Greens bowling, both volume and quality has unbalanced the side. Webster's slot should be a specialist's bat or a bowling all-rounder.
Green's a bowler, not just used to change ends?
For all the potential this kid offers, he's massively under delivered, in fact most of the squad fall in that category.
Don't accept the stats, if the greats of the past had as much opportunity to play cricket under the modern idealistic conditions they would have records twice the magnitude! None of these "moderns" compare in my opinion. The modern players find things to complain about in conditions that would have seen Viv Richards or Bob Simpson batting for 5 days!
Can you imagine facing Warne or Lillee around Tea time with a pink ball in a Day / Night test, most batsmen would come off looking like Mr Bean? Think of all those times Warne turned the last moments of light into a symphony of cricket!
I thought that we dominated the game but some wayward kicking from quarter time onwards kept the Bulldogs in the contest.
100% agree, the stats are most likely good because we had 2, 3 or 4 good disposals in the row then burnt the last one, at least that is what I saw but I wasn't there live!
It's probably another good example of how stats can retrospectively paint the wrong picture, or cause people to draw the wrong conclusions.
I particularly noted in the 2nd half on event, we ran the footy out of D50 through CHB to the Wing then towards the HFF. We had setup with CHF vacant, and both Kemp and McGovern started deep with space to lead into. Yet we baulked at that centering kick and forced McGovern to double back and lead into the pocket. Fortunately, McGovern clunked the mark, and fortunately the Dogs had run up towards the ball carrier leaving space behind. I saw Fraser's eyes rolling in the coach's box and he made an arc with his hand like he'd also expected us to the centre the pill and not head to the pocket. Fans will celebrate that play, but the reality is it's easy to kill the footy in the pocket, and if McGovern had not marked the Dogs had the numbers to run the footy back for a full field length turnover, our Mids were pushing towards CHF 20m away from where we kicked the pill leaving nobody to crumb. That makes our lot look slow because we are caught out of position.
I have always rated Richards very highly, he is the exact type of speedy ball user that we need.
Agreed, rare as rocking horse shizen, strong in the contest yet with speed on the outside, very few have those two qualities combined. At any one time in the AFL there is probably only 5 or 6 like that, who can also perform at a high level, when you add size to that like Judd you have a genuine freak.
Richards has been great all season. Taken huge steps this year. Descends from Collingwood royalty. His great-great-grandfather is Charlie Pannam Sr., his grandfather is Ron Richards, and his great-uncle is Lou Richards.Bad luck for the Pies, he ended up at the Dogs.
I think he's been good for 2 or 3 season now, just overlooked in the media, forced into the backseat by bigger names (bigger heads too) who have more mates on the commentary side.
Anti-vaxers will crow about RFK's decisions and the official anti-vax proclamations, claiming that the new bills support the conspiracies.
But the real truth here is about securing control of markets, RedTrump and his cohort are pummelling foreign providers like CSL, so that the US can gain control of the production, just like oil but in a needle, at which time the official conspiracies will evaporate and vaccines will be all good again!
At the start of the season Champion data ranked the Bulldogs as the strongest list in the comp. That doesn't guarantee success but it shows they are a talented squad. Ed Richards has been a top 10 player all season, the other 9 players are all superstars but no one talks about Ed.
Subjectively I think Richards regularly performs to a high standard against us, I'm not sure if that is backed up by the figures but I recall him making a signifcant contribution to our demise in past games. At least some signficant moments.
As much as the batting failed the bowling group abjectly failed to build pressure.
This has always been my assertion regarding the erratic performances, it's OK to crow about some player's best efforts as being a class above, but if the average output is ordinary it drags down everybody around them. This applies to both batting and bowling, probably fielding as well.
For example, the Australian Cricket mafia will use Green's latest innings as a excuse to persist, and Marnus just needs one good innings to secure another extension off the back of an isolated effort, ignoring repeat failures for the sake of one spectacular success here or there. That seems to be modern cricket, a flash in the pan T20 betters the 5 day grind.
It's 2 points because they halved the game. No-one lost either. If you draw you share the points. Half each. Shouldn't be getting a zero like a loss as you didn't lose. Losing is worse.
