As the playing group gathers more experience they will improve in this area. We are along way off being a "unit". Also when your mindset is around losing then you feel you have nothing to protect ... you are 50 points down and you play in a team that loses most of their games ... you see the 1% things of little value because you are falling down in the other 99 percenters. Take any young Carlton player and put him in the Geelong team and the first thing he will see different is the mindset of the players at the two clubs ... the Geelong mindset is around having the confidence to win, having belief in each other and doing the 1 percenters KNOWING your team mates are doing the same and thus protect you from losing.

I am not expecting an inexperienced coach to drill an inexperienced playing group. I think we had 10 today that have played under 50 games ... have not seen that anywhere else.

Some of the indicators I will be looking at to judge Ratten (in these early stages) are:

1. elimanting the joy that certain players get when kicking a goal when the team is way down (despise this) ... a shift from the individuals importance to that of the team
2. watching one line support the next line ... a feature of every top team in any team sport is where the "lines" support each other ... you know you are playing in an honest unit when your team mate runs the yards and makes that effort to support you
3. respect for losing margins ... most blow outs occur not because the winning team was that much superior to the losing team but rather the latters lack of respect for that margin ... when a team respects their losing margin they move a step closer to winning ... you stay closer in touch so if you have a quarter where many things go right you can win that game.

From my experience from coaching I saw the above three of far greater importance than kick out strategies etc

Thought the kick in clearances after opposition behinds were much more effective on the weekend than we've seen for a while.

Don't know if that reflects on Essendon* or us. But presumably credit needs to go to the coaching panel for that.

I also took heart when Malthouse said in the press conference after the collingwood game that we killed them in the stoppages. Which was true on the day.

What happened in the space of a week??

Who knows, but good teams can adjust their game plan to suit their opposition. Maybe we need to look more at our Plan B execution.

Watch Wiggo do the 1%ers. It's his biggest asset. Blocks, shepherds, dives into packs and flicks the ball out. His game and importance to the team can't just be measured in possessions. Maybe I notice it more because I have to listen on the radio. Comments such as 'tapped on cleverly by Wiggins', clever handball out from Wiggins' are pretty common. On TV the commentators don't mention that stuff because the viewers are supposed to see it for themselves.
Gibbs is al so good at it but he should be spending more time recieving and dishing off as a link-player.
Bentick has done it well on occasion at the centre bounces for Judd but at the around the ground set-plays they aren't as obvious to me anyway.
Finally, set plays at stoppages depend on a winning tap ruckman. It's hard to set up a nice block, run through to advantage into an open goal when the ruckman doesn't get the tap. That will have to come further down the track.

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Let slip the Blues of war (with apologies to William Shakespeare) (and Sir Francis Bacon, just in case)

Does a power of work - very good hands - marks well on the lead and gives a good handball off to teammates whilst in traffic. Decided to watch the game today after all the dust had settled and had him amongst the best players for the dons game

That list makes interesting reading. Most high ones in the backs and most low ones in the forwards. That's to be expected due to the nature of defence vs attack so the middle group from about 4.2 down to about 3.5 is probably the most indicative. Of course there are exceptions to the above but I don't think we can rely on pure stats all the time. Nice work just the same to produce it.

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Let slip the Blues of war (with apologies to William Shakespeare) (and Sir Francis Bacon, just in case)