Carlton Supporters Club

Dont think it was the weather...Freo's best 4 players had the ball around 30 times each, thats why we lost IMO and being caught on the rebound for some easy goals.....Neale had it 37 times...you wont win many games when the opposing teams best players have so much ball....

I suppose so. Freo may not be world beaters, but they have developed into a gutsy, scrapping team. We are not exactly formidable opposition, but their ability to fight back and graft out some close victories would have to instill some kind of confidence.

I understand where Bolts is coming from to a degree - limiting the blow outs limits the "damage" to the players, but gives less opportunities to win, versus win at all costs by playing the in vogue game style, which may give more chances of victory, but also more spankings. He does at least have a plan that he's sticking to. But i still worry. Losing culture is hard to break. The longer we lose more than we win, the longer it takes to get up off the canvas. I'm not sure that the movement up the ladder is linear and simplistic. There's still enormous amounts of work to do, and lots of decisions that need we need to get right. And some luck, and the umps, and.............

One could also use the argument that playing like this betrays the coach's lack of confidence in his players, which may hurt them than it helps. Lots of ifs, buts and maybes.

Definitely not.

Our Centre Set ups were awful and it started with our Leaders. Gibbs, Murph and Cripps in the middle of the ground were pounded. I would love to us have mixed it up with SPS, Charlie or Cunningham in the middle. They couldn't do much worse.

I walked away thinking exactly the same. There better players Neale, Walters, Fyfe, Johnson were better than our players. Ross has been using Walters around the ball a lot and it's a great move, Fyfe was way better than his stats suggested, and Neale just knocks up getting it.

We were smashed around the ball from quarter time and were always on the back foot.

Other notes:

 - Small Defender - Small forwards are killing us all year. Matera, Billings, Walters/Crozier etc
 - Locking the Ball in our forward line - I think our stats had 14 inside 50 tackles to 2. In the last quarter we pressed and had some good looks inside 50, only for it to just hit the floor and bounce back out. So we need to find some pressure forwards as well.
 - Young - The scoreboard kept flashing stats of some of our players... 19,19,20, 21, 19. We are so young. Plow made some bad errors, but you can live with that as you know these guys will learn.
 - Jack's Goal Kicking - needs to work on it if he wants to become a forward of note.
 - Doc was immense.

Yeah, I get that but I am amazed that we manage to play this style of footy and pull it off.

Remember Richmond tried it and had to abandon it because they were so crap by foot and so undisciplined.

Three more quality mids and this style starts paying dividends.

Hmm. I reckon we need 3 more good mids irrespective of how we play. And whilst we're shopping :

- 3 mids (as you suggest) - 1 to be like Cripps, and 2 Dylan Shiel types,
- 1 KPF
- 2 small forwards - like Puopolo, who can kick a goal, has pace, and can lock the ball in F50, something which has completely eluded us thus far.

I was like shadesy and at the game and the weather conditions definitely played a part. It was worse than the tv showed real torrential stuff. Our young guys just ran out of strength middle of each quarter and let them get back into it once they got back the almost silent crowd came to life and lifted them past us. Dockers also started to play wet weather football kicking and knocking in on at any cost where we kept on with dry stuff of setting it up for too long. Sandilands gave Fyfe and Neale an armchair ride and they kept belting it forward quick putting our backline under huge pressure which created mistakes.  Wet football in a nutshell. We certainly weren't thrashed as one poster said we just weren't strong enough for long enough, that will change with time and body shape. Was happy with the effort not the loss. Sandilands won the game with his ruck work,Kreuzer just not big enough. In the wet he was twice as tall and his tap work superb. Freo will be crap again once he retires or gets injured