Blue Vain wrote:
Well, I'm still in a bit of a daze.
It was like watching a car crash over the past month or 6 weeks. I can handle losing to good sides and Collingwood are a reasonably good side and Melbourne are definitely good. As long as the players have a dip.
And I don't think anyone can doubt that about Sundays game. Some players made bad decisions and some poor skill execution but they all had a red hot crack. Same as the week before. We should have won both but it was moments that failed us, not desire and effort.
The killer for me was the Crows game. Not just that we lost but we lost by 5 goals. I said at the time that the percentage loss would come back to haunt us and it sadly did. They're the games good teams don't drop so we still have quite a way to go.
But I'll go with the positives and come out of my bunker in the near future. We lost to a team with more belief. I look at the Collingwood team and they had at least 5 players in their 30's. They had numerous players who have played finals footy and 9 players who have played in a grand final. Far more experience in life and finals football.
Our players have only known disappointment and failure. This should be our moment to put the past behind us and move into a period of success.
Our players have only known the feeling of not being good enough. Now they know they have the ability and resources to take on the very best. But they have to value every game and every moment. That is elite performance.
I suspect this will burn inside the players like it does us. And they will be far better prepared and far more resilient Round 1 next year. It's just going to be difficult to get this feeling out of our guts until next season comes around.
Good post BV.
As Voss said numerous times - we’re not the finished product yet. And, frankly, we didn’t deserve to make the finals in 2022.
But our list is young enough and talented enough for me not to get too worked up about it. Plus I’m mindful of how far back we’re coming from.
Obviously I’m disappointed that we didn’t make it…..but in a way I feel like our players (and supporters) have had the finals experience anyway. The last two weeks were finals level standard games. The atmosphere on Sunday was more of a finals experience than, say, playing Brisbane in an EF at the Gabba.
If we had made it through I honestly think we would have been making up the numbers. Yes, our best can match it with the top teams - but the reality is we’ve been playing catch up with our injuries all year and been trying desperately to hang on since May (we’ve only won 4 out of our last 12 games!).
The way things worked out might be for the best - as long as the players, coaches and fitness/medical staff learn from what happened (not just in the last fortnight, but all year) and are motivated by it. There’s lots of work still to be done!
The sting of not making the finals might give us more hunger for next year than, say, an honourable finals loss on the road to Fremantle or Brisbane.