Again, are you taking the p!55 or what? Tom got smashed by Witts today, if ever you needed two rucks with one parked in the fwd line it was today. I dont know why they didn't park TDK in the goal square for his rest instead of the bench (like the resting ruckman did in the good old days). Sometimes old is new.
No, Tom didn’t get smashed in the ruck. Witts got more hitouts but few ended up as GC clearances. Most of Tom’s hitouts resulted in a clearance to us, and Tom’s second and third efforts at stoppages played a big part in that.
Tom had twice as many effective disposals than Witts and took important marks around the ground. Witts was a virtually a non-event around the ground, apart from the goal he was gifted.
From what I could see, Tom went to the bench for running repairs and because he had no gas in his tank.
Never in doubt really. My only complaint is that we should have won by more … and that we kept pinpointing Mac Andrew. He could be one of the best players of this era without our blokes kicking to him.
Kudos to the coaches for the forward line adjustments and kudos to Charlie for the work he put in to get on top of Andrew.
Some of the whipping boys in Ollie Hollands, Zac Williams and Orazio Fantasia deserve acknowledgment for their efforts today. Williams showed enough to suggest that he could perform a Jack Martin role and he was effective when he went into the midfield too.
De Koning was outstanding against Witts and was probably more effective than a combination with Pittonet would have been.
Our defence was miserly, our midfield was brutal and our forwards were pretty good for a work in progress.
Perhaps he has emboldened a few, but he isn't the first in recent times by any means. Berlusconi and Orbán immediately spring to mind as forerunners. I've said a few times that the left is basically dead, and the world is shifting to the right, with barely any exceptions, and barely any resistance.
I would be very reluctant to attribute any trend setting to a bloke who has never had an original thought in his life. I think that his success in being elected to the Presidency and getting the presumptive Republican nomination for the next election may have emboldened populist and totalitarian leaders. They have more ruthless and successful (if I can use that word) authoritarian figures to follow, as has the likely Republican nomination himself.
The problem with those simplistic analyses is that they don’t take into account goals that aren’t scored by Charlie, Harry or Tom but are the direct result of balls kicked to them, that is, the crumbing and scrambling goals scored after a marking contest.
In fact, Charlie has kicked quite a few goals after crumbing marking contests.
One thing that has struck me this season is how often we’ve targeted players other than Charlie, Harry and Tom inside 50. Owies with a total of 15 from both inside 50 targeted kicks and opportunistic goals is our third highest goal scorer.
Ahead of all is the cumulative total of 60 goals from kicks targeting Cripps, Cottrell, Kennedy, the Hollands brothers, Martin, Durdin, Fantasia, Hewett, Walsh, Acres, Cerra and Pittonet as well as goals arising from their crumbing and pressure applied to lock the ball inside 50.
We don’t need another forward 50 target. We need a small forward who can make the most balls targeting our key forwards that go to ground and who can force turnovers and stoppages inside our forward 50.
Avian flu generally doesn’t last too long. It’s a lot easier to limit the transmission of a virus when you can eliminate the birds and animals that are infected or are at risk of infection. Over 400,000 chooks have already been slaughtered.
Hopefully, it won’t spread to our dairy herds. Apart from the loss of milk production, avian flu is more likely to infect humans from other mammalian hosts.
We can all laugh and joke, but it is the right thing to do....for a couple of reasons.
1. Who does he play on? Is there a matchup for him? No.....so why play him? 2. We need to be smarter with our player managing after coming back from injuries. Look at all the 're-injuring' we've had lately. Cerra, Williams....a couple others....have injured themselves in the 2nd game back....or 3rd game back. Ease them back into it and you'll have them available longer.
There is another explanation ... but I'll leave that alone
I think that we would prefer to "manage" more players more often but we just haven't had the soldiers to make that possible.
we somehow manage to have frees paid against us directly in front of goals but hardly ever get one ourselves.
The two frees paid against Zac Williams for holding Elliott are a case in point. Collingwood defenders did exactly the same to our forwards several times later in the game and there wasn't a whistle to be heard.
Perhaps umpires wish to set the ground rules early in the game, possibly subconsciously, then relax their interpretation as the game progresses.
Did our MC overreact to some misfortunes? We had some close losses but they were really misfortunes or bad officiating that cost us more than once while stats continued to look pretty good in most areas. Now in the space of just a couple of weeks, a few tweaks and all the numbers have slide to the point last Friday we had almost no winnings areas.
The tweaks haven't helped they may have actually hurt.
We had a few discussions here a couple of weeks back, when Kennedy was made sub, that we seemed to be making some odd decisions relating to the MC and match day tactics. In effect we seemed to have willingly disrupted a winning formula to try and patch underperforming areas of the team, and in doing so it feels like we ended up pulling down the whole house. The part that was good is now waning under the strain of trying to bridge gaps, and we are left with almost no winning areas at all.
Voss explained that Kennedy and Hewett being the sub is part of our strategy to manage player workload.
What happens to Walsh and Cripps is horrendous, our taggers barely make contact by comparison, our blokes are disadvantaged because we aren't being coached to go outside the rules.
We seem to get pinged for holding at stoppages more often than our opponents, despite being a lot less physical and blocking rather than grappling.
I know that we can’t blame the umpires for the result, and free kicks miraculously ended up at 19 apiece, but it’s where and when frees are and aren’t paid that makes a difference.
If the right decisions had been made in the first quarter, we would have had a six or seven goal lead at the first break. That’s the kind of margin that can affect team performance.
The bottom line is that the 23 blokes we had on the park weren’t good enough … but they could have been 🤔
Be handy if we could get Motlop and Saad back this week. In Saad Motlop Cowan Binns Wilson Out Williams Durdin Fantasia Marchbank O Hollands Chuck Binns on Ollie's wing, Wilson the sub Obviously if Weiters doesnt get up, bring Young in for him. Those ins could not possibly do any worse than what those I would drop dished up.
Jack Silvagni and Vossy both hinted that we might get two players back this week ... and we should know whether Weiters will come up by Tuesday.
I'd be leaving Williams in the 22 purely on the strength of that tackle
Biden is the world biggest embarrassment of a leader, I'd be ashamed to call him my President. Shouldn't be in charge of a Milk Bar let alone a country.
Yes, but in comparison to Von Schitzenpants, Sleepy Joe is a combination of Haile Selassie, Winston Churchill, JFK, Douglas MacArthur, Queen Elizabeth, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma and Indira Gandhi.
