You should be stoked. You started the 'sack' wagon back in April. We lost. Against a top 8 side. At home.

Where did you expect us to finish this year?

Take your time responding, I'm not checking till the morning, I'm off to bed with my wife. Redtube - it'll relieve that tension.

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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

We were smashed in the contested possession count during the third quarter. That's where it was lost.

Everyone loves to see the fast flashy fashionable footballers (we know who they are - we have quite a few of them) and we bag the crap out of the perceived slow in and under types, but today we could have used at least one of them especially in the thrid quarter around the centre clearances.

Like everything else in life, it's a balance and I think went into the game with one or two too many flashy types.

When it comes off against the unaccountable bulldogs it looks great but the crows like the swans are not drilled that way. We need to be smarter at the selection table - horses for courses.

As much as I love Ratts' coaching, and think he's done a fantastic job this year, I was perplexed as to why he apparently didn't do something to shake Judd's tag, other than rest him for a spell on the bench.

I would have liked to have seen Fev moved to HF, and Judd moved to the square.

Oh well. Nothing much can be done about it now.

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And so while others miserably pledge themselves to the pursuit of ambition and brief power, I will be stretched out in the shade, singing.

60+ clangers is why we lost, not the Coach's moves or non moves. We had 9-10 errors in that last quarter alone.

We have the whole summer to address our skills, that's where Ratts will be judged and earn his new contract, if we don't improve our skills in 2009 then he hasn't done his job or he is persisiting with the wrong cattle.

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Mjonc signing off at 8888

Fair point and I think in two or three cases it's definetly the latter.

i hate the phrase outcoached

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"You don’t get much more Navy Blue than Stephen Kernahan" - Marc Murphy

Don't you think he is learning each time he coaches an AFL game? Just because he is named the Coach does that mean he instantly has all the worldly knowledge of every coach that has gone before him.

Rats is no different from anyone else learning a new job. Nobody has all the answers when they start so they will make some mistakes early on.

Just like we have to wait until the younger players mature we also have to wait until Rats has done a few laps around the block. The thing with Rats is that he is the most enthusiastic bloke you will meet and he thrives on trying to improve in every facet of his coaching and management style.

Very few if any Coaches have instant success and make all the right decisions all the time from the moment they walk in the door.

Regards Cazzesman

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Ricky Gervais - “Everyone has the right to hold whatever beliefs they want. And everyone else has the right to find those beliefs f***ing ridiculous.”

don't waste your time with the chicken littles Cazz - it's not worth it

May have thought that Judds best bet was to burn him off. Run him into the ground. Didnt want to give Shirley a rest in the backline. In the end Ratts plan worked. He got important touches but we lost because scotland missed some he should have kicked.

They were running the ball out of defence easy enough so i dont think cloke or harltett would have been the answer. Eddie was missed.

I agree with those who say we struggle against the lock down style teams at the moment. We dont have the strength to bust through them. We will get it though and it wont be long and when we do we will get the extra 9 points or 3 points against sydney and chin them.

Plenty of things to improve on with the team and the coaching. It will all come in time if they all continue to work hard which i am sure they will.

I look to two of our top players, and I see one has 7 clangers and the other 53% disposal efficiency.

And that's just 2 examples. When the players get pressured, they just start heading for Fevola and hope for a few miracles from him. Until the team as a whole can absorb the fact that they need do do as they are supposed to, lower their eyes and look for other options (because there are other options in many circumstances), there will be days like yesterday.

For whole quarter yesterday, I saw a team constantly 2nd to the ball, then promptly tiurn it over when the actually did get it. You cannot expect to win games when you ae so sloppy.

Blame the coaching all you want, butit's a team game and the players have the major share of responsibility on game day, particularly days like yesterday.

They need time to harden their attitude and not go missing for whole quarters, and for players at certain times to be more team oriented, recognise when they are under pressure, and take the first option more often.

You cannot expect to dispose as poorly as yesterday and win/get into finals, and players have to take responsibility for their poor disposal.

it will only come with experience, and probably more days like yesterday.

I think it's unrealistic to expect more from the team at this stage of progress in the first year of a new coach who is trying to get them to relearn how to play a modern style game.

That's true enough but as Napoleon once said, "show me a man who makes the same mistake twice and I'll show you a fool".

Unfortunetly for Ratts, this is a cut throat business.

I think with Russell as an example, we are making the same mistake not once, not twice but ..............how many chances has he been given this year?

Yeah, I didn't like the selection choices for this week ... fair enough Armfield is in .. but we needed to persist with Hartlett and get Hampson in there as well.

3rd quarter destroyed us .. and we didn't have any plan to get around their zone.

I still think Ratts is a good coach though .. if we had of kicked straight in the last quarter, we would have won the game

How do you know we didn't have any plan? Do you think Ratten just said kick it to Fevola or to any opposition player you can find at half forward?

I don't.

It's one thing to have a plan, but then the plan needs to be carried out. That's the difficult bit, specially with players under pressure.

Let me re-phrase .. didn't have any "successful" plan to get around their zone

I know one thing..............

If we were 32 points down at the 3rd qtr mark under Pagan...... We would have been thumped by at least 10+goals.

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"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit"
- Aristotle

I think Browne and Austin will be good players for this club however they probably aren't quite ready yet (against quality opposition) and probably were our "weakest links" yesterday.
If the likes of Bower, Hadley and Bannister were available for selection the final result probably would have been in our favour.
My only problem with the MC/Ratts this year is that I would have liked to see Pfeiffer given more opportunity.

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There is no footy god

Third Quarter:

Three Adelaide goals caused by a Stevens missed tackle in the guts, then another from Stevens delivering to a Crows player at CHF which resulted in a goal, another to Shirley because we didn't man the mark correctly.

That is where we lost the game, nothing to do with coaching. We gave them a lead we couldn't peg back, well a lead we should of but again errors resulted in our inability to do so, not Ratts coaching.

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Mjonc signing off at 8888

Having just watched the second half I think there were numerous skill errors from our boys that were responsible for this loss. The Stevens handball which inexplicably went metres over Judd's head was a 12 point play on its own. Hit the target and Judd is streaming inside 50 and you'd back him to find Fev or kick it himself. Instead, turnover, Crows goal. I'm sure Ratten has a drill where he teaches the players to handball to the opposition.

Twice Shirley was out of range and due to terrible concentration from the man on the mark was able to sneak 10 metres and goal. The first one was the 2 closest players were Judd and Gibbs. Do you think Ratts instructs them to switch off in that situation?

Then there's the Thornton mark that somehow wasn't paid. Then the umpire deciding he had to run in to show the Crows player that the place he was standing was actually where the mark was. Couldn't make do with yelling out to him to just stay where he was, had to get his head on telly.

2 missed shots from Scotland, 1 from Simmo, 1 from Russell etc. Was this bad coaching?

Many reasons why we lost this game. I'm not saying Ratts is the perfect coach, but it's disappointing to see people brush aside our improvement this year so easily in their rush to blame him for every loss.

Great post, and I'm glad I'm not the only one to be disappointed in some of the comments on this thread. There were real reasons to be upset with the way things were going when Pagan was in charge and our admins were a joke. But now that the club is moving forward and those in charge appear to be slowly getting the club back to where it belonds on and off the field some people just can't stop being extremely negative every time there's a hiccup.

I swear some people on this website have Henry VIII syndrome. We lose a match and suddenly the coach is a fool, our development system is garbage, our senior player need to be delisted or traded, Russell is to blame for the fall of man and Fev needs a labotomy. There are people on this forum who must be happy when we lose because it gives them an excuse to whing.

Sad but true.

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There is no footy god