Carlton Supporters Club

FWIW, Harry identified a few blokes who he'd like to have kicking to him when he is on the lead and he brought up Cottrell as being one of the better kicks.....which i thought was a little suprising, but there you go.

The fact that we were run down in the last quarter and a bit like so much Navy Blue roadkill should not obscure the fact that for almost 3 quarters we had the measure of what is indisputably superior opposition. It took their best player (and arguably best or 2nd best in the comp) giving the best individual performance of anyone this season to ignite them.

If SOJ and Fogarty had kicked those goals, perhaps a different result.

If its close at the end, this poster by SOJ and the miss by Casboult, and the non-shot by SOJ is where we lost it.

.....and Fogartys one!

And with the likes of Martin, Fisher and a few others to come in.

Martin is a match winner is his own right.

Let's assume TDK & English/Martin negate each other.

Of course a fit/firing Charlie Curnow is the one that gets us well ahead of the Dogs.

He is in a different class.

Noting Cripps and Williams did less than SFA yesterday and a few others little more....

If SOJ and Fogarty had kicked those goals, perhaps a different result.

I suppose when we lose it's natural to have "if only" moments.  But the same applies to the opposition. The dogs kicked 11 points and I'm sure their supporters have thoughts along the lines of "if only we had kicked fewer points we'd have been ahead at 3 quarter time."

With regard to Charlie, who knows what he'll be like when he returns.  Let's hope he is back to his best, but the reality is we don't know whether his knee will allow him the freedom to play his natural style, or whether it will withstand the pressure of match play.

Also, we don't know what his mental state will be after such a prolonged layoff.

We are still lacking a small, lockdown defender.

Not many players i can see on our list who are really capable of it, but i've come up with 2.

1. Ed Curnow.
He is getting older, and perhaps we need him to sacrifice his game for the team, playing deep in defence might be an option worth looking into. He'd be perfect for Dusty types who go middle and forward at their leisure.

2. Matt Cottrell
I've said he is the most likely to take over from Curnow as a tagger (good tank, loves contact, never says die) but if we don't want to move Curnow back, perhaps we use Cottrell there instead.

Either way, its 1 less 'mid' which allows us to try Stocker, SPS or whoever else we are forcing to play a secondary role instead of their favoured midfield role.

What we sometimes overlook is who gives way for those players. For example...if Curnow, De Koning and Martin play...is there a spot for Jack Silvagni?
What's our forward line look like with Curnow in?

Sure is ... Jack ahead of Martin IMO

Two more positives :

1. Docherty starting to regain touch and a little class and polish
2. Time in front :
76.57 Carlton
32.59 Bulldogs

To me one of the biggest positives was cuningham.

2 decent efforts back to back.....a first for him.

He's showing breakaway speed, sidesteps through packs, great kicking.......BIG TICK.

Did some a couple of nice things but I wouldn't write home about it and give him a BIG TICK. He needs to do a crap load more than that and it wasn't a patch on his Ess game.

What i saw was that he was finally up to the speed of an AFL game. Not only that, he was 'matrix-ing' - seeing and moving around things before they happened like it was in slow motion. A good sign.