One thing I admire about the Cats is that they have their fair share of "no name" players but they all seem to do their job. Last night for instance they had Lonergan, Taylor, Blake, Mumford, Rooke and Byrnes who are all fringe type players.......whilst there is nothing special about Hawkins, Stokes and Wojinski either IMO.

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There is no footy god

Ratts will win the games where we will be allowed to do whatever we like

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Synbad I reckon you might be overrating our list and underrating Sydney's.

At least their nuggety fellas hit targets.

Are you saying we're not overrating Johnston, Thornton, Cloke, Houlihan etc etc.? Come on man, take a good hard look, half that side is ORDINARY at best.

The lads were taking the game on through the corridor in the summe comp, but have decided to chip sideways ever since. Either that have forgotten how to play, or are taking the easy route after two good wins first up, or the problem is in the coaches box.

Ultimately the problem rests in the coaches box, that's where the buck stops, that's where the messages need to come from, the orders, the guidance.

Why are Stevens and Gibbs not playing on ball?

Why are we chipping side ways?

Why is Fevola leading to the boundary?

Why are we still going to Fevola when he's 3 on 1?

Why is it they finally go to Cloke when Fev's up around the wing? Sooo obvious. Why can't they go to Cloke when fev's also in the F50? Are they that stupid they can't make decisioons on their own?

Anyhow, pressed reply to say that I thought Effes post was spot on.

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It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it

Sydneys list????????

Kidding me right????

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No I'm not kidding you.

What is your opinion based on? The fact we have a few no.1 picks + Judd + Fevola + soft Stevens?

What else?

They beat us by 3 gls with Hall out, ROK quiet for much of the game, Goodes quiet.

They have a far, far superior ruck to any of ours.

They have the best tagger in the game in Kirk.

There's a terrible tendency for Victorians to underrate interstate teams.

As I have just shown to you the Swans have a fair sprinkling of talent.

And outsied of that they have about a dozen hard ar5ses who stick to their game plan and perservere and importantly as shown yesterday are able to hit the score board and hit their targets, cetainly better than ours yesterday.

Why don't you go and compare their 2nd tier players to ours, do a REAL asessment,. based on the basic skills and principles of football.

Our second tier fellas are very, very average.

ANyhow, intersting to see Ratts' comments post game, said we blew our chances early (no shite!), and after that we turned it over and that probably resulted in a drop in confidence at the same time the Swans predictably started to wear us down which they do most weeks very, very well.

Key pionts here - kicking skills !!

We have some top end talent, but we also have a very dubious 2nd and 3rd tier, you ought to know that Synbad, and you ought to have a more realistic knowledge of interstate teams' lists.

Jolly - one of the best rucks
Hall - still a threat, didn't even play
O'Loughlin - still a threat, didn;'t even play
Kirk - best tagger
ROK - excellent player
Goodes - superstar
Bolton - excellent and underrated All Aust defender
McVeigh - underrated again, bagged 3 gls on Judd

On top of that their 2nd tier are streets ahead of ours.

A lot of their top players might be old now, but that's not the point. I'm talking about the NOW, not the TOMORROW.

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It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it

Yep we are

These guys should not be playing
Stevens
Houlihan
Johnson
CLoke
Thornton and Waite will never be complete footballers. Thornton is a shit kick. Waite makes too many mistakes
Russell not smart enough
Wiggins I love Wiggo but he is short of class

Our style of play is crap when a team throws something at us. Use the corridor for christ sake. Tempo footy when we have the momentum makes no sense.



The biggest concern for me is the lack of leadership. Yesterday it seemed everyone was looking for someone else to do something.

For senior players like Houlihan and Stevens this is their opportunity to stand up but they are pathetic. They wont change now. Get rid of them.

Cut Fev some slack. He needs to be rested and get the foot right. Judd allowed MCVeigh loose needs to tighten up. But atleast he tries to make things happen.
Murphy will be a good player but not a star
Gibbs has the potential to be great but needs to get his hands dirty. Hangs back too much. Needs to be in the guts. Its time for Grigg to be the main tagger. Ratten was way of the mark with that one


We are worse off with Gartlett out of the team yesterday.
Why not have Yarran, Betts and Gartlett in the forward line
Fev Fisher and Kreuzer up forward
Time to give Hampson and extended period in the seniors

All in all a lot for the mc
Thing is the problems the club have had for years are still there
Time to bite the bullet
Keep the same personel and we will finish middle of the road.

We are overrated and have not improved.

DANIEL RICH........... skilled, hard and already has presence on field 4 games into his career. Thats what was missing yesterday..... you got to feel for Chris Judd

And all of these guys you've mentioned have been in the game for some time now. Our list is completely overrated and the worse thing is we will struggle to get the support act right with many years of compromised drafts

Houlihan and Cloke are liabilities just like Fisher is because of there lack of pace.

