Braithy wrote:
for me, what's worse than the result is some of the off field stuff.
trading our number 1 pick this year for stocker & bringing in Gov ... when we were craving a small forward with some craft and explosiveness to his game. so now we go into games too top heavy -- 3 or 4 talls in this era of modern footy where possession and locking the ball into your forward 50 and starving them of an exit route is king -- is like starting every game down a man or two. Now, stocker may turn out ... but just the fact he wasn't ready to go for the start of the season is an alarm bell over someone ready made, espesh when you're talking about our number 1 pick.
also. Our gameplan is negative. Bolton talked in the presser about playing fast is not always good. how slowing it down gives your forwards time to reset. Only that isn't happening and hasn't happened in 3 years of footy.
and to me that's a very half empty philosophy to be adapting; when we need half full. slowing the game down and being methodical is robbing the players of instinct. we have a super talented list. Guys like walsh and dow and SPS are running 16km per game ... thats elite. they will have no probs running out games.
a good example is dow breaking away from the centre bounce, and then drilling a soft pass 2m over Gov's head. Dow still had an acre in front of him. you want to be giving these kids the green light, not applying the handbrake.
right there in that instance i'd much rather the coaching philosophy being: if there's a bounce there, take it, and drill it through the sticks. be brave, be bold and back yourself. you're good enough, you belong here. show the world what you can do.
where instead, they're being coached to slow it down, raise their eyes and kick to one of our many talls. which inevitably goes tits up bcos our forward line is being man marked out of the game. man mark with a spare defender in front at all times, game in game out -- bcos that's how you diffuse such a tall & slow forwardline.
as a squad, we're going to be fine. it's one of the most talented lists in the afl. the key is to nurture and grow that. i fear right now, we're actually smothering it, and taking the fun outta the game for these kids with our ultra conservative approach.
bolton is coaching like a dead man walking. we're too stiff and too scared to take the game on bcos his job is riding on results and instead we're playing conservative risk adverse football.
i'd love to see bolton just say, "fk it!!" and roll the dice and go out in a hail of bullets. bcos the irony could be, that's exactly what saves him.
Your best post ever Braithy... imo
10 seconds to go and they score a goal.... everyone was ressponsible for! Esppecially the on field leaders.
My very cool and calm 11yo screams a gutteral cry Nooooooooo, and he continues to hurt.
I was just numb. Gutted.
I dont know what to think. Couldn't face to read TC. Then I read this post. Makes sense.