Hung on to win in a close one -an even team effort with 4 passengers - canvassed the skills of 4 new players - Kennedy murphy gibbs simpson young jackson Setanta Russell all played in a winning side and made a contribution
We got the best out of the cloke- Bryan trade with Clokey apart from his kicking doing well
Hollywood Fevola burned -backline held up well Setanta really did well against Lloyd - waite against lucas -thorton taking third tall
Our coach is talking about having a midfield rotation of 10
Nick Stevens showed how damaging he can be with more support in the midfield
BOG on Saturday night was Andrew Carrazzo - pity all those astute judges in the media didnt notice his contribution
Walker got inside Hirds head
Ryan Houlihan I KNOW got caught twice in last quarter but was one of our best and really went in for contested ball
Murphy showed real courage to get up and play given the huge hit he received from Fletcher early on in the match

Room for improvement - kicking for goal -need to get better here apart from Fevola really need forwards /midfielders to nail goals
When we have a lead and the other side is coming at us need to continue to be positive win the game dont go into shell and revert to little chips and going backwards
Need some more grunt in center square -Bentick missed.
Need to continue for 100 minutes shepherding blocking tackling and creating a path for others -second efforts etc fell off about 10 minutes into third

Didn't think we would need this thread this week Frank.

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

Winston Churchill

Jordan Russell playing like he belongs out there was a huge bonus.

The boys have decided to explore new hairstyles. Could it be that it signifies a new streak of flair at Carlton (nad not just some-one tipped some peroxide in the spa).

Another positive - West Coast are the ones under the microscope this week. At least until tonight's ACA

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"Whoever said you can't buy happiness forgot about puppies." - Gene Hill

Frank ....need another path to goal other than Fev..wont get those easy frees later on in the year..
Agree on Bentick...but leg speed is a problem with some of our mids....Lovett and Davey exposed us for pace but didnt finish their work.
Agree on the Bryan trade...Cloke looked keener than Bryan ever looked...

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"When you have the attitude of a champion, you see adversity as your
training partner."
- Conor Gillen

Biggest positive for me was this...

Essendon* are in absolute cloud cuckoo land right now! They honestly think they can make the top four. Takes me back to 2003, when Denis told us that Ratts was fit, Andy McKay was fit, McKernan was fit, and we had recruited Mick Martyn - and therefore we were going to make the finals. Sheedy tells us Lloyd is fit, Hird is fit, Fletcher is fit, and they've recruited Mal Michael and therefore they will make the finals. It is just a joke!

They came up against a side that had played two practice matches (as opposed to 5) coming into the game, that didn't seem to be taking the NAB Cup too seriously (I got no sense from Pagan that we were desperate to win the other night - Sheedy was banking on taking out the comp however), and that in key portions of the game rested key players (Lance, Walks, Murph, Gibbs, Kouta, Ackland - all spent good amounts of time off the ground). The scum will come last for sure... massive positive! The only downside is that they'll probably win less than 4 matches.

As for us - Waite, Walks, Fev, Cloke, etc were all great.

One question for those able to watch the game. Channel 10 in brisbane seems to love cutting back to the game from ads and skips about 30 seconds of the game. As a result, I saw very few centre bounces. The 1 in 3 centre bounces I saw were mostly taken by Cloke. Did Ackland take many of the hit outs?

I think Cloke/Ackland could be another option but cloke needs to kick
straight -Ackland will be better for the run
As per my training report Wednesday -whitnall shouldnt have really played on Saturday and if left on forward line will kick goals
Fisher/Kennedy another option and Kennedy will be better once they consider him a real alternative to Fevola
Agree about pace in midfield but 3rd quarter Benticks extractive skills would have been handy-midfield a bit one-paced -need some more speed particularly defensivelyou

Ratts & Braddles up in the box

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There's so much I could say...

Was pleasantly surprised by Cloke.
His kicking action was disgraceful. What sort of coaching do they do at Lexus? Should be fixable

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T E A M

I was watching Cloke during the warm up and he was having shots from outside 50 and nailed almost every one of them. Was quite impressed.

Then he had a shot from 15 and

Keeping your kicking technique under pressure is what seperates super forwards (Fevola) from average forwards (Tarrant). Cloke needs to be able to reproduce what he does in warmup in a match situation

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T E A M