Carlton Supporters Club

I know we have won 4 games, but the sides we have beaten currently sit 9th, 10th, 11th and 18th, and we lost to 12th.  Heaven help us when we are up against the top half of the ladder.

That was your label .... not mine.

Fitness is one angle but we also seem to go cold on contesting and chasing too, I was at the game and when Powell Pepper decided to get involved after half time a few of our blokes reverted to short steps and one arm tackles when PP went hard at the ball and were waiting for the next bloke to do the hard stuff. Port started to win around the contests and thats where we got into trouble IMHO.

I saw our Test Cricket Captain out of the side for 6 years with constant injuries. You just never know.

If it were just a fitness issue, I'd think that would play out more as the 3rd Q dragged on. I can't imagine it would prevent a concerted effort in the 1st 5 minutes of Q3 after a 20 minute break.

Just watching the second half again, put this in your review, Vossy

* why are so many guys slowly jogging while the ball is about to come into the area?  Get on your bike and find a contest.  Far too many uncontested marks.   We let opposition teams ping-pong down the wing with little thought of manning up.  I know some refer to it as zone defense - that's great on a basketball court, but on a footy field, it lets the opposition own the ball and squeeze us out of the contest.

* provide options when we are coming out of our defence - have a look at the replays of our kick ins, absolutely no movement, so the opposition know it is simply going to be the bail-out kick to the half back flank or a 15m deep into a pocket.  So predictable, little wonder we can't get it out of there.

* forwards - stay in front of your man for a centre bounce!  Kicks coming out of the middle are often scrambled.  Most of the half-kicks we had out of the middle were either marked by Port half-backs or easily cleaned up because they were there first.

* provide a contest in the air - if you are near a marking contest, get involved!  At least 6 times in the second half, a Port defender took an uncontested mark, with adjacent Blues players looking around wondering who was supposed to provide the contest.  I think we need another mid-size forward who can provide decent aerial competition.

* never allow both Charlie and Harry to be off the ground at the same time - our forward line becomes virtually useless, the ball gets trapped up the other end, and we can't do the interchanges.

* when you don't have the ball, you work twice as hard to get it back.  Our chasing is absolutely pedestrian.

I know we have won 4 games, but the sides we have beaten currently sit 9th, 10th, 11th and 18th, and we lost to 12th.  Heaven help us when we are up against the top half of the ladder.

Don't worry about the fitness guru. He has the runs on the board at Hawthorn. The game style is extremely difficult aerobically and takes games before you can fully adapt to it. Fitness isn't black or white it develops and gets better.

Spot on.

Seems to me that The Terrier has a full season approach rather than an early peak, plus players getting used to a game plan that asks more of them, physically, plus overcoming the psychological hurdle of so much losing over previous years.

Coming along gradually, though, of course, not as quickly as we supporters would like ...but creating solid foundations that endure, takes time.

If you beat good sides like the Dogs, last year's GF, Richmond previous 2 year's premiers, and even Port, last 2 years PF (for what it is worth), well they will be down the ladder early in the season.

Who looked at the draw, Tigers, Dogs, Port and thought we'd be 4-1.................and our only loss would be to the GC.

I must have been at a different game 

Powell-Pepper played mostly as a forward and had a couple of turns in the ruck (where the umpires let him get away with tactics that SOS was penalised for).  He used his strength quite well as a forward and was a difficult match up for our smaller defenders.  Weitering had him for a while and that enabled Finlayson, Georgiades and Marshall to cause problems for Parks and our smaller defenders, although Parks is a much improved player and generally defended well.  The idea that our blokes put in short steps because of Powell-Pepper is fanciful.

I think Vossy summed it up really well:

"The last five or six minutes of that game were extremely intense. If we lost some intensity around the ball, we somehow found it in that last five or six minutes.

It’s fair to say that we’re in that position right now where we have to learn how to win — and win properly. We’re still in that stage."

The first half was outstanding, champagne footy ... but the last six minutes produced some of the best footy our club has played for a long time.  As Vossy said, we have to learn how to win properly and that means undoing the learnings of the last decade where losing intensity and folding under pressure was the norm.