Pretty much what I expected.

As soon as we were expected to win, I feared the pressure would get to us.

Thankfully, the boys got it done. We can't be mad at progress, we need to be patient.

That Durham kid can play, wouldn't mind seeing him in Navy Blue.

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The Artist Formerly Known As BamBam7

Looked for all the world as though one team turned up mentally prepared an "easy" game and another turned up itching for the contest.

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"One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds." - Frank Zappa

Who here on TC has sugar coated this win? I think I have read most posts and hadn't noticed anything other than posters say we played poorly and got a lucky win in the end.

Regards Cazzesman

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Ricky Gervais - “Everyone has the right to hold whatever beliefs they want. And everyone else has the right to find those beliefs f***ing ridiculous.”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

Yeah, fair bit of that.

The mental application to craft a score wasn’t there. Wasteful old ways going inside 50.

Walsh shouldn’t have played. The captain has to have a squad mentality. Be an organiser. Put someone else over.

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"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter" - Winston Churchill.

our mids got belted up to half time. I think Acres was our only mid in the Top 10 by AF points at HT.

I included Merritt as a mid b/c I don't know who replaced him in the middle, all the other named mids were included. By rights I should have included Ainsworth who sometimes went head to head with Merritt, and was one of our best 'midfielders', let alone extra mids.

Setters did a job on Crippa until the last quarter where Patrick managed to get some great ball, but missing that Q4 goal to seal the game was a soul destroyer.

At the point that Florent was adjudicated HTB even though he was tackled as he took the ball in arms stretched above his head and spun 360 to the ground i started noting the frees that went against us that I thought were more than a little dodgy or off. I noted another 12 dodgy decisions after the Florent HTB, (I have notes on all of them!) including that touched to the Ainsworth non-goal which didn't look like it deviated in the slightest to me. Fortunately the footy gods gave him another opportunity a minute later on the run from 45 m out with a nice turn and give from Flynn Young and Ainsworth nailed it. Also Ainsworth was in Essendon**'s faces from that HTB onwards and definitely the pressure ratcheted up after he grounded Blakison, or whichever blond pony tail it was he started the all-in melee with.

Pros:
In spite of being comprehensively outplayed and out hustled for 2.5 - 3.0 quarters Blues found a way to pressure up around the ball and hit a few targets inside 50.
Harry played a great game and led from the front (Lloyd even said he was BOG, lol)
Ainsworth continued with his high intensity footy , a consistent block of 6 or more games now from him.
Byrne was a beauty.
Hewitt turned up to play, took nothing for granted unlike the rest of our midfield. Sucked that dodgy umpire into an over the shoulder tackle free in front of goal.
We restricted Dons* to 10 goals, somehow.
4 points = 4 points
Weak sugar > no sugar.
The players wont go to the bye thinking they can get all Hollywood in training sessions now. they cannot get all Hollywood this season, (to many missed kicks and HBs and hospital handballs and kicking to disadvantage of our teammate for that.)

Cons:
(to many missed kicks and HBs and hospital handballs and kicking to disadvantage of our teammate)
Turn over kicks and handballs out of our defence or during fast transition play cost us goals. The usual suspects, Cowan & Wilson and unusual suspects in Haynes & Hayward (iirc) who had a shocker dropping marks etc — other than nailing his difficult Q4 goal to get us home, gets him off the review hook this week.
Ball movement was mostly slower and more obvious than what we've been doing last month. Essendon* corridor players denied us those 45º kicks that the media had identified we've added to our game. Sometimes a 45º kick inside or an extra HB to Jagga or a good user was on but we didn't take it. (Referred pressure?)
We looked short down back. Derksen got a couple of easy uncontested marks but didn't look like it in the contest, Young should have played not Derksen.
Walsh played injured in second half and didn't have much impact.
other than Byrne, small forwards didn't impact enough.
Ison and Flynn Young made good position at times, didn't finish their work at times. 30 & 47 AF and 7 & 12 D respectively. Evans was pretty quiet by his standards, 11 D.
Hayward was busy but seem to drop almost everything, except his Q4 mark and sealing G.
I couldn't sit back and watch a percentage boosting win against these whinging Hird-lovers. Did housework from half time onwards monitoring score every 5 minutes. Seemed to work, except for cleaning the shower in the last 10 minutes of play where we nearly gave the game away after saving it.


