That was one of I think 2 posts I made since the game and I don't know why I bother if that's the way you're going to react.

At least you're consistent.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

I reckon the boys can't wait to get another crack at Geelong

Revenge will be sweet

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There's so much I could say...

The Pro for mine was that our better players were mainly our youngsters, i.e. Murphy, Walker, Gibbs and to a lesser extent Simpson. This is much better than losing by 13 goals but seeing Stevens, Fevola, Lance etc as the best.

The Con was that we got little out of our senior players like Lappin, Whitnall, Fevola and even Ackland who must be considered a senior player in this side. We won't win when all of the above have downers. Incidentally with all the talk about Lance, Lappin's poor form has gone under the radar somewhat and he must be close to being dropped.

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Formerly Blues-Back2003.

Pros:


Young Guns are coming through...Murphy (30 touches), Gibbs finding his feet, Walker becoming a damaging and consistant player, Fisher & betts becoming a consistant 2-3 goal players......



Cons:


1- Our Fitness: where did it go? we simply stoped running after half time....We were just walking.... We couldnt match their running capacity...We were back to our old team...We were Flat as....I Really do hope this was a mental collapse rathar than a Fitness issue


2- Our Ruck : badly got exposed and proved that Carlton Still dont have any genuine ruckmen... Ackland kicked 2 goals, but he honestly proved that he is just a hack.. a Waste of a player in any team... he cant ruck, too short, doesnt take enough marks, cant run, cant chase and not talanted enough.....As for Cloke, he is playing above his level, but he is only a back up Ruckman.... he is not tall enough to do any serious Damage.....


3- Bentick and Lappin sent alot of time on the bench.... i dont understand Pagan's logic behind that.... Bentick had 24 touches last week , he should have been playing almost all game, as his hardness does help and take the pressure off nick Stevens who seems to be the only Midfielder we have... You take him out, and we lose...... Lappin is a senior player, if he is out of form, he needs to be dropped, not be wasted on the bench...


4- our Kicking into the Forward line was Poor... very Poor..... at a rate of 99.99%, they have kicked to the Wrong option and often 2 on 1....thats what happens when your mentally under pressure and physically as well....Hope they improve on that.....


5- The biggest disapointment was that i really thought we were over those beltings..... i was expecting the score to stay in the 30's, but the second half effort was poor....We are back to earth.....our hope is on the young players to continue to develop and mature...

Get flogged again....you can see the intimidation and hesistant way we go about it vs the Cats...Gibbs and Murphy havent been conditioned to be that way and were good...but most of the others played the same way as the other three or four years that Geelong having been pounding us...

Maybe Michael Voss knows how to play the Cats..Denis has no idea....

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

Seems to me .... that if an opposition team stops stevens and fevola, Carlton can't win.

Pros:
* Walker was tremendous
* Gibbs was pure class
* Murphy never gave up
* Setanta kept on giving it his all
* Wiggins across half forward was sensational. Put the rest of the forwards to shame with his ability to lead hard and get clear. Of course he had backman 4, 5 or 6 but who else could get 2 metres clear?
* Ghost and Einstein may lower their sights abit and not write such 'We is the world' type gumph.
* Fev's body language upon being towelled

Still thinking:
* Game plan. When the game was there to be done we continually trusted our strong marking forward line to take the ball. Was it confidence or stupidity? The result suggested the latter but it didnt look like we were panicking - it looked pre-determined and clearly unsuccessful.

Cons:
* Fisher and Kennedy's inability to find space even outside of the 50m. Fish stole some rovers goals but his job is to take marks. Whether they be on the load or pack, I dont care, but we have a 1-dimensional forward line of similar type players (Thank God Waite is out of there). This is also a passing to forwards problem but we were getting stuck tim & time again.
* Whitnall. Whitnall's brain didnt fire tonight. He didnt even scum the free kick from the boundary ump was 50m away!
* Lack of a 'When we absolutely must win the centre clearance' ruckman and midfielder. This is a short-term con for we have the young players on the list being able to provide hope to do this. But in the 3rd we needed an ounce of polish / class / CFC bravado and couldn't find it.

Overall the Cats were switched on and looked magnificent. We looked good for 3/8 of the game before starting to look defensive and getting swallowed by their defensive drive. Some lazy matchups, checking and thinking in the third allowed the blowout.

