Next Saturday night we have the chance for a little bit of redemption: we play North Melbourne at Etihad. Chances are that we will loose: we have a huge way to come back from with a minimum of talent and confidence on the park. However, I do expect a better performance. In many ways I would love to give it to North: they have been very vocal lately, claiming we do not deserve Friday Night games and that they do. I find this faintly absurd. It assumes the AFL can redirect the draw when it sees one team performing below expectations and another performing above expectations. I have real problems with this. Be that as it may, it would make them shut up if we could cook their finals' goose for them. It would also give us a little something after they stole Waite from us for no compensation.
As I mentioned earlier, it would be a very low probability event if we could stuck it up the Road - Kills, but hope springs eternal.
We must be reasonable chance to get one or 2 players back. Certainly we have some underachievers who need more time in the VFL before their inevitable delisting.
Missing from the vs Port Adelaide game: Graham Menzel Armfield Wood Carrazzo Gibbs Walker
Replaced by: Boekhurst Jones Johnson Holman Tutt Walsh
That makes a huge difference in just how competitive we can be. But the big problem here is our obvious lack of depth. None of the 'Ins' made significant contributions. The "Outs" may not have been in best form, but they represent talent. We basically had the Northern Blues out there last night and we got pounded accordingly.
I found this game almost impossible to watch, even in bed. Granted that coughing and blowing noses isn’t conducive to watching football, but there was nothing to see from us. Team: F I can’t give anything else for our worst ever defeat.
Explanations: [5.5] Murphy: Murphy cared. His 200th game was a total disaster, but he got 37 possessions and really tried. [2.5] Bell: After half time he was pretty good. [2] Kreuzer: Tried hard in the ruck, but his taps just didn’t go to our advantage. [1.5] Curnow: Did a solid job and kept at it all night. [1] Buckley: Some promising signs for the future. [1] Tuohy: Tried valiantly. [1] Cripps: Cripps worked hard and can put his hand out for his pay this week. [0.5] Simpson: Tried hard, but his kicking was aweful.
Honourable Mentions: Casboult: When given the chance he was excellent, but it never got forward and we didn’t kick it long. He took the mark of the round and gave a target. White: Tried hard
What a disaster. Our worst ever loss. There will be consequences. This was one of the few times I was glad not to be there: I was ill.
Remember: [1] At least 3 players need to get a mention. [2] No more than 10 votes for any one player. [3] Give a rating of team performance. It can be anywhere from A+ to F. [4] Votes must add up to 15.
Thank God there are only a few games to go. This was not easy to watch in any form.
Isn't the Prof questioning the performance of those players that don't score votes rather than the performance of voters?
I'm still thinking about my votes. Using the 5 4 3 2 1 system does throw up some issues
The 5 4 3 2 1 voting system is the easiest for my to enter, but I find that it doesn't give me an opportunity to give votes to as many players who may deserve a mention or to grade them sufficiently. But I am the extreme case. Others follow it rigidly: the other extreme. I don't care as long as the votes add up.
Things are really going well for Northern Blues. [1] After playing probably his best game for the Blues, Wilkinson retired and has gone to punt in the NFL. Considering how much talent there is on the Preston side of things, that has to hurt. Wilko was one of the 2 Vice Captains. [2] Little Box Bransgrove, the Blue Captain damaged a hamstring against Casey and will struggle to play many games this season. [3] 4 of the 6 named best players for the Blues were Preston boys, including one (Roberts) playing his first game. That does not bode well. [4] We lose Ciaran Byrne to hamstring injury. That probably does his season, as he has struggled to get over hamstring issues all year. [5] How ineffective can we be with the ball? 34 % efficiency?
[6] Foster had 7 possessions in the 1t quarter and 8 for the whole game. [7] Roberts was named our 2nd best player with 4 possessions.
Pretty sure Buckley, Docherty and White weren't dominating last week and isn't this a votes only thread?
Mainly. The arguments are supposed to be on the post game threads and the like. But comments do appear: I am the worst offender. But I feel I always need to explain my thinking. I don't mind if others justify their thoughts, but it does make things more difficult to correlate when you have to wade through a heap of arguments.
Having seen some of Hawthorn's display on TV last night, next Friday night's game is not looking good. [1] Hawthorn appear to have hit form and are playing very well. [2] Hawthorn appear to hit (or knee) players and get away with it. We get suspended if we put any physical pressure on. [3] We will not be able to get anything like our best 22 on the park. Even if we get a few guys back, we seem to lose somebody irreplaceable each week. [4] The honeymoon appears over for Johnny Barker. We have returned to some fairly negative football and have a lot of players playing without a lot of passion. The run and willingness to take risks just hasn't been there. [5] We haven't beaten Hawthorn for so long that many supporters have never seen it happen. I would LOVE to see us reverse this trend, as we have been getting closer and closer in recent times. However, we just don't have the cattle at this point of time.
