If we actually recruited a semi decent ruck/forward we wouldn't have needed to play Young.
It's why I liked Casboult. Jack of all trades, master if none. but was very handy Jack in all of those trades.
Probably going to be left to Harry again next year. We'll likely get Amartey, not my first choice but a decent enough player to support Harry. Makes it a bit easier to play Harry in that role and not have Kemp and Gov left there when he rucks.
Its why i was so 'positive' on Jack Silvagni.
Having him as a 2nd ruck was great for team balance and why we never needed 2 rucks. Forward/back/ruck.....Young is a poor version of Silvagni and worse in all 3 areas......but still the best we have.
Yet he is still the best option for that roll that we have.......which is a blight on our list management.
We should've had players to do this roll drafted years ago, but constant neglect has left us here.
Very true, which is why several of these duds get games every week. If there's even a remote chance that Blakey wants to leave, then we should make him our trade priority this year.
As good of a player that he is, I don't think we could sell it courtesy of our Carlton Respects campaign.
It would hurt the club and everything its trying to do. Unless we could somehow manage to get him to be a poster boy of righting wrongs etc etc Propaganda machine would need to be in orverdrive for that to happen.
I thought Walsh was clearly our best, Hewett had a lot of footy but I suspect little impact. Weitering was well on top before being smashed by Neale, just another accident. I suppose the usual suspects will role up here telling us how soft Weiters is and why he should be traded!
There is a toll paid when you try to better teams like the Handbaggers, they are willing to go that step beyond fair to get a result, and they are coached in it. They bury knees into hips and backs in marking contests, take legs out from under opponents, block hinder and push to the limits of the rules and often beyond, they happily give away the free if the opportunity to bruise an ear or two surfaces. All the time claiming an injustice at peak voice.
You can't defeat them by colouring inside the lines, we just never seem to learn that.
Personally, I've not really a fan of the "we're too nice" trope. I've been hearing this for years, and whatever other issues I have with it, it basically condemns several generations of coaches, players, administrators etc to the status of blind ignoramuses, scardey-cats, or an endless parade of placid, semi pacifist individuals of extremely high moral caliber.
Agree.
Where we physically dominated? Pushed around? Scared??
No.
We put our body on the line. We stood up for teammates. We pushed and shoved as much as we needed too.
Did we miss some tackles? Yes. Did they? Yes. Does every team? Yes. Look at our run down tackles last week. Same players. They get scared during the week??
So....do we want to encourage our guys to 'stretch the rules' in order to get an advantage? I'd argue we do that already in certain ways......cripps has a nice 'crow throw' and george does a good 'selwood drop' to get frees. Do we need to borderline assault the opposition to win games? I don't think so.
The MCG was a fortress for us for a little while and Docklands was an achilles heel. It seems thats flipped around. Problem is, finals arent played at Marvel (see Syd and the SCG).
The problem is no home ground advantage.
To finish top 4 you have to win as many games as you can.
We haven't finished the home and away season top 4 since we left Princes Park. The Bombers barring 2000/2001 when they were already a powerhouse might be the same.
I get the sentiment of this, but there are 2 problems with this.
1. That was not Geelongs home ground, it was more of ours. 2. Every game we play (except maybe Collingwood??) our crowd is louder by comparison, so we make it a home crowd at least.
I think we went in with our best balanced team. That was until we saw the weather forecast. In the end, Young was not needed and we needed an extra small. Wet conditions, marking is more difficult, ball spend more time on the ground, you need more smalls to adapt.
I think the weather exposed our game plan.
I think it exposed our forwards as not good enough.
I think the poor performers from last week were the same this week. Young, Byrne, gov, Kemp.
We missed Hayward.
We missed Haynes. Derkson was not up to same level. We got exposed when Harry Dean went off.
Happy with the balance. Definitely needed Young in the side.
Hayward needed to be 100% fit to come in with the way we need him to play, so good call there. Also difficult finding someone to drop....Byrne would be my guess based on last week alone, but overall he's performed well and everyone is allowed 1 bad game.
Ollie hollands didn't deserve to be dropped after his last game.....nor did anyone else.
All this is just deflection from the original point. That is, the AFL stuffed up by not playing this game on a saturday as they would get more people there. No. No they did not.
