100000000% yes. History tells us exactly that - we lose more often than we win games we are "expected" to.

More importantly, they pressed us hard, they put on multiple goals in a row against us and got a 4 goal lead.

Recently where these components have occurred, we have been unable to to adjust and/or get back into the game, and allow opposition to score heavily in a row against us and, they end up winning comfortably as a result. We did exactly that and more this time.

I dont for any minute recognise this as a great win, BUT, I do recognise progress and improvement.

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Cripps is the man

Yep. That was Gov who blocked, fairly for kemp to mark uncontested. Gov also blocked for Hayward too. Really clever stuff.

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Everyone looks good in Navy Blue

Wasn’t it Gov who blocked for Acres in that final?

Gov says he blocked, but he was going for it!

Young was the obvious choice to replace Weiters but we need to have more looks at Derksen.
We know what Young can - and can't - do.
Derksen made mistakes but it's been a very small window.
Suspect he'd do better fwd but will have to wait for an opportunity at that end of the ground.
Can't put a line through him yet.

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I just want my old club back ... (edit) maybe I have!

Finally finished watching the game the other day.
Wow............ugly ugly win, but still a win.
We still have the same problems we have had all year;
Players still missing targets
Players still missing easy shots on goal
Our F50 entries are still an issue
When we are beaten in centre clearances and clearances around the ground we are exposed.

Our list still has holes and we lack A graders that deliver and take the game on.
And the mental fragility of the group was on show again.

The scary part is that the cheats* had 17 players injured and are bottom of the ladder and we only just won.
If Harry didn't hold the clock up like he did the result may well have been different.

A win against this lot of cheats* is always worth more, but I feel we took a step back this week from our progression.
Hopefully with a weeks rest we can come out firing again.

I do not agree with this statement.

The opposite is the case in my opinion. Yes there were stuff ups, passes not making it and so on, but it seemed to me that they continued to try and take the game on and attack for 4 quarters.

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No Guts, No Glory

Each to their own I guess Windy.
The expectation was that we would win easily.
You like your odds, we were $1.40 to $2.60 IIRC
That is more than a 5 point win.
We didn't score a point for the last 9min of the game.
Instead we gave up a comfortable lead to just scrape in the win.
This should have been a % booster playing against a club with that many injuries.
And the players would've known that.

The mental fragility was there, no argument, look at all the missed shots on goal and the last five minutes. Yet we won, whereas over the last two years we would have crumbled under the Essendon* pressure in the first half and lost badly. What I saw was a resilience to fight back and keep executing the game plan no matter what. For me that’s a step forward and a reduction in the level of mental fragility.

We won’t know if this is a real improvement or a dead cat bounce until this time next year.

Instead of going into the defensive mindset and defending the lead - you bet. Notice what happened at the end of the game in the last two minutes when we tried to defend the lead. We need to get this out of our game (minds) for now.

Nothing wrong with trying to play out the clock when you're 17 points up with 3 minutes left. We just have to do it properly.