Soon all the pre season hype, optimism, concerns and worries will deliver some insights. Only a first game in a long season of on-going development under a new coaching group, led by Vossy, but a game in which we hopefully get a good look at the 'New Blues' - players, coaches and game plan/attitude. Hopefully we begin the year with a win. Be a nice change.
Optimism.
Loved the team defense approach, bold ball movement and discipline of the pre season games against good opposition. Intensity was there and we just kept coming - persistence. Yummy.
Impressed by the Gov. Rolled into contests to spoil, delivery by foot was important and dangerous and high footy IQ was on display.
Impressed by our small forwards and forward half defensive pressure.
Crippa, Hewitt, Cerra and Kennedy as a midfield group (and soon, Walshy added to that group).
LOB improvement.
Running half backs.
Concerns.
In game lapses... allowing opposition to kick multiple, unanswered goals (though mitigated, particularly in the D's game by 2nd half personnel changes) i.e ability to deliver 4 qtr pressure/handle effectively the opposition when they've got the 'run of play' and apply strong pressure to our game plan (in the past, we had no answer and would wilt/go into our shells).
Injury prone players - we've a few too many of those.
Your excitements, interests, thoughts and concerns?
The Tigers will be a good litmus test for our newfound team defence, composure, and crisp ball skills. I've liked the zigzag handball on display in the praccie against Melbourne - a change from our usual hot potato handballs. But the swarming strategy the Tigers employ will apply much more pressure than a practice match could ever do.
The talls down either end will have a good test. In F50, Charlie & Harry should have relatively favourable match-ups, particularly if Grimes doesn't come up 100% and Balta plays forward. Tarrant will probably need some time to gel with the back 6 and Gibcus is a bit raw if he is chosen to fill in for Grimes. And down the other end, Lynch, Riewoldt & Balta will test whoever we pick as FB. That'll help us decide whether we've picked wisely.
Looking good but i'll wait for the first couple of rounds. Round 1 we are always competitive then, after being full of hope, we don't turn up for round 2. We can do no more than what we could've done during the pre-season but history tells me to wait after round 2. A good round 2 and i'm in!!!!
One of the big differences that gives me more hope than I have had at this time over far too many years is the focus on culture. Vossy must have recognised that as a significant deficiency and argued successfully for the appointment of an assistant, Aaron Greaves, to address that. How will it play out? Hopefully, greater pride in the jumper and mutual respect across the board will mean that we are competitive at worst.
I think that we surprised St Kilda and Melbourne but Richmond will be all over our new gamestyle. If we can execute well, we're definitely in with a chance, particularly with Richmond having a few regular players out.
It may take a few games before everyone is playing their role and I'm expecting our best footy to really kick in from Round 4 or 5. Getting a couple of wins on the board before then will be a bonus.
Interestingly, seven out of the nine Age "experts" have us finishing in the eight and Andrew Wu has us at sixth. I'll take that :)
Cripps ability to get through the season makes up about 3 ladder spots, if he stays fit!
Before Cerra and Hewett arrived, Cripps probably made a 5 spot difference!
So much depends on guys like BigH, Charlie, De Koning and SoJ staying fit, but again we are less dependant this season as guys like Kemp, McDonald and Kennedy can bridge gaps in more than one position. Losing one default starter won't hurt us like it has in the past.
Richmond have a weaker defense than usual especially if Grimes is out...Astbury and Houli have retired and they have imported Tarrant to help fill the gaps. Decent player that he is he wont make up for the others missing and IMO this is our best chance to beat Richmond and we should start favorites. They do have Dusty Martin back and still have a a very dangerous forward line as well as two big strong rucks especially with Nankervis who dines out on us most games but hopefully DeKoning later in the game can out jump them and provide us with a spark as it really is the battle of the mids that will win the game.
Lambert and Graham out will help and I'm hoping Prestia wont play either, Tigers are still a force and of course have the biggest X factor in the comp in Martin but this is a must win game IMO.
