Carlton Supporters Club

We have a former AFLCA MVP winner in Murphy. He goes ok.
Gibbs, for all the flack he gets, is still an a-grade mid, not A+, but A.
Cripps is breaking all the records for clearances and contested possessions for games played and if he isn't there now, will certainly be an elite mid soon enough.
Kreuzer would be amongst the top 6 in terms of ruck output this season.

There is your starting midfield. Not too much to complain about there.
From there it does drop away, E. Curnow, Graham...etc

However, our forwardline....
Is anyone there considered elite? No.
Is anyone there considered a-grade? No.
Is anyone there considered b-grade? Questionable. Plenty of potential...but nothing guaranteed.

....before anyone says Weitering, he is a gun player, but is not a gun forward by any stretch of the imagination.

In short, our forwardline needs more attention than the midfield.

in your opinion. And your logic in rating individual players simply doesn't stack up - sorry.

And, if I may remind you, when we get belted, our midfield is non existent.

If you can't see the problem is more the speed and manner of delivery into F50, rather than recipients of said delivery, well not much more to say really.

Neither Betts nor Jenkins nor Walker would boost our scoring when the ball was jerked around laterally and backwards as it was for 3 quarters like it was against the Shockers....

But dream on by all means...

feel free to dig out my quotes re making the 8.

If the Doggies can win a flag with their list we can make the 8 with our list. Why?

Defence - will be better again than 2016, considerably with our midfield able to contribute more defensively.

Will we miss Tuohy? Not for a second. Hopefully Macreadie gets a crack in the seniors if form warrants.

Midfield. Better? Yes.

Murphy in and fit. He must be champing!

SPS to play Rd 1 and add some real zing. Crippa will appreciate the break....

The mids need to ramp up the intensity on a consistent basis - easy really....

A forward line with C. Curnow, McKay, SOS, Palmer (+ Wright and another small forward) and Levi can be very competitive and offer up some intriguing problems for opposition defences.....

Sure, we'll need a dose of luck and for some of the junior players to really step up but the Doggies did it with a largely bunch of no names....with a few notable exceptions granted.

Stringer 42 goals, Dickson 40, then Bont with 26 - hardly earth shattering goal kicking efforts!

Plenty of our blokes are playing for their AFL careers - a pretty decent motivator!

10 - 13 wins.

IF BB is telling the troops to play in that (slow, lateral, keeping off) style he's no better than many other B grade coaches....and i don't know whether that is his instruction or not. But i will ask and get the answer from those who know. Not that I'd share such information with you.

Docherty's was the one for me.  The overlap run and drilled it from outside fifty to either put us in front, or bring us within a kick.

Absolutely could have been our goal of the day... maybe the club gave it to Cuningham to pump up his tyres; give him confidence, good goal but no pressure and only 35 metres out? Crippa's, Gibbsey's and Doc's were all under pressure.

The one thing that I would say about Cunninghams goal.

He took posession in the centre square, and handballed forward to either of Cripps or Gibbs, and then followed up by running hard into forward fifty to then finish from 35.

That might have got him over the line.  If you watch the footage, and keep your eyes peeled you will see him start and finish that forward thrust.

I still liked Docherty's better, but maybe its reward for effort...  No harm in that at all!

After round 10

2016

Goals 105 Behinds 100-730 (points against 901)
Percentage 81 %

2017(Target 224-224-1568)

Goals 107 Behinds 86-728 (points against 923)
Percentage 78.9 %

Goalkickers (Target 2016- Wright 22)

Casboult 17
Wright 13
Silvagni 8
Gibbs 8

On a positive note…we are more accurate this year.

I was pretty sure we were going to slip behind our 2016 goal total after Round 10.
In 2016 we scored 16 goals in Round 10  and I thought that might be hard to match but a reasonable effort  saw us with 15 on the weekend to just keep our noses in front of last year’s total…but not by much.

On the individual front Casboult is closing in on Wright’s 2016 total.

That's a great analysis. IMO it is still very concerning [and scary] that we have made ZERO improvement to our scoring and goal kickers over the past 12 months.

I have banged on about this a bit, but I feel that many are missing the simple fact that we have made no progress in scoring power over the past 2.5 years. We are dead last in points for this year - we are simply never going to win games of football consistently and climb the ladder until we can improve our scoring by around 30% - 40% from where it has been stuck for a very long time.

Like a lot of others I see potential in some of the young players, but history also shows forwards, especially tall forwards, will take 3 years before they make a consistent impact and can kick 40-50+in a season. If we get Kerr and Harry into the team now, we are a still a long way away from having a top 8 scoring capability.

We can improve the defence relatively quickly [and we have with Doc, Marchbank, Plowman and Williamson], and the midfield is where we already have our 4 best players. Of course we need more quality midfield depth, but our forward line today is effectively a rabble still, led by a 27yo who will average 2 goals a game at best. All of the youngsters we have rolled through there so far this year have shown cameo's at best.

I think we need to start playing Kerr and McKay as a priority, and give KJ one last roll of the dice for a few games to see if he can show something. In the off season we need to recruit an established goal kicker and an experienced mid sized midfielder / forward to build our future forward line around - just like how we have built our backline around the experience of Simmo and Rowe [and now ACOS]. Remember our last successful drafting a KPF was Josh Kennedy in 2005!!

If we don't change something significant then we are doomed to keep getting the same scoring results as we have for the last 3.5 years. The idea that it will just 'naturally improve' has clearly been shown for a long time now to be a fallacy.

Rant over.......