Another positive for me is that this is another game under the belt for our very young and inexperienced team. It was a tough lesson in not dropping your guard for one second... if you do you can finish up on the end of a severe thrashing.

I believe our room for improvement is limitless. I have broken down our list into those yet to play a senior game/played under 50 games/50-100 games and 100+ games. Basically we have 22 senior listed players who have not yet played 50 games. We still have a while to go before we start tasting any real success, but every match -win lose or draw- is money in the bank. Short term pain for long term gain.

Yet to play a senior game:
Anderson
Austin
Benjamin
Edwards
Flint
Grigg
Hampson
Hartlett
Raso

Under 50 games (as of 9/4/07):
Bannister
Bentick
Betts
Blackwell
Bower
Carrazzo
Cloke
Gibbs
Kennedy
Murphy
O'hAilpin
Russell
Simpson

50-100 games:
Ackland
McLaren
Teague
Thornton
Waite
Walker
Wiggins

We have 5 rookie listed players that have played one senior game between them and we only have 8 players that have played 100+ games.

As a footnote to this, 3 of our best players on the night were Gibbs, Murphy and Walker who are all still babies in football terms. I would rather lose and see our young players shining than be like Essendon* who are still relying on the likes of Hird, Lucas, Lloyd, Michael etc to win matches.

Pro: I got so smashed at Derby Day that I only remember parts of the first half and none of the second.

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The only way for some people to understand is for them to be on the receiving end

Left wing moralists
In self serving denial
They shit me no end

Pros:
-Walker and Gibbs.
-Many players had a "downer" and should bounce back next week. Also we were up against a very good side playing at their potential.
-Bower, Hartlett and Hampson all playing well for the Bullants.

Cons:
- Jarrad Waite's form has dropped off. Hopefully he can still be the solution to our CHB problem.
- Fisher looked ineffective up forward.

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There is no footy god

Pros fairly obvious ....
The games from Walker, Murphy, and Gibbs in particular was specially good in a backline under barrage.

Fev much better than in previous Geelong games, despite being hopelessly outnumbered whenever the ball came near him.

Cons:

1. Centre square setups, when we were being belted in the ruck, showed no attempt to man up on the Geelong mid-fielders to try and stifle their easy takeaways.

2. Lack of accountability across the field when Geelong had possession in relatively static plays ... most Carlton players content to watch their opponents wander away without maintaining contact. Basicly, Geelong wanted the ball much more, and were prepared to work much harder to maintain contact when they were not in possession.

3. Lack of reaction to Geelong setups when they had the kick-in ... similar to Richmond game 1st half, our forwards failed to adjust to Geelong stacking one side of the field with more players.

The way to stop their run is the same tactic used by every top team - Keep possession. As much as it is a blight on our game and perhaps we don't have the skill to execute it properly, but we needed to chip it around when we were on the wing and not kick it into the forward line until we had a player free. The long bomb into the forward line destroyed us, if we chipped it around we could have found a player free and it would have made the Geelong defence more accountable rather than have three on Fev. We just didn't give ourselves a chance with that gameplan....

As much as Geelong dictated the hitouts Conundrum, Carlton actually won the clearances on the day.
They had only 12 more contested possessions but their uncontested possessions did the damage. 86 more uncontested possessions to Geelong allowed them to carry the ball and use it without pressure.

IMO, our inability to adapt and improvise is and has been a major issue. Anyone who watched our previous games knew that our forwardline was a huge asset. We gave our forwards space, they converted quite well and most importantly, they applied enormous pressure when the ball was exiting our forwardline.
Look at our NAB Cup games and Eddie, Fish, Fev and co were chasing hard and causing numerous turnover. If they did'nt cause a turnover, they applied so much pressure that the opposition kicked under pressure

I posted my thoughts on this a month ago

http://www.talkingcarlton.com/phpBB2/vi ... c&start=20

Any reasonable coach was going to try to limit our strengths. As soon as Geelong got numbers back into our forward line, we needed to make changes. Their players are experienced at carrying the ball and using the spare man. Thompson was bright enough to put good decision makers and ball users in our back half and in doing so, blocked up any space we had.

