I am struggling to see how the lights have been put out so quickly

Heard all the theories, opposition sides let us do what we wanted in the Wiz, cold harsh reality is now coming home too roost, no leaders blah blah dont know if its true or not.

What I cannot understand id how players miss goals from 25 meteres out, cant make a tackle stick, dont shephard , run.

Whatever the @#$%&! is going on I cant put it down completely to having such a shit list, its not great but it should be competitive, this side is playing completely devoid of any confidence. I feel the discipline part has gone out the window with the wizard cup, maybe Pagan even started believing the bookmakers.

Lets face it were not going to play for the priority and early draft picks unless we find ouselves thereabouts and its only a matter of dropping a game or two. Its a long season, to finish with no joy is bad for business, sponsors, members, etc.

I just hope we can throw some cash aroungd at the end of the year, a couple of the kids step right up, Waite, Walker, Fisher, Deluca, Livo etc and we recruit resonably well for wherever we finish up.

For the short term we need to put our heads over the ball, go back to basics and play with some desire, passion and guts.

Cant make a tackle stick because we dont have the overall strength and size of teams like Geelong...the wizzer cup is gone forget it...teams like Geelong are aiming at the flag and mean business...even a win this week would only be a wallpapering the cracks job....the list isnt good and we have a shortage of A graders and thats the reality. Play the kids..and hit the draft/trade period bigtime and make sure we are cashed up for the PSD to snag a quality ready made player.....thats how I see the season...

Triple J, I think you answered your own question.

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"Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I,
I took the one less travelled by,
and that has made all the difference."

Robert Frost

just needed some therapy

We need all our better players up and ruinning to perform consistently and for a variety of reasons we haven't been able to get the best team on the field. In simple turns we just don't have the depth at present to cover loss of form by 3 or 4 players.

Our midfield does not seem to have the run that we demonstrated during the Wizard Cup and this has effected our disposal into the forward line. That is possibly because of a combination of factors.

One we lack depth in our midfield running brigade and can't change the match ups if we don't have the full list available.
Two we have suffered injuries and that has affected the roles of certain players in the team.
Three we have been scutinised by the other sides more closely.
Four due to a lack of depth we can't afford many regular senior players to be out of form.
Five we have the youngest list in the league.
Six quite a lot of our players have been very up and down in the performances. This could be because they are so young and inexperienced and can't be expected at this time to be match winners or it could be that they just won't cut it long term. Time and more on field support will tell us a lot more about them.

The return of Chambers from injury will add some pace and skill on ball and Carrazzo to the back pocket then this releases Wiggins and others and changes the make up of the team and allocation of roles in the team.

I think that we forget sometimes that both DeLuca and Walker are only in their second year of senior football. Like a lot of players they seem to be suffering second year Blues and have not reproduced the form of last season. Eddie Betts is just in his first year and IMO will get better with time.

We need height and contested marking options down the spine, another ruckman or two, and more running midfielders added to the list and into the senior team. This will take time some smart drafting and trading if necessary.

It will be interesting come draft time. Do we draft running midfielders with our first picks or do we draft young key position players?

Young key position players.

Talented midfielders come and go, but talented big men are rare and invaluable.

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Writer for SuperCoach Paige www.scpaige.com.au
Twitter - @johnfeeney24

Beau Dowler (192cm)
Mitch Clark (198cm)

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"You are being watched. The government has a secret system. A machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because I built it." - Finch

Dowler, by all reports, will probably go early?

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Writer for SuperCoach Paige www.scpaige.com.au
Twitter - @johnfeeney24

I'm not sure where he'll go but I've seen his name mentioned a lot

Your mate McConnell played well today

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"You are being watched. The government has a secret system. A machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because I built it." - Finch

I defiantly believe that we are NOT as bad as some of our performances this season would indicate. We aren't great, we all know that and nobody pretends that we are. Yes, we lack talent, we lack matchwinners, besides Fev, we have fundamental problems than run through the side.

