Besides E.Hollands and the two Irish guys, we had Motlop, O'Farrell, Chesser and Carroll out to LTIs, as well as Newman, Haynes, and Hayward to injuries, all improve our team and player depth when available. B.Camporeale, L.Camporeale, Ison, Charleson, Chesser, Riley, O'Keeffe, Moir and Byrne need to develop more and improve, and if we pick up Khamis and Amartey, along with Walker and maybe a couple of others, we should be able to sustain improvement over the long term.
Started off like we wanted to really win it, finished like we were still being coached by Voss.
We played Hawthorn a while back in the rain and got spanked, tonight we didn't handle the slippery conditions again. It's clearly an issue that needs to be addressed.
What is also of serious concern to me is that some of our players who have been adequate for many weeks, crumbled under the pressure and did some extremely stupid things.
Young & Cottrell were braindead tonite, some of the things they did completely defy logic. Kemp going for the left foot checkside from the right forward pocket only to kick the ball in the middle and float it across goal to the opposite pocket where Cottrell took a chest mark. From the set shot, Cottrell kicked across the body and hit the post - two appalling choices let down by poor skills. I also wasn't impressed with Cottrell laughing when he hit the post, seriously champ, this is a cut-throat final which requres a little more focus than what you showed.
We got a few bum decisions from the umpires but that is not why we lost, we failed to maintain the pressure & chase like we have seen for many weeks.
Fraser got a coaching lesson tonite, we were all over them early and made them look second-rate, Scott made some subtle changes and they stormed back into the match.
Yes, it's been a really weird year for us with plenty to like but this elimination final showed just how far off the pace our list is and how we cannot cut corners in our pursuit for the ultimate success.
Not the prettiest match to watch, we fumbled really badly early too.
It was great to get the win but given a lot of our players were playing their first ever final, I do think we will be better for the run next week as a result.
Geelong are beatable, but we can't serve up the same crap we did in the first quarter against them.
I was sending texts around during the match questioning our desperation & want to chase & pressure. Finals are a different beast and you will get found out very quickly if you don't play with a reckless & uncompromising assault on the contest.
There was a lot to like last night but equally, there is still some tinkering to be done if we want to go a little further in this finals series.
I particularly liked Lord's role on Pickett as he was the one who could have sparked the Dees back into the match. Thing is, Pickett got more & more frustrated with the hard tag Lord gave him so he tried to do the mercurial highlight reel stuff which he fluffed badly & played into our hands.
I nearly threw the remote at the TV, if he had of fumbled the mark over the goal-line thus resulting in a point, I reckon a team-mate may have decked him.
I also have a question...............Will that change your lists?
Kruddler partly answered the question for you but the key issue for me is that a leopard doesn't change its spots.
We definitely have 6-8 who have to go and should go (eg. Saad, Fogarty, Boyd etc), however, there are some who have been playing for their career and have played a little out of their skin doing a Jake Stringer impersonation.
We can wax lyrical or pontificate in theory over why this has happened but when it all boils down, the same question keeps coming up, why have some of these players not done this before ??
In the main, we are not talking about the young chaps either, it's the more mature players who were coasting and terribly inconsistent earlier in the year.
I accept that I am "old school" here but I have always had concerns over players who don't dig in when the going gets tough preferring to just take the weekly pay packet without any remorse or commitment.
These are the players who, IMO, will let you down in a cut-throat final, it's their natural fallback position.
For that reason, I still see a handful of other players who should be shown the door anyway bearing in mind that 10-12 changes is the limit in any one year when it comes to list changes.
Factoring in the need to address the onfield deficiencies we currently have should also have a serious bearing on how many goes and who they are.
Unfortunately, I have seen a few of our players either not prepared to put their body on the line or completely unsure of what to do in these conditions.
The Hawks were obviously smarting after last week and were determined to make amends. They were on from the get go. I didn't think we'd win, but I was hoping for a much closer tussle than this.
I think everyone was expecting us to give them a really good run for their money, sadly, we have gone back to the Voss era standards.