Richmond have a weaker defense than usual especially if Grimes is out...Astbury and Houli have retired and they have imported Tarrant to help fill the gaps. Decent player that he is he wont make up for the others missing and IMO this is our best chance to beat Richmond and we should start favorites. They do have Dusty Martin back and still have a a very dangerous forward line as well as two big strong rucks especially with Nankervis who dines out on us most games but hopefully DeKoning later in the game can out jump them and provide us with a spark as it really is the battle of the mids that will win the game.
Lambert and Graham out will help and I'm hoping Prestia wont play either, Tigers are still a force and of course have the biggest X factor in the comp in Martin but this is a must win game IMO.
Nice to have you back EB!
Nice to have you back EB!
Thanks DJ, happy to be back amongst fine company such as your good self, happy to share I had a heart scare and now have a stent for company in an artery but on the mend and given the sad losses recently of SK Warne, R, Marsh and Senator Kitching I'm not complaining especially with the excellent care I received by both the ambulance and hospital staff.
Thanks DJ, happy to be back amongst fine company such as your good self, happy to share I had a heart scare and now have a stent for company in an artery but on the mend and given the sad losses recently of SK Warne, R, Marsh and Senator Kitching I'm not complaining especially with the excellent care I received by both the ambulance and hospital staff.
Glad you made it 👍🏼
Agree EB...on paper probably our best chance of knocking Richmond off in Round 1 for awhile. Their tall forwards are a bit of a worry, especially with no Jones, but I think McDonald and McGovern can do enough between them to help out Weitering. At the other end, we can really test them with our talls and blokes like Silvagni and Kennedy going forward too able to take a mark. Throw in some speed and nous with Owies, Durdin and Fisher and I think we look pretty even across the ground.
I'd still be going with TDK/Pittonet combination too.
Glad you made it 👍🏼
Thanks NT...me too😀
Thanks DJ, happy to be back amongst fine company such as your good self, happy to share I had a heart scare and now have a stent for company in an artery but on the mend and given the sad losses recently of SK Warne, R, Marsh and Senator Kitching I'm not complaining especially with the excellent care I received by both the ambulance and hospital staff.
Very thankful for that
@ElwoodBlues1 ... take good care mate :) :) My best wishes
Thanks DJ, happy to be back amongst fine company such as your good self, happy to share I had a heart scare and now have a stent for company in an artery but on the mend and given the sad losses recently of SK Warne, R, Marsh and Senator Kitching I'm not complaining especially with the excellent care I received by both the ambulance and hospital staff.
Glad to hear you're on the mend
@ElwoodBlues1 , we should start a club, Men of Metal! ;D
I think mine is Nickel Cobalt Chrome.
Very thankful for that @ElwoodBlues1 ... take good care mate :) :) My best wishes
Cheers Cap...
Glad to hear you're on the mend @ElwoodBlues1 , we should start a club, Men of Metal! ;D
I think mine is Nickel Cobalt Chrome.
Thanks LP...
Richmond have a weaker defense than usual especially if Grimes is out...Astbury and Houli have retired and they have imported Tarrant to help fill the gaps. Decent player that he is he wont make up for the others missing and IMO this is our best chance to beat Richmond and we should start favorites. They do have Dusty Martin back and still have a a very dangerous forward line as well as two big strong rucks especially with Nankervis who dines out on us most games but hopefully DeKoning later in the game can out jump them and provide us with a spark as it really is the battle of the mids that will win the game.
Lambert and Graham out will help and I'm hoping Prestia wont play either, Tigers are still a force and of course have the biggest X factor in the comp in Martin but this is a must win game IMO.
Good to have you back safe and sound EB. Wouldn't be without my stent! 👍
Good to have you back safe and sound EB. Wouldn't be without my stent! 👍
Thanks Cookie, nice to be back and share your appreciation for our extra arterial additions...😎
Thanks DJ, happy to be back amongst fine company such as your good self, happy to share I had a heart scare and now have a stent for company in an artery but on the mend and given the sad losses recently of SK Warne, R, Marsh and Senator Kitching I'm not complaining especially with the excellent care I received by both the ambulance and hospital staff.
