FarmerBlue wrote:
I was always concerned as going to Adelaide on there home deck for the start of Gather Round was asking for trouble. The momentum and energy was all their way. Losing Docherty & McGovern hurt badly.
However, it also highlighted some major issues that we have escaped so far this seaoson
1. Our ball movement especially inside 50 is pathetic
2. Our forward structure and postioning is poor
3. Our skills in general are of a low standard
4. We lack genuine depth
5. We are slow through the middle
6. Too many players don't work through the hurt and for 4 quarters. Too many passengers
What happened to the exciting run we had last year? Have we gone too defensive?
This is only a few. The coaches have a lot to work on and it is imperative for our culture that we bounce back hard next week
Great post Farmer, balanced and not hysterical.
IMO these two highlighted points are the most important issues we have to fix.
Our skills all year have been off, handballs to the knees, missing targets with 15m kicks, putting other players under more pressure than they were, key forwards missing shots right in front of goal and long kicks to no targets at all.
Adelaide were clean, blocked for players, tapped to advantage and more importantly when they had a congested F50, they held the ball up and patiently waited for a lead and had the confidence and foot skills to hit the player in the tightest of gaps.
They were changing the tempo between arcs when necessary, unlike us when we seem to do this in blocks of attack or defensive play only.
Their forward line worked as a unit and separated from each other and lead well to spread the defence, something Charlie and McKay still can't do unless way up the ground.
Their midfield had the patience to slowly work the ball out wth handballs and spread our mids creating even more space to make us look like witches hats.
They individually stuck tackles where we had to have multiple tacklers and they still got away.
These are all basic skills we lack or have not been able to do this year for extended periods during a game.
As I said last year, we really needed a quick skilful inside mid that can rack up the numbers and a bonafide ruck.
I personally think we should be shopping around TDK if he wants to go this year and getting in a gun ruck instead.
He is not a ruck and not a forward either and we already have one of those in JSOS and for all his faults he bleeds blue and at least he was at the contest working hard last night.
I also think it's time to give Hollands and Cowan a rest, very average performances by both. Hollands was at 41.7% disposal efficiency (worst in the team), he needs a break, let's not do typical Carlton and destroy these kids, they have real potential.
As for the Voss bashing, FFS it's only his second year and history has proven changing coaches like we have has got us absolutely nowhere so how about we try and stick to one for a few years instead.
Look at Geelong, if Scott was at Carlton he would've been toast many times over in the last 10 years.
And as for comparisons with Fly, Collingwood has a pretty good list with top end mature talent.
The biggest issues we have is injuries and depth, not Voss.
But it is not all doom and gloom, our chances of winning this game were slim and even slimmer with Mitch and Doc out as Farmer has stated.
We have still won more than I predicted, hopefully this is a massive rocket up the ar$e$ of the club and we come out better next week..........it's only rd 4 and we need to keep building.