You can say all you want about it being the first game against Melbourne but I remember the first game last year how refreshingly organised Carlton looked in our defensive structures. Bolton brought over a new system from Hawthorn and you could see it straight away.
Well today we looked all at sea on every front and that is concerning In fact it is alarming and considering how abysmal we were in the 2nd half of 2016, if this is what we are going to expect in 2017 well just piss Bryce Gibbs off to Adelaide and cya in 2018.
Only positives were Charlie Curnow got plenty of it in the midfield and Caleb Marchbank looked really good.
FB: Michael Jamison, Sam Rowe, Lachie Henderson HB: Kade Simpson, Sam Docherty, Dennis Armfield C: Dylan Buckley, Ed Curnow, Marc Murphy R: Matthew Kreuzer, Chris Judd, Patrick Cripps HF: Andrew Walker, Simon White, Tom Bell FF: Blaine Boekhorst, Levi Casboult, Andrejs Everitt Int: Dale Thomas, Nick Graham, Zach Tuohy, Nick Holman(sub)
Another 10 goal belting against the swans should lead to a few changes
He needs to start earning the 700k a year pay packet that he is on in 2015. That means returning to midfield and averaging 25-30 touches a week. He was not recruited to play in the forward pocket or get easy touches off half back.
At this stage the recruitment of Dale Thomas has been jost as bad as the recruitment of Mick Martyn.
Mick has talked about our lack of midfield rotations last year with playing the. 3 small forwards in the same side. So I think we should not be playing Yarran, Garlett and Menzel in the same side. Yarran for me is a forward first although he did play well on Dangerfield before he was injured.
I'm excited as you look at the draw and we really should be aiming to be no worse than 6-2 at our first bye. The 2nd half of the season is a lot tougher but as Port showed last year if you can build momentum in the opening rounds it can carry you right the way through the season.
Henderson looked pretty good for the Northern Blues on Friday. You would expect he will line up against Port. Watson has had a good pre season so you would think he would be picked in the team for this game.
This leaves Warnock, Kreuzer and Casboult fighting it out for two spots in the team imo.
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