After they placed spare players back there, they just waited for us to kick it to them. They then utilised the spare men and ran the ball out without pressure.
Some posters are saying that the forwards didnt chase hard enough but 6 players should never get the ball off 7 the way the game is played these days. Teams train continually to choose and use the spare man.
To compound the problem, Thompson got the the players he wanted in the contest.
Jordan Russell was assigned to Corey Enright from the first bounce. As soon as Thompson noticed that, he dragged Enright back into our forwardline which further congested the area. JR rightly followed his opponent which put an extra player in the space.

Other posters are blaming the midfield yet the attacks were starting mainly off half back through Wojcinsky, Bartel and co.
Obviously Stevens has been in red hot form so Thompson attempted to expose him and make him accountable. Quite often at contests, Ling ran forward of the stoppage and the Geelong players were looking to give it to him as often as possible.
This made Stevens either exposed when we lost the clearance or dragged him away from the play when he manned up. With Geelong winning the ruck, they had the ascendancy.

As for our backline, well any backline will struggle when the opposition are running the ball in numbers.

What are our options? IMHO, we need to increase our flexibility.
On the weekend, Denis changed personnel on several occasions but mostly left the same structure in place. Instead of hoping Fish could do Fevs job and trying Waite to do Josh's role, we needed to retake the initiative.
Why not move everyone up to the half forward line and leave the space behind them? Why not back our players to beat the Cats to the ball with pace instead of letting them control the contests with "smarts"
It places more players around the middle of the ground which stops them running it out unimpeded.

If they dont want to try that, why not push everyone up the ground and leave Eddie and Fish one out with their opponents? It takes Scarlett and Egan out of their comfort zone and creates space for the ball to be kicked to.
Why not instruct the players to chip the ball and try to pick holes in the flood?
Varying options and setups should be part of our training schedule. Good clubs anticipate different scenarios and practice different options.

Not unlike 2005, we've gone into a season with a method that the coach thinks is a winner. Just like 2005, our opposition picked holes in it in the first game or so and we had no answer.

As for the comment about young bodies, like was posted elsewhere Geerlong had an average age of 23.4 compared to our 23.1.
The average games was 77.3 compared to 75.2.
Interestingly I'd say 3 of our best 4 players were actually 3 of our youngest.
As for sticking tackles, I'd suggest our youngest player stuck stronger tackles than anyone.
As much as Denis peddles it, our youth and inexperienced players obviously are'nt the issue.

IMO, we have the talent. We just need someone who knows how to utilise it.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

That's a great post BV!

The fact that the approach/structure wasnt changed during the game was what annoyed me.

The signs were there in the first half and through nothing more than persistance we managed to stay somewhat in touch. But that wasnt gonna last was it as we got swamped in the 3rd.

"Hear Hear!"

the most flexible component is the most powerful - we are as rigid as a 17 year old's.......

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This type of slight is alien in the more cultured part of the world - Walsh. Its up there with mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun!

Thank you Blue Vain for taking the time to respond to my post. I tend to agree with you that Pagan deliberately stuck to his plan of playing accountable football with little regard to the happenings on the field. The lack of flexibility may be deliberate on his part to accelerate the development of our players in playing contested football. Would prefer that than the basketball type possession game of an Alistair Clarkson. Having said that it was painfully obvious that our forward line was cramped and not be blessed with players who could effectively deliver the ball to our forwards exarcebated the problem.

Having gone to watch the boys train on a few occasions I felt those game simulations where defenders were matched one on one with forwards did nothing to prepare us for the modern day flooding with loose defenders filling in holes and blocking potential leads.

How much of this thrashing can we attribute to a poor game plan and how much to our players' inabilty to carry out instructions. I believe we lag behind most sides in terms of decision making skills and disposal by foot
and Geelong really exploited it. When you have Carazzo ,Wiggins and Fisher kicking it into our forwards, the best we could hope for is a 50/50 contest given the extra defender.

BV good post - you obviously know a thing or 2 about the modern game......unlike it appears our coach.

This was the 5th (?) straight belting we have received from the Cats and Pagan still is at a loss to rectify the situation. The Cats love playing us and so do Freo & the Saints.

Pagan needs to come clean & give us specific reasons why we got so easily belted & not hide behind the thin guise of youth, etc.

Excellent post BV. Good analytical thinking like that is what we need at the club. Although it is frustrating if we (and by that I mean you) can see it from the outer, why is it that the ever-increasing inner sanctum can't.

At least it was only four points in the grand scheme of things. I'm sure that we'll have some thumping wins this year too.

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"our guest is dressed by hand-me-downs, hair designed by pillow"