Waite as a loose man has no idea?? I must have been at a different game...I thought he covered 3 or 4 blokes on many occasions and I lost count of the time he saved our ar$e

Walker started at half forward. The Kangaroos flood had him ending up down back a few times in Q1, where he presented good running kick-in options but was mostly either ignored, or kicked to too late.

Walks lined up on a back flank at the start of the 3rd & 4th...not a good start if we were planning to go offensive.

Waite needs direction. Playing a loose man has never worked for us.

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I stole Sheedy's Gatorade...

You lost count with how many times Waite saved our ar$e???

Ok we were smashed by a big score kicked against us....
We had a few players playing defensive roles.....


If Waite was ok as the loose man across half back..... how come we were scored so heavily against and we had a flood????

Waite isnt a natural reader of the ball.... what he can do is at times do the athletically incredible stuff....and its very eyecatching..... but he also creates some eye catching stuff ups...


While were on the defence how many times have a heap of our forwards gone up as one and come down as one on their backs only for the ball to hit the ground and an opposition forward to just waltz in and kick a goal???

Ok another one....
How many times have our defenders punched the ball back to an opposition forward ????

Defence 101....

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

dommo25, spot on. Our running has improved, but has a long way to go yet.

BTW Hi Heady!!

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I stole Sheedy's Gatorade...

Synbad, defence 101 and kick-in strategy 101 and mid-field 101 etc all look really easy on the white board ... unfortunately the game is not played on the white board.

That's why it takes time to improve these things.



Hi chief.

Anyone who agrees Waite has "no idea" as a loose man in defense, I suggest you watch the Bulldogs game again.

Not only does he repel alot of attacking moves, but he then sets up attack off half back, by being able to break the lines either by beating the player in front of him with his speed & unique striding run (ie) goes around them, or takes the player on, takes the tackle & then is able to almost always get his hands free to offload to a runner. Very rarely is he caught holding the ball.

He also appears to have been given a Tom Harley type role by Ratts to take as many marks as he can when the ball comes into our back half, instead of spoiling, which, if you do, you cannot control where the ball goes most ofthe time (ask T-Bird). And he does it superbly well.

If anyone says he also makes errors doing what he does, I agree, he sometimes does, but look at Geelong. Why are they so good? Alot of it is because they take "risks". With all the zone defensive setups these days, players need to take risks & try & break the lines to create attack. If no-one takes risks they wont get very far & will keep hitting the defensive wall.

Seriously, go back & watch the Bullies game again. Was he as effective against Nth. Probably not, but just because it works very well one week & is then less effective on another occasion, doesn't mean you throw it out & start again. If we did that, no-one would have any continuity in the same role.

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"You will always miss 100% of the shots you don't take"- Michael Jordan

Defining defensive strategy, kick out strategy 101 pre-disposes the fact that our players are at college.

But this flatters them - we are lucky to be playing at a Year 9 or 10 level - and its our Coaching Staff who must take and share responsibility for this.

Our kick in strategy if we are zoned up, is kick short to the back pocket - we might have won a flag in 1995 with this one Ratts - but its now 2008 and surely you have some better ideas than that.

We play a very naive football - we have the young talent at our disposal - we have to start giving them more than they were getting at TAC Cup level - we have to start teaching them about AFL Football.

They have had a pre-season and 20 weeks to improve - and whilst we have have shown improvement against the bottom to mid rank sides we have really been smashed by the quality sides like Geelong and North. Hawthorn and Brisbane will be real interesting test cases on how far we have come.

I am not writing off Ratts and his coaching panel yet - but we would be wanting to show a lot more nous and intelligence with our counter strategies - we just cant rely on us winning the ball out of the middle with our "quality mid-field" because North showed how we can be smashed with their "blue collar no-name" midfield.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

Ridiculous to suggest that Waite can't play back. He has been enormous for us this year as demonstrated by his selection in the Hall of Fame match. As TC said, he had a massive influence on the game against the Bulldogs and has done in most games this year.

Laidley had clearly put a lot of time into working out a way of limiting Waite's influence and the North forwards spent a lot of time niggling Waite and blocking his run. Despite this he still had a reasonable game for us.

Chaos in the backline comes with the fact that it was coming down so frequently and we had so much trouble rebounding the ball out. That 18 man zone was a killer. But it's good to get exposed by that sort of tactic at this stage of our development. It will make it an urgent priority for the coaching staff to establish tactics to counter it. It's probably not something that can be fixed in two weeks but we'll go into the Hawks game and they'll do the same thing and we'll see if we've learned anything.

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Don't blame it on the sunshine, don't blame it on the moonlight, don't blame it on the good times, blame it on the WIGGINS!

Well said

No one is saying that Waite can't play back, I think he is brilliant down back.
But I would rather he be assigned a player and a task than run around on his own while the other team have a bloke doing the same thing. Other teams may have more avenues to goal than us, as soon as we have a loose man in front of Fevs were are in trouble.

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I stole Sheedy's Gatorade...

