gamble for us if they're not at the top of their game.

Also, FWIW, he copped the knock to the head during the second quarter, and he did not play 100% of the first half.

The goal of a ruck is to secure clearance opportunities for his team. I don't care if it's hitouts or by ripping the ball out from the centre, so long as the clearances are won or halved more often than they're lost. If you want to be a purist about it, I suggest building a time machine.

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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.

Well, we did get absolutely smashed around the clearances and centre bounces the whole game last weekend....

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"I will rejoice in their anguish, delight in their failure and revel in our success"

We are Carlton, @#$%&! the rest !!!!!!

I'm just pointing out his gaps in his game and therefore ours.

Nit picking the argument is playing ringa rosy. So how many minutes did he play without concussion?
He got 2 possessions in that period. May even be worse if one of those possessions was with concussion.
Is that good enough?

You've shown me nothing about the 2 rucks jimmae and are still trying to convince me by talking in riddles...if this and if that....

He missed one game because of injury hence why he isn't jumping like a 20yo? I reckon you play games with stats and convince yourself.
That game he dominated at the stoppages against Geelong shows what he can do if breathing fire. He ran and chased and it came off. It doesn't happen regularly enough for me.
How many other games has he controlled the stoppages this year?
What happened as recent as last week?

Look, for me the positive I see with Kreuzer is we don't have any better (at the moment) and Bolton says he's the Spirit of Carlton.
As long as the coach loves him, and that coach is Bolton, I love him too. There's supporters who say he's Heart and Soul. That's a good thing too.

I find his ruckwork in the centre embarrassing when he steps away at the contest and looks at his opponent.
I find his marking or attempt to mark a liability as I expect marking to be a strength for bona fide ruckmen, especially against shorter opponents.

I can show you how Kreuzer is a liability if he's not at the top of his game. Same applies to anyone.

I know he's loved by most Carlton supporters and that includes me, but I'm comfortable pointing out his shortfalls, and hope we find a better replacement in the future, because I don't want a great ruckman like a Goldstein or Jacobs to be the reason we don't win our next GF.

In the meantime, go Kreeuuuuuzzzeerrrr

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

Yup and as others have commented on, mostly in VFL threads, it's an area of concern for us given we seem to be rolling the dice with our stoppage setups.

We have a good team in there, but they are playing a very simple game and good sides (tactically speaking) have been trouncing it with good tactics. Brisbane, however, are the worst side in the competition when it comes to net clearance numbers, so hopefully that's the wake-up call we need to change things.

Rockliff looked like superman out there with 7 centre clearances, and I'm putting the blame at the feet of Barker.

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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.

At what point time of the game did Kruezer get concussed? I haven't seen the incident /s . Did he play on and then once he started throwing up did they realise he was concussed?