Rapt you're back mate. CSC is not the same without your regular insights!
Stay healthy brother.
Rapt you're back mate. CSC is not the same without your regular insights!
Stay healthy brother.
Cheers Shawny👍
Cheers Shawny👍
Glad to hear you’re on the mend👌
Glad to hear you’re on the mend👌
Thanks SB...👍
Good to have you back EB.
I had the open heart job done 3 years ago and all is still going well.
I hope it does the same for you mate.
We need you here. ;)
Thanks DJ, happy to be back amongst fine company such as your good self, happy to share I had a heart scare and now have a stent for company in an artery but on the mend and given the sad losses recently of SK Warne, R, Marsh and Senator Kitching I'm not complaining especially with the excellent care I received by both the ambulance and hospital staff.
Sorry to hear of your ordeal, EB1, but rapt you've come through it and are back on deck here, sharing your thoughts and insights. Take care, Mate. Cheers and good health to you!
Names such as SPS, Newnes, Setterfield, Casboult, Fogarty, Murphy, Plowman, Ed Curnow, Williamson and Gibbons from Round 1 last year will be superceded by the likes of Williams, Cerra, Hewett, Charlie, Owies, Durdin, Kemp and Kennedy.
I think the changes in our list from Round 1 last year are far more significant than any changes they would have made. Our improvement must get us across the line!!!
Good to have you back EB.
I had the open heart job done 3 years ago and all is still going well.
I hope it does the same for you mate.
We need you here. ;)
Thanks Sandy..good to hear you are tracking well too..
Sorry to hear of your ordeal, EB1, but rapt you've come through it and are back on deck here, sharing your thoughts and insights. Take care, Mate. Cheers and good health to you!
Thanks Baggers, glad to be back with you and the other fine Navy Blue folk on the forum..
With all the others EB....good to have you back onboard and hopefully strapped in for another up and down year in Navy Blue!
Ditto from me EB
With all the others EB....good to have you back onboard and hopefully strapped in for another up and down year in Navy Blue!
Thanks Surfie, hopefully more up than down 😉, strange start to the season for me actually as I am going to see the Saints v Pies on Friday night with my Son in Law and his family. I wasnt going to go but given they are Ukranian background and his mother has had a stroke recently and lost her sight in one eye I couldnt refuse given how kind they have been to me and my wife yet have a multitude of their own problems. Mad keen Saints fans so I will have to park the Navy Blue scarf for the evening and show some love for Brett Ratten and team....
Ditto from me EB
Thanks GTC, nice to be back with you and the usual crew immersed in another Navy Blue campaign...
Any footy is better than no footy EB.....and at a neutral game you can walk outta there at the final siren and still be happy! Doesn't always work like that at Blues games unfortunately.
Any footy is better than no footy EB.....and at a neutral game you can walk outta there at the final siren and still be happy! Doesn't always work like that at Blues games unfortunately.
Fair Point Surfie, hopefully my blood pressure wont be up from the previous evening....
EB, it's great to hear good news. I had a triple bypass twenty five years ago so you've got many years of following Carlton ahead of you.
Speaking of good news (congrats EB) it just been said by Vossy, that Sam Docherty will be playing R1!
Remarkable recovery considering i think most here wrote him off for the year.
Just read the same thing Kruddler. Enormous boost for the team and the club I reckon. His form early last year was very "un-Docherty" like...fumbles, dropped marks, poor kicks etc....got a sneaky feeling he'll be pumped to make amends this year. Huge game and no way would Voss pick him if he didn't think he was 100% right to go.
Starting to get excited about what may lie ahead for the next 6 months.
When I was a wee lad, there weren't any bad players for Carlton - because they played for Carlton, they were good. While I'm sure that wasn't the case, the innocence of childhood has a lot going for it.
The players will have me if they show that they are playing as a team and for Carlton and put in. Doesn't matter who.
