I didn't think we would win. I thought we would be 15th on the ladder but instead we are 8th. In the run home we have 5 of the bottom six teams and the Gold Coast who I expect to drop off as the year progresses. We need 9 wins to make the finals so it is really in our hands. It is amazing the difference coming with the attitude to win rather than hope or pretend to want to win. I have always been a lot more bullish about our list than some who are on this site but I have really been concerned about the attitude and the consistency of attitude. This could be our break our game. Considering we have Silvagni, Dow, O'Brien, Marchbank and Fisher coming into the mix over the next couple of weeks, young players like DeKonning, Stocker and Philps up and about, and seasoned players like Lang, Goddard and Polson, we are in a strong position to make a real go of it. Also considering we have Charlie, Newman, Kreuzer and Kemp on the LTI list, we have a real chance to have a long term impact over the coming seasons. Carlton should be the pin up team of the AFL. We stuffed it up in the first part of the decade. We took our medicine, we went to the draft and got high end talent, we reorganized the Club, we traded off our better players and we got nothing from the AFL, yet here we are, on the cusp of something really good. I am sure we are capable of stuffing it up again, just as we have done so over the past twenty years, but I am forever hopeful
Bulldogs, our mid-field needs to turn up. No Aaron Naughton. St.Kilda defeated Bulldogs by 39 points a couple of weeks ago. Not sure what means. We now have 9 days to prepare. Hope they use that time to get the attitude right.
I said a couple of weeks ago that I thought didn't no how to win, and didn't turn up to win. We keep falling behind by six, seven, eight goals, and then we start playing. The good thing about last night was that in previous seasons we would have lost by five to ten goals. The fact that we do have a go is good. But you have to have a go for four quarters not when you pick and chose to do it. I was surprised how good St.Kilda was in the first quarter and they really exposed our lack of pace in the mid-field. I thought Philp was good for his second game last night, and we really need Fisher, Dow and O'Brien in to give us some more run. Kennedy is another who seems to be running better across the ground this year. It is easy to criticise the back line, but when you are getting beaten in the middle, and your disposal coming out of the back is bad, and the entries into the forward line are so poor that it allows you to slingshot all the way down the ground, you can see how some of the goals came form our poor play rather than their good. I thought our players, back and forward had trouble judging the ball under the lights in the first half. This led to a number of marks which were virtually uncontested. When we closed them down and made the game a contest, we really had them on the ropes, but once again we didn't make the most of the opportunities. This leads me back to my original premise that I am not sure the Club really wants to win. They say they do, but I am not sure they really mean it. As I say, winners win because they win, losers lose because they lose. We had Silvagni, Dow Marchbank, Kreuzer, Newman, Fisher and Curnow out, as well as Kennedy, O'Brien and TDK missing. I am not sure we have worked out who are our best 22 and which group is the best 22. This is something we will need to work out if we are to progress.
Bit hard to get a handle on St.Kilda. Collapsed against an undermanned North Melbourne, cleaned up Footscray, got cleaned up by Collingwood and then cleaned up Richmond. I think Clarko and Hawthorn have worked out Richmond and Ratten used the key again last match. Ratten has always been a good game day coach so Teague will need to be on his game. In last years draft they gave up 1st & 2nd round draft picks, Newnes, Steven, Bruce & Acres for Butler, Howard, Ryder, Hill, Jones & Abbott. Basically last year's draft was an admittance that their rebuild from the Riewoldt and free kicks from the AFL era has been a failure. They have traded to become competitive. Hill & Jones will give them outside run and class, while King & Clark are pretty good players. When they are on top they appear to be able to kick goals, first half against North, game against Footscray & Richmond, but when they are losing they struggle to kick goals, 2nd half against North and against Collingwood. I think this means that if we keep it tight we should be able to restrict their scoring ability. Last week St.Kilda took their opportunities against Richmond while I don't think we have fully taken our opportunities against any of our opponents this season. O'Brien, Fisher & Kennedy are all pushing for selection, and maybe De Konning, and McKay would be handy to bring in. Silvagni, Philps and Newnes are possible outs. I think if we are competitive from the start and trust our skills, we should be too good for them, however StKilda, along with North, is a side we haven't played up to our abilities against for quite a while.