50/50:
Jagga had a very quite fist half and fairly un-impactful second half, but was nice to see him run with the ball and even take a bounce or two. Some nice passes.
Harry Dean was fortunate Essendon* kept not seeing Nate Caddy, I think Caddy would have out marked him 3 times out of 4 but it didn't happen. Harry got some good uncontested marks, mainly from poor kicking by Dons*.
Gov took a few very strong centre-square type outlet marks from our D50, couldn't grab it in F50. only 11 disposals and 45 AF points, low by his standards.
Kemp could have done more, but two nice goals, he's been better, we've seen him worse too. really needs to kick those easy ones like when he marked the bullet pass from Acres(!) at end of third quarter. It was o the lead and 15m out FFS.

Cats Hawks Saints Bombers Pies all had gutting losses. We may not have set the world on fire but that's an enjoyable weekend.

Screw WFH, might head into the office tomorrow

Sent from my moto g54 5G using Tapatalk

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#DonTheStash

Never seen Ross Lyon so demure and reserved in a presser. Almost apologetic, but of course he didn't apologise to ’Aints fans.

Ok, hope you enjoy any coming losses, clearly you don't enjoy the wins.

We won the game. Full stop.

I don't care how ugly.

GO BLUES

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No Guts, No Glory

Careful. Not everyone enjoys a ‘helicopter’ in the morning.

Some, but not all.

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"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter" - Winston Churchill.

Been away this week so didn't get to see the game properly live. I've just watched the replay. I thought Essendon* set themselves and came really hard at us. Their pressure and willingness to compete got us in the first half. Couple that with inaccurate kicking and some shocking turnovers by foot, and we were lucky not to be further behind at half time. To the boys' credit, we turned it around in the second half and should have been more comfortable, but again haunted by inaccurate kicking for goal.

It's tough to win 4 in row in the AFL. You only need to be off by a few percent and you are in trouble. Still found a way to get the win. And any win against this scumbag club is a good win. Still a good reminder to all of exactly where're we're at and where we've come from. Good time for a reset with a week off

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Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.

Footy's an interesting game. I thought Derksen was serviceable (and pleasingly, hard at the footy), Hayward was important and Acres was one of our best.

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--------------------------------------------------------"The only one that could ever love me..."

Shit win, but we took over in the last 1/4 till conceding 2 late goals when we tried to ice the game. As per the Doggies game
I am more interested in how we go vs the Giants. If we can regain our intensity, all is not lost.

I was invited to an Essendon* function at the G. They got A McGrath up for a few minutes. He said that Solomon had the team ready to run through a brick wall in the pre-match address. It took us a while to match their intensity

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T E A M

It’s a game that under normal circumstances where we are expected to win that we would have lost - especially against teams who know how flaky we are - they’d take it like their Grsnd Final and would smell the four points like sharks smell blood in the water - we won - I’ll take it.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

Sorry Cazz , you can blame me for this . I said it was a great win . What I meant was it was great to win .

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All my dangerous friends

Mick you went with years of emotion and forgot the sugar.

They found a way Mick. Hard to be disappointed at the effort. I thought the effort was there all game, but the Bombers were harder at in the 1st half and we made a mess of a few times. The fact we got smashed in the middle and still won, has to some something about the growing group resilience.

IMHO, learning how to win tough is just as important for growth.

Regards Cazzesman

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Ricky Gervais - “Everyone has the right to hold whatever beliefs they want. And everyone else has the right to find those beliefs f***ing ridiculous.”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

Thought Gov was in everything in the last 3rd of the game. Some good marks. Disrupted their plays to setup Carlton attacks. The set play with Hayward for the Hayward goal.
Stood out to me.

100 % .

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All my dangerous friends

Selfless acts and stepping up in crunch time, his value exceeds his supercoach scores, for sure. Think it was him who subtly blocked defenders to give Kemp an uncontested contested mark, too...

Yep he had a real purple patch late in the game

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#DonTheStash