I think there is a different feel to R1 this year, helped by not being the first game of the season.
Like others, I think we're in for a good show R1 this year, but head says Richmond to win.
PS welcome back Elwood. My SIL's brother, 45 had a quad/quin bypass earlier in the year - probably best thing to happen to him as it has given him a massive wake up call (not saying that you need one) and I think he has decided life is worth sticking around for. It is amazing how standard and generally easy the op is these days.
EB, it's great to hear good news. I had a triple bypass twenty five years ago so you've got many years of following Carlton ahead of you.
Thanks Macca and glad to see you have recovered so well ...
Speaking of good news (congrats EB) it just been said by Vossy, that Sam Docherty will be playing R1!
Remarkable recovery considering i think most here wrote him off for the year.
Thanks Krud and yep poor Doc has had a tough run and be great to see him run out round 1, play well and stay well.
Starting to get excited about what may lie ahead for the next 6 months.
When I was a wee lad, there weren't any bad players for Carlton - because they played for Carlton, they were good. While I'm sure that wasn't the case, the innocence of childhood has a lot going for it.
The players will have me if they show that they are playing as a team and for Carlton and put in. Doesn't matter who.
I think there is a different feel to R1 this year, helped by not being the first game of the season.
Like others, I think we're in for a good show R1 this year, but head says Richmond to win.
PS welcome back Elwood. My SIL's brother, 45 had a quad/quin bypass earlier in the year - probably best thing to happen to him as it has given him a massive wake up call (not saying that you need one) and I think he has decided life is worth sticking around for. It is amazing how standard and generally easy the op is these days.
Cheers Dodge, I was fairly diligent in terms of lifestyle, monitoring etc and didnt think I fitted the profile for heart issues but just goes to show you can do a lot of things right and still find yourself asking why me?. but you have to look at the positives and sounds like your SIL's brother did that...
I had a laugh today listening to the radio, they are all over us as "we should be big improvers", "this year will be different", "they've made great progress", etc., etc., building expectations that this year will be different.
Then they read out the picks for Rnd 1 and we didn't have a single backer, not one, nada, nothing, no-one backed us to win tomorrow night!
Then I had to listen to the spiel about the Ferals being "the underdogs!" :o
This is straight out of the Jab Watson Snr / Kevin Sheedy Memorial Carlton Haters playbook, "Build em up to tear em down after "the upset" loss!"
^^
Or it could just be the status quo.
We are going up against a team that we haven't beaten since 2013. That team has won the premiership 3 times since then, and we have won the wooden spoon a few times.
They have become a bogey team for us. We have a few under an injury cloud, and they should account for us reasonably quickly.
They currently still have the bones of a premiership outfit, and we are coming up from a low base with a new coach, and a bunch of new players.
Can we win? yes.
Should we win? I don't know.
Are the pundits right for expecting Richmond to account fur us? Probably.
Do they expect us to show remarkable improvement? YES. That doesnt mean we should win though.
I don't think anyone who has been indoctrinated by Sheedy, or has had the opportunity to spread or assert Sheedy's indoctrination over subordinates, will ever miss an opportunity to shiv Carlton!
It's followed the same fundamental pattern for more than 30 years, long long before we were such easy fodder.
To further that, we've had decades of an AFL Executive that is/was basically CheatsFC boosters, even someone like Vlad who turned out to be a CheatsFC closet booster, they painted him publicly as the bad man when all along he was really their man on the inside.
Then you add to that a layer of AFL media, that is basically the marketing division of CheatsFC.
^^
Or it could just be the status quo.
We are going up against a team that we haven't beaten since 2013. That team has won the premiership 3 times since then, and we have won the wooden spoon a few times.
They have become a bogey team for us. We have a few under an injury cloud, and they should account for us reasonably quickly.
They currently still have the bones of a premiership outfit, and we are coming up from a low base with a new coach, and a bunch of new players.
Can we win? yes.
Should we win? I don't know.