Once they started to score our backline went into its shell. Russell was worried about one man which were his instructions, Thornton and Bower were taking far to long to move it on. This robbed us of the corridor which in turn robbed us of any chance to get it to fev on the lead or to a one on one. Ratts tries gibbs, simpson , stevens and even moving waite from forward line where he was doing ok. He was trying to get some run back into us.

Remember last year against WC when they came at us and Bower took it upon himself to mark and just take off up the middle and it turned the game. Well thats what we needed.

The backline are moving it on too slowly. Forcing us to play the chip game once the opposition get 18 players behind the ball.

Id stack the backline with dashers and sacrifice the odd pack mark when things start too look stagnate.

I agree with synbad when he says Ratts will win games when he is allowed to do what he wants. That is true for now but if he can get the side better drilled in the game plan. Get them stronger physically and mentally then stopping us from doing what we want will get harder and harder.

Go Blues !

I'm certainly not overating our side, nor any particular player. But could it be that we are overating the importance of possession football, when the momentum shifts?

Thought we had many opportunities, to run straight through the lines, and opted to play the possession patient game of football. I would have prefered that we lost by 40 points and tried running through and kicking longer footy, in an effort to creating some headaches for the opposition team, rather than participating in a painful game of "keeping off".

And yes we participated rather than played football !!!

Go Blues !!

It was painfully obvious yesterday that when Sydney came at us we didnt back ourselves.
The players lack confidence and we went wide. We had no chance of winning.

Back yourself and we didnt.

I would rather lose being proactive than reactive

This was possibly the worst game I have seen a Carlton team play since the day Fevola kick our entire score justabout against the aints.

However this time no excuses.
We have a better list
Players should be getting better
Problem is when things dont go our way we start playing like a pack of softcocks looking around for inspiration and making sure we kick it sideways 20m so we can get another effective disposal.

I would even go as as to say that there is something fundamentally wrong with this playing group.
Thornton lolly pops the ball to Betts who almost marks it when the kick should have been drilled chest height from 30m.
Thornton then went right off at Betts for dropping mark that he nearly took. Unbelievable .If Ratten doesnt tell Thornton to pull his head in and practice drilling low passes this week then he aint doing his job.

Football in some ways has become too technical.

Do the Maths. The SCG is 159m long and 155m wide. Which direction would go when attacking.
What we did was chip it around while Sydney flooded back playing completely into their hands.

Sydney are a middle of road side at best/ Their 2 best forwards were missing but after quarter time we were pansed. The fact that we finally turned up to play with 5 minutes left of the game added further salt into the wound.

Not good enough

Please enlighten us on what you have to back up your claims? If you cannot, replace the word "claims" with "grandstanding drivel"

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If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you!

Overrated like 13 other sides

Well, we're even stevens at 2-2 - probably should be 3-1, but we're not good enough yet.

Whilst the last two games have been extremely frustrating to watch and see us squander great starts to the games without enough scoreboard pressure, it shows that we have holes in our list - yes, you heard HOLES. Like all other teams, perhaps except for Geelong, we have some deficiencies relating to skill.

Most of the football community have tipped us to finish in the 8. We probably should, but it won't be in the upper part, which will disappoint some on here. It will be 7th or 8th. We have improved and are still developing a young team.

Still 18 games left in the year where the competition is extremely even, bar Geelong.

Are we overrated? Yes, we are, cause we're still developing. Look at Geelong the bigger bodies, the skills, the confidence, the depth of their list. Now compare us - no where near them.

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For some silly reason, you people want to assassinate him, and it's just rubbish. You people. All of you, ALL of you!

Keogh,
a least Stevens hits a target {most times} when coming out of defense.
He has a place in our team.
Regards Pedro.

No he doesnt have a place in the team in my view.

And his kicking isnt as great as some might think.

The fact is he doesnt have a defensive side to his game.

Have a player like that in a side and it costs you.

If a guy gets a game only because he can kick out of defense well you are in trouble

He did have one tackle!

After watching the Bullants today I am of the opinion that our list is average at best. We have no real forward options apart from Fev, some handy mids but nothing outstanding and as a rule we are a very poor kicking side.

Also, our game plan has me stuffed!

In both sides we are also starting well then getting overrun by the opposition. To me this is very worrying especially when our fitness team is supposed to be one of the best.

Me thinks we have a few overrated posters...

Terrible list.... already old and slow...

Well drilled though.... better than us by the looks of things.

Alot of sides are old and slower with a sprinkling of kids that are not on paper as good as ours but they know what theyre doing out there.

Our senior players with Juddy not included like bit roles
Or set ups are all wrong

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