Lost another one. I don't like the score, but I have no idea what happened.
Remember: [1] At least 3 players need to get a mention. [2] No more than 10 votes for any one player. [3] Give a rating of team performance. It can be anywhere from A+ to F. [4] Votes must add up to 15.
This was probably our most ordinary game under Johnny Barker, and pretty uninspiring games all up. We lost Gibbs for the rest of the year and Armfield for at least 4 weeks (probably more - breaks don't heal overnight). The umpiring was diabolical and cost us far too much. Our skills were ordinary at best in some freezing conditions. I am happy that so few games are played under those conditions.
We managed 12 voters this week, still an improvement over this time last year, even though we lost. Voting this week will be interesting. I do not have pay TV so I won't be seeing any of the game. I doubt I will be voting, as my only way to work things out will come from following the statistics and they can be misleading. Hopefully those with pay TV or those lucky enough to be at the game can give us an idea of who really deserved a vote.
This round's rating was 7.08, just over a D. This is a reasonable representation of our effort.
The Votes: Round 15: Carlton vs. Richmond Kreuzer, Matthew 204 Murphy, Marc 201 Gibbs, Bryce 177 Tuohy, Zach 156 Buckley, Dylan 109 Simpson, Kade 89 Carrazzo, Andrew 86 Cripps, Patrick 12 Curnow, Edward 12 Bell, Tom 9 Tutt, Jason 6 Holman, Nick 3
I think the results say something about our night where our best player (Kreuzer, in his 1st BOG in years) was actually beaten in the ruck by former Blue Hampson. That may have you scratching your heads, but it is a good measure of how we went. Murphy managed 2nd place, a few votes ahead of Gibbs (a good effort on his return from suspension, especially when he was crippled in the last quarter with injury). Zac Tuohy and Dylan Buckley continued their good recent form. Cripps had a quiet game for him.
Progressive Voting: 1965 - Murphy, Marc (0) 1805 - Cripps, Patrick (0) 1460 - Bell, Tom (0) 1369 - Docherty, Sam (0) 1099 - Simpson, Kade (0) 872 - Judd, Chris (0) 828 - Tuohy, Zach (0) 625 - Curnow, Edward (0) 549 - Everitt, Andrejs (0) 468 - Armfield, Dennis (0) 445 - Wood, Cameron (0) 401 - Henderson, Lachie (0) 372 - Carrazzo, Andrew (0) 341 - Kreuzer, Matthew (0) 340 - Gibbs, Bryce (0) 337 - Rowe, Sam (0) 337 - White, Simon (0) 325 - Casboult, Levi (0) 250 - Graham, Nick (0) 227 - Buckley, Dylan (0) 128 - Tutt, Jason (0) 125 - Yarran, Chris (0) 119 - Jamison, Michael (0) 89 - Menzel, Troy (0) 87 - Walker, Andrew (0) 14 - Byrne, Ciaran (0) 13 - Holman, Nick (0) 12 - Jones, Liam (0) 9 - Dick, Matthew (0) 5 - Jaksch, Kristian (0) 4 - Boekhorst, Blaine (0) 3 - Warnock, Robert (0) 2 - Ellard, David (0)
Murphy snuck ahead of Cripps, but things are close at the top. Nor is there much space between Bell and Docherty in 3rd and 4th places. Judd remains in 5th spot almost half a season since his demise. We have played 9 debutants this season, with a 10th, Brad Walsh, getting his go tonight. Of those 9 players 7 of them have managed votes so far. Tutt leads them with 128 votes, even with his significant problems (being unable to hold a tackle against anyone older than 10 years of age, for example).
From this I would suggest that not many Carlton players had a good day; Jaksch and Jones being the exceptions. Whiley having 20 possessions is not amongst his best games, but he may get into the best players. Jones appears to have played a bit in the ruck and managed to get a few more possessions. The question with him would be how effective were they? No mention of Blaine Boekhorst or Matthew Dick, so they were probably on the plane to Perth. No mention of Byrne after quarter time (where he had been pretty good in the 1st quarter), nor of Foster, who also started well. No mention of Viojo Rainbow after half time (he had a good 2nd quarter) and not mention of Smith at all.
FULL TIME: Northern Blues 9.4.58, Casey Scorpions 15.15.105 On twitter it was described as a disappointing day, but considering what we could put on the field, I'm neither surprised nor disappointed. I'm happy to see us have a go and run the game out.
Watson managed only 1 goal, which probably shows where he is at.
Development Game Northern Blues 1.4 2.5 4.8 7.10 (52) Casey Scorpions 8.3 13.7 15.10 18.11 (119)
GOALS: Northern Blues: Walton 2 Malone 2 McDonald Jordan Peet