Are the pundits right for expecting Richmond to account fur us? Probably.
Do they expect us to show remarkable improvement? YES. That doesnt mean we should win though.
I think if we dont beat Richmond this time then we wont be going anywhere this season. IMO they are ripe for picking and apart from Walsh we will have our best team available. Be terribly disappointing to lose after the good preseason we have had and I reckon Voss would feel he needs a good start. 2013 is a long time between wins and we need to break that cycle, first up win be be a great confidence booster and could propel the team finals bound. Lose this and then drop a tough one vs the Dogs the following week and you are playing catchup for the season.
We can win and win well IMHO....
Teams is in....
FB - Saad - McDonald - Weitering
HB - Williams - McGovern - Docherty
C - Kennedy - Cerra - O'Brien
HF - Owies - McKay - Martin
FF - Silvagni - Curnow - Durdin
R - Pittonet - Cripps - Hewitt
INT - De Koning - Fisher - Newman - Setterfield
EMG - Carroll - Fogarty - Williamson - Young
Not picked....
Ed Curnow
Lachie Plowman
Paddy Dow
Lewis Young
Matty Cottrell
Jack Newnes
Brodie Kemp
Luke Parks
INJURED...
Walsh
Stocker
Cuningham
Marchbank
Personally, i probably would've included Kemp over Setterfield but other than that, that is almost exactly the way i would've picked the side......and its probably been about 10 years since i could say that.
Why wasn't Plowman picked? Especially with Jones out.
Didn't Voss look at our best and fairest results?
Why did he pick LoB?
All that went before is irrelevant now we have a new coach, some will wither while others will thrive.
I thought last year the difference between the two sides was Dusty Martin. I am not sure that Richmond has improved their team from last year whereas Carlton looks like it has improved its side. Despite having Stocker, Walsh, Marchbank and Cuningham unavailable, we have a situation where Dow, Fogarty, Kemp, Plowman, Williamson, Newnes and Ed Curnow were not selected. In previous seasons three or four of these players would have been in the team. Last season Richmond endured the run of injuries Carlton has had over the past few seasons and they came back to the field. So I think we must be a big chance. The games we have lost to Richmond in the season openers have in the main been four to six goal margins. I can actually see us reversing this situation and winning by this sort of margin. Go Blues!
That's the spirit
Interesting analysis here:
https://youtu.be/G-i7HSlN1pg (https://youtu.be/G-i7HSlN1pg)
Listening to a Pom wearing a Manchester United guernsey talking footy is a bit strange, but he talks some sense. And when I say talks, he could talk under water. If you typed out everything he says, you'd probably have a bigger book than War and Peace. But then again, I have to believe him as he predicts a 4+ goal win for us.
Seems the 1st part of his spiel rips off Kruddler's Coaches' Milestones bit. Kruddler should demand credit ;D
I thought last year the difference between the two sides was Dusty Martin. I am not sure that Richmond has improved their team from last year whereas Carlton looks like it has improved its side. Despite having Stocker, Walsh, Marchbank and Cuningham unavailable, we have a situation where Dow, Fogarty, Kemp, Plowman, Williamson, Newnes and Ed Curnow were not selected. In previous seasons three or four of these players would have been in the team. Last season Richmond endured the run of injuries Carlton has had over the past few seasons and they came back to the field. So I think we must be a big chance. The games we have lost to Richmond in the season openers have in the main been four to six goal margins. I can actually see us reversing this situation and winning by this sort of margin. Go Blues!
Beware Martin, Riewoldt and Lynch.
Beware Martin, Riewoldt and Lynch.
I'll throw in Bolton too....
If for no other reason, good, bad or indifferent, everything we do this year and beyond is for Doc. If that guy doesn't inspire us, nothing will.
If for no other reason, good, bad or indifferent, everything we do this year and beyond is for Doc. If that guy doesn't inspire us, nothing will.
Yep 100%. Privately our club would have forged the strongest of strong bonds because of docs situation.
Some good has to come out of a tough situation.