Stefchook wrote:
frank dardew wrote:
We must stop this trend to play our worst against the weaker opposition teams in the competition? What is it that year after year this is a feature of our performance? It is soul destroying year after year. We should not be having these beltings against such teams year after year. How the hell do we keep losing to the Aints, Gold Coast, North and Fremantle every year, and not be prepared when they come out steaming and nasty? We simply wilt and either don't come to play or give in.
Completely agree. It needs to be drilled into them all summer. Behind the scenes. That they're going to be judged ESPECIALLY by how they perform in these games. (Stuff the Richmond, and Collingwood and Essendon*** games.) In this age of free agency, you can't attract good players, until you start to win games. And realistically, half of the teams are simply too good for us at the moment to beat. So we need to target the winnable games ESPECIALLY.
I don't think it's realistic to expect us to be competitive every week. That's just too hard. 6 out of 7 is pretty good. But I want someone at the club to realise we need to come prepared to the ABSOLUTE MAX, in games against the other cellar dwellers.
I don't want the club and the players and the coaching panel to spend 3 months preparing to beat Richmond. I want them to spend the summer preparing for how to beat Gold Coast. And North. And Saints. And Freo. And Bulldogs. And Swans.Not sure what you mean here.......did you predict the Bulldogs and Swans to be "cellar dwellers"? And North has added some pretty good mature age talent in the off season. Hall (who did not play), Polec, Tyson (who did not play) and Pittard. We added McGovern, Setterfield, Newman and Fasolo (which none of them played). I understand what you are eluding too but some of these so called "cellar dwellers" have more mature lists than we do, with less injury to key players. FWIW we know and the club knows we dropped the ball against GCS, but I think it will take a pretty fit team to beat the Saints and Freo. And we were just lucky the Dogs couldn't kick straight otherwise that would've been a lot closer too.
So in summary I think they are prepared for all games not just the top teams, but as Ed said in his post match interview the coaches plan all week for the opposition teams, then it's up to the players on game day, but this week the players went out thinking it was in the bag (a little too much self belief as it turns out). It's how they respond as a playing group this week that counts now.
This team is still young and have little experience in playing with each other and unfortunately they don't know or believe they can change the momentum in a game to stop a flogging or win a close one yet. I'm hoping it will happen soon, as this game was a crash landing back to earth of our expectations of a young team. If we get a few good wins near the end of the season to show they have grown as a group, that will be enough encouragement for me that next year should be a break out year and hopefully we can land an A-grader or two.