In our case iot was the unique situation of a draw being a "win" as it achieved the desired goal.
Don't agree, there is a point of difference between two teams playing to win and being tied, versus a team that has settled on a draw as the result.
If having zero points for a draw means we never see a team settle for a draw ever again then I'm all for it, we don't play soccer, draws are sh1t!
I'd rather extra time, and first to a 2pt advantage, no more settling! I think 2pts makes sense, because it allows for a defensive rushed behind while leaving a goal as a winning score.
I thought in the dying moments it was our older heads that took control of the momentum, as is needed, and while it was absent at times throughout the game when it was needed they delivered, but a draw is a very different to needing a win, and Bevo discussed in his post-match they were momentarily thrown by us not trying for the win.
It was certainly a contrast, and sadly as the AFL works towards forever closing the gap between the have and the have nots, it's likely we'll see more of it.
Of course, the AFL can eliminate this completely by making a draw worthless, zero, nada, nothing, zilch. Why does it need to be a split of the 4 points, if it's zero, it's zero for everybody, as good as a bye. Only ever reward wins!
Late season a couple of things, Kemp, Gov and Harry are slowly improving in terms of set shots, will it be sustained time will tell. But doing it in recent weeks is as good as any test, and surely that must leave us in better circumstances for the future.
I was a bit disappointed in young Byrne not having a crack from the 50m arc, maybe he had weary legs, but it's his go and he is as likely as any. Certainly, more likely than handing it off to Cripps! If you are a small forward with a leg, you need to be taking those shots and converting some of them. If you don't then opponents will just force you further out and you will lose all effectiveness.
I don't think we got the structure right this week, Derksen looked like a fish out of water in F50, we seemed to allow the Dogs to drag Pitto into D50, and that degrades his effectiveness. If we wanted someone dropping into the space then why not send Derksen up the field, what value is he standing alone at FF! Note to Pitto, never kick the footy to our shortest player when they are standing the opposition ruck!
What's our plan if Hayward is out, we lost a lot when he went off, he's becoming a pivotal part of our full field structure.
Starc and Head won the ashes....this is an old, poor side with a few blokes who are capable of first tier performances
They have golden moments, sometimes a few in a row, but there is little consistency from any of them.
We've been spoilt over the years, Lillee, Warne, Langer, Haydon, McGrath, you got 24x7 cricketers who always managed to compete. But a lot of their success came due to the reliability and consistency of partners in crime, we don't have it at the moment, we aren't relentless like we were.
Surprisingly free kick count was in our favour 15-23!
Of course it's not just what but where that matters.
I didn't get the "play on" thing, it was evident from the very first bounce someone had changed the interpretation this week, but it only seemed to apply to us. Twice we had guys instantly called to play on for shaping to handball without moving their feet or off the mark.
Both Hewett and Walsh got mown down late well after disposal without a down field free being awarded, I recall specific cases once by Libba and once by Freijah.
Weightman was blocking our defenders well off the ball, way beyond the legal distance and without eyes for the footy, and not penalised once. On the other side of the case Dean takes the space behind the fall of the ball and gets pinged for a block. Now we can debate the right or wrong of it, but the difference between each case is the real problem because Dean and Weightman are at the same end, same umpire, etc., etc..
Also, go back and watch that infamous throw, the umpires head is in the bottom of the video feed looking straight at it, he sees what everybody else saw and decided "Computer says no!" and called play on! At no stage did the Dogs player attempt to make a fist or close his hand, he just threw it! Earlier in the game one of our blokes was penalised for a volleyball spike called a throw, at strike but with open palms like a double hand ruck tap, but clearly a strike.
The NSW Cricket Mafia has backed itself into a corner, it can't blame the bowlers this time because they are all in on the incumbents. The defenders of the top order would normally see it as a bowling fail not a batting fail, they would expect the batting did nothing wrong and the bowlers weren't able to knock over Bangladesh for a similar score!
Even in the post-match the usual suspects were talking about a refresh, then spent 10 minutes discussing the next generation of bowlers.
The only batsmen they threw rocks at were Weatherald and Webster, declaring both fails, they wanted Inglis in and an extra bowler!