1. The commentators were barracking for Essendon. They wanted the victory against adversity to be real. Now the narrative is Carlton are on the rise. Turn off the sound on TV and just watch the vision. 2. Worsfold claim their list is similar to Carlton's in age demographic and games played is a case of using a statistic to deflect. To understand a list you need to look at who is not playing. We had Dow (Pick 3), O'Brien (Pick 10), Kennedy (Pick 13), McKay (Pick 10), De Konning (Pick 30), Stocker (Pick 13), Kemp (Pick 17), Marchbank (Pick 6), Fisher (Pick 27), Curnow (Pick 12) and Goddard (Pick 19). I am not sure Essendon, or anyone else, has that young talent depth. As Silvagni said, it is easy to get a list to the middle. 3. The 50 meter penalty will be ticked off by the AFL as it always does. Umpires are criminals and the AFL is the Mafia 4. We need to kick those goals. Could have won by three or four goals easily. Kept Essendon in it. 5. The next few weeks will be important. We will need to get ahead of the W-L count.
Last time Essendon really smashed us as we gave a pretty insipid performance which turned out to be Bolton's last game. It will be interesting to see how much things have changed. Essendon like the ball bobbling out side so they get run and carry. Their mid-field can be very attacking and devastating but are not so good in hard contested in close football. Down hill skiers is the term that comes to mind. They don't have enough players who actually win the ball. I think they have a fairly strong defence with some really attacking options around pacy small forwards. However if they start losing in the middle the whole thing can fall apart very quickly. Kreuzer had a shocker last time so I expect Pittonet to be better for us in the ruck. Our forward line has a lot more options and our defence is very solid. Our weakness is pace, or lack of it, so Essendon could damage us, however if we turn up to play, and play out the whole game, we should win comfortably.
I was actually feeling a bit sorry for the Cheats but hearing how O'Connor has flouted the rules and following Zerk-Thatcher, who was suspended for braking the quarantine rules, they deserve everything they get. Clearly there is a culture down there where they believe the rules don't apply to them. They were pretty lucky with the punishment they received for their drug cheating fiasco, so I hope they really get punished this time and are not rewarded with an early draft pick if their season spirals out of control.
Jake Niall in the age has written a report about the lack of tackling by Carlton in the first quarters. Intensity is the key. Geelong has good but front running mid-field, their back line is solid but can be taken apart if the ball enters quickly into their opponents forward line, and their forwards are a bunch of names put together like a quilt and only functions if the mid-field is on top. This is why they keep getting cleaned up in the finals by good teams. We need to make an absolute raging contest from the first bounce, if we do that we might find Geelong out.
Melbourne kicked one goal in over two and a half quarters. Once we were able to put pressure on their mid-field and defence, they really had very little way of scoring. Once again if we had kicked 5:3 in the last quarter instead of 3:5, we would be having a completely different conversation. I have said this before and I will say it again, winners win because they win, losers lose because they lose. I have believed for a long time that the problem at Carlton isn't the players, the coaches or the administration, and while these things are the creators of this, I believe it is the lack of a winning culture that is holding us back. This is what Elliot and his cronies really destroyed at Carlton. I once read a story about a professional golfer who potential was very good and the expectations was that he would win a number of Majors, however he found he got more joy out of rolling a fifty meter putt to a couple of inches or just missing, than actually putting the ball into the hole. He got more out of the groans of the crowds than the cheers. He went on to have a successful career playing trick shots at tournaments rather than playing to win. The question I ask is is the mentality at Carlton such that the players would rather have a heroic failure than commit to the contest from the start and be burdened by the pressure of victory and winning? Are the players happy to be five goals down at quarter time and virtually out of the match, so they can release themselves from the burden of the expectations of actually winning. It is easy to console yourself with the what if we started five minutes earlier, and rejoice in the last minute Murphy goal, than actually come to the contest ready to play and accept the notion that you are not really good enough if you lose. There was not one side I saw on the weekend that if Carlton committed itself to the contest from the first bounce, that Carlton would not be capable of beating, but if you are not going to have a go in the first quarter you are not going to win, and as long as we are able to hide behind the facade of heroic failures, everything will be ok.
