Yeah, pretty dissapointed in Ratten to be honest.

Love the guy, don't get me wrongm and think he's done a very good job in his first year, but yesterday was a bit dissapointing.

Especially when i read in the paper today that Ratten was dissapointed in nobody else lifting (except Fevola) in the forward line. That's kinda hard to do Ratts when the ball isn't even getting anywhere near our forward line!

Our kick-ins are just terrible...........North could see what we were gonna do 5min before we did it!

We dominated early on but North counter-attacked and Ratts was lost. Pushed us wide and we just lost it from there.

Ratts is early into his career, which i'm positive will be a long a rewarding one, but hopefully he can watch the re-run of this game and learn from his mistakes...............as i'm sure he'll expect the same from his players.

Anyone who was at the Gabba last year would know how far we've come.

You have to remember that Pagan left a train wreck behind. A midfield that couldn't win the ball. No winning ruckman. A defence that leaked like a sieve. A forward line that was overly reliant on Fev. Yeah, we still don't have a winning ruckman, and we still go to Fev... but the main advance this year was to instill some spirit and belief into the side and that has clearly happened. The side goes out onto the field prepared to have a red hot go, and knowing that it can win... that's a mega improvement on where we have been.

What we came up against yesterday was a well drilled side that had been under the same coach for many years. Those guys know how to eat and breathe footy the way that Laidley sees it. Our guys will get there with Ratten, but they need more than the one off-season.

To me, the proof in the pudding is that you can only point to 3 games in which our midfield has been smashed. Yet, we've done that without having a centre clearance ruckman. That shows acute tactical nous to be able to get the level of clearances we have without a dominant big man.

We've also improved the defence. At the moment we have no answer to the resting ruckman... but at the start of the season we knew we wouldn't. The good news is that with natural strength improvement in Matty Kreuzer and Shaun Hampson we'll soon be in the position to cause other teams the same headaches in their own defence. A team like North won't then have the luxury of being able to send a guy like Hale forward because they'll need him down back to clog up our forward options. Guys like Hale and Moran are basiclaly kicking sucker goals against us because we don't currently have the big man strength down the other end to force the opposition to think in a more accountable way against us.

My guess is that last off season we spent much time trying to devise a winning midfield. We've achieved that. We also spent much time building a coherent defence, and more often than not we are seeing a good deal of fluidity to the way that the back 6 works together - particularly given absences at various stages of the season of first choice defenders. My guess would be that we spent less time on the forward line because we felt we needed to stop getting smashed, and therefore the midfield and defence were key. I expect that will be rectified this off season.

So anyway, onto 2009. I expect Ratts to make the finals, and if not, I think he'll be gone. But onwards and upwards my friends... if you thought 2008 was exciting, then just wait for 2009!

In 1993, everyone knew that if you put Williams off his game you beat Carlton.

It is common knowledge that Williams could not be closed down, and the beauty of such an attempt is that we had Bradley, Ratts, Browny etc who also were playmakers in the engine room, who could take up the slack; we had a dominant giagantic ruckman.

It's also common knowledge and reported in the media in that Neale Daniher was 'recruited' for the finals series to study the Carlton set ups from a dominant ruckman; Harry the dinosaur. Daniher cracked the code ie signalling from Bradley to Madden which enabled the Baby Bumbers to take advantage of the ruckman's movement of the ball.

So say it loud and say it strong

Ratts can't coach!

great to have you back Synbad! Where the hell were you last week?

[Week 20 already..... still thew same problems exist....

Look dannyboy, he obviously is no heavyweight cos everyone in football knows how to beat Carlton, you just use a mid-field press, but Ratts has never heard of it cos he's dumb.

If he only knew about the press, we would be in top spot now after finishing bottom 2 for 3 seasons and having the youngest list.

You just need to lift your expectations.

Now go write some bad poetry.

One thing that has been pleasing this year is that just about every week our team has been littered with 19 year olds. Yesterday it was Gibbs, Kreuzer, Browne together with 20 year olds Grigg and Hampson.

Where it's lost on you is those teams were not good enough to beat us. They tried and they failed...miserably.

Sucks doesn't it? If only they had used your method. WE WOULD"VE BEEN SMASHED!!!

With all due respect...

prior to the start of this season I cannot remember a single poster who was complaining that we couldn't perform kick-ins. The average spiel was that we had no ruckman and that we needed a key defender to help out. But I can't for the life of me remember anyone who said that we couldn't handle kick ins.