But we are not THAT bad. I just think we're mentally fragile at times; our confidence is shot to bits at the moment. Football and sport has a large psychological element to it and we just appear down on confidence and beleif at the moment.

I do go on about the Wizard Cup because I firmly believe that it can't be dismissed. We beat a FAIR DINKUM West Coast side by FIVE goals after being headed in the last quarter. Some of the footy we played during that match was sensational and I challenge anyone to say that it wasn't. If you seriously believe that West Coast just rolled over and let us win then you've got to be kidding. The side they had in that night was as good in terms of personnel as it is now. All the big guns that are in the side now played in that match. The match had the intensity of more than just a regular season match.

The main reason why I still believe we aren't a lost cause is because of wins like that. That was no fluke, we genuinely played better and deserved to win. Sure Fev kicking eight certainly helped but the team played well. We were on a roll. And I'm sorry but if we can do this we must be better than some of our performances so far in the regular season.

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Formerly Blues-Back2003.

He did, didn't he?!?!
Good debut for him.
13 possies and 5 marks.

Loved his smart pass to Jones in the last quarter.

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Writer for SuperCoach Paige www.scpaige.com.au
Twitter - @johnfeeney24

OUR MIDFIELD SUCKS NOODLES

WE NEED MIDFIELDERS

DRAFT MIDFIELDERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MIDFIELDERS!!!!!!!!

good midfielders are rare

good players all over the park are rare

but you need a midfield to win a flag

and ours is shit

SHIT!!!!!

MIDFIELD!!!!!! NOW!!!!!

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Love Cricket? Love me

We have no-one who can take a mark, but Hartlett and Fisher are yet to come back in.

I'd draft 1 KPP but we desperately need a midfielder who can win the ball in the clinches and dispose of it properly.

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"A good composer does not initiate. He steals."

- Igor Stravinsky

i'd draft whovever the most talented is. You can't have too many class midfielders or big men etc. If you end up with Ball and Judd, that's not a problem, if you end up with Brown and Tredrea neither is that. What we need is absolute quality, forget the size. If we have a choice between Judd and Tredrea then worry about size but that isn't going to be the choice we get. Just make sure we draft well, no more Massies or Vances or Chatfields etc.

I agree with you that we're not that bad (the team is playing with little to no confidence for a start- I'm not gonna go into the other reasons) but we're not that good either!

Over the past week (prior to the Geelong match) we've had Sticks and Diesel (on radio) and then Collo (newspaper article) pretty much say that we had no right to win that Wiz Cup. It made us look better than what we really were. And I admit I fell for it as well at the start of the season thinking we were a chance for the 8. But when you consider what Sticks and Collo has said, coupled with what we have seen in our last 3 games, it's pretty clear you can't read too much into what happened in the pre-season comp.

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When Dick became President, it was as if everyone at Carlton came out of the hailstorm and into the sunshine - Stephen Kernahan

YARRAN!!





.

Hey we're not great bluebernz and nobody is saying that we are - but we aren't this bad and of that I'm convinced.

Again, we beat West Coast (who else has done that this season) which at the time had a side about as good as it is now in terms of who was playing. We won the Wizard Cup fair and square and in doing so we played some good footy that could be playeda against any side. Look at how we moved the ball then and look at how we do it now. It's bullshit that West Coast weren't trying to win that match.

I know that you can't read everything into it but you can't just dismiss it either. I believed after the Wizard Cup that we'd challenge for spots 7-10 or thereabouts. Either just in or just out. I still think we can get something going somewhere and finish just outside the 8 if we play well enough. Is this the best course of action? I don't know, but my point is that we are not that bad a side.

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Formerly Blues-Back2003.

If we were still playing like we did in the WC we wouldn't be having these discussions. Not sure why we aren't but we saw then that we are capable of playing good footy and being competitve with anyone.