Wasn't responding to your post Chief, there were others that said he had no idea. Ratts had identified that the loose man wasn't working for us in the second quarter and thus Waite began the third quarter on Hansen and we eliminated the loose man which I thought was a good move.

I agree that our lack of alternative options makes a loose man for the opposition such an effective tactic. However, Waite has been a virtual wall at times for us playing loose in the backline so it's a case of picking the right time and opposition to implement the ploy.

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Don't blame it on the sunshine, don't blame it on the moonlight, don't blame it on the good times, blame it on the WIGGINS!

I'm not say we should be world beaters over night, nor am i expecting or demanding us too.

But............ Jacobs and Aisakie should have been given a go. And I'm starting to think that Hampson, who CAN win the tap, is a bit clueless as to where to tap it too.

Hampson and Kreuzer will be awesome ruck duo when they mature, i'm certainly not asking em to do anymore than what they are doing. But yeah, we could have tried a few things but it kinda looks like where just poldding along with the same old attempts week-in week-out.

And the kick ins'....wow.....haven't had a clue all year.

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

Actually I though the stuffing really went out of us when Fisher was open in the left forward pocket but couldn't make the distance from 35m. From memory, it would have brought the magin into 16. Who knows what might have happened then.

All in all we'll be better for the loss (combined with Richmond's an Brisbane's wins). We've proved enough this season, what's wrong with us can't be fixed mid-season, so bring on November and a top 6 pick.

I am still in the camp of Ratts will turn out and do well in 2009 i am happy with 2008 considering the 5 years of doom and gloom. We seem to sometimes forget where we have come from.

I think to state the Kickins or forward structure against North is a secondary problem to what we faced in the North Encounter.

We lost the game in the Centre square all i remember all game is another @#$%&! North Clearance. We got smashed out of the Centre square clearance with that much use of the ball straight out of the centre i am surprised we didnt get belted worse i dont know the stats but 6-7 goals from North Came from the initial Centre square clearance.

Puts so much pressure on the team structure and has the effect of causing the players to revert to old habits ie Kick it to Fev. Stop creating space, being pushed into a corner.

I dont blame the forwards or backs so much as the backs had to much pressure on them all day and the Forwards didnt get enough good ball from our Midfielders.

I agree Saddo looked out of place in the Backline also agree in comments on T-Bird also but looking at the game from start to finish the centre clearances domination by North caused alot of the other issues to come out.

If the Blues had 80% Centre Clearance i am sure that the Kangas would have been seen to have similar issues with the Forward line structure and kickins.

We really needed a Betts and probably Hadley out there today against the Kangas. Betts would have been ideal to put a spark in the centre square just to mix it up.

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CFC TAC Squad everyone over 25 must be traded sounds like Loguns Run

"The Big Sinner" has come in.Welcome big fella............flooding the guts,the half court press.I seem to have been ridiculed for daring to suggest such a thing "S".Uhm,havent footy coaches been exploring other codes such as basketball,soccer,rugby .They have only been gleaning info from outside for about minimum 30 years.........but then again,wise folks on this site just dont believe it.............tacticly speaking Syns,im prepared to cut Ratten plenty of slack.But the two Adelaide games and the Sydney games were mirror images of each other without a wimper from the box.I would sooner Ratten tried something and flopped than continually hitting your in EXACTLY the same spot..........and the funny thing is that the Roos dont play anything like the Swans or Crows.It was a game they had to win,so rather than play there normal game,they adopted the foolproof Crows and Sydney method knowing it was a near certainty to succeed.Paralysis in our coaching box would gift them a win.Worked perfectly to script...........im more than happy to give Ratts a fair go,but mate,do something,anything.Know one is gonna bag you for gambling if it doent come off.Gotta get inventive.
PS.......no way known im bagging Waite.He is the everywhere man.He must be dizzy.One of the real plusses for us this year.And he has got his once fragile temperament in check.

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All my dangerous friends

While Ratts is developing the team he is right to stick to his guns. He has a style of play in mind like any coach. I wouldnt want him to drop his vision this early just because teams with bigger, stronger more developed teams realise that all you have to do is flood the corridor, stick a tall up forward and win over 60% of contested football to win the game.

With maturity and a little tweaking of the personal the team will learn to deal with such situations. It will take time.

The kickouts are bad but if i and internet goons like me can see that i am sure the blokes in our coaching box can see it and just because they can see it doesnt mean they can do too much about it straight away.

We have won games this year. 9 infact. We lost games against teams that have been sitting up near the top for years and they beat us because they are better drilled.

I still reckon the guys who come on here thinking they know more than Ratts about footy are doing it just to be cool.

Just having Judd accounts for 5-6 wins. Problem is with players like Judd and Fevs they hide what sort of forward line and midfield we actually have. Ratts needs a plan B when these guys are not firing.

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I stole Sheedy's Gatorade...

Nth are a good team, we have good individuals.......10-12 B graders playing well will overcome 2-4 A graders having to do most of the work with a predictable game plan and one avenue to goal.

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