Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Recent Posts
1
Robert Heatley Stand / AFL Rd 20 2026 Pre Game Predictions Carlton vs Gold Coast at Marvel
Last post by crashlander -
Well, we might get Pitto back. That would stop much of haemorrhaging in the middle.
We might get Weitering back. That would also provide stability to order to a defence that was done reasonably well without him.

H probably won't play. Depending on what he's done, he may not play again this year.
That leaves us with serious holes in the forward line. And I don't know who is going to fill them.
I don't think we can afford Kemp as our key forward. His kicking loses us games. Mitch McGovern does some nice things, but not enough.
But who is there to come in? Moir? He probably doesn't deserve a spot, but he will kick goals if he gets it.
O'Keefe? Maybe, even with his poor form, at least he has some height and strength. (His kicking won't improve us.)
Do we play Reidy as a part time forward? He is slightly more reliable that Kemp.

Who comes in for Cerra? He won't play next week, maybe not for the year.
Do we try Ben Camporeale? He is worth a look.
Cooper Lord would be the obvious one, except he clearly hasn't got his fitness back yet. he had 18 possessions against Collingwood, but didn't hurt with any of them.
For that matter Blake Acres was ordinary. 17 possessions for almost as much impact as Lord did.

I'd like to give Jack Ison a few games in the twos to discover his mojo again. He has lost that confidence that was so important when he came in.
Flynn Young? Maybe. he also usually kicks goals if he has a shot.

Our structure was seriously compromised when Charlie Curnow, Jack Silvagni and Tom de Koning left. It left seriously lack key position players and the sort of ruck designed to take advantage of the new rules. The guys who have come in have been contributors, but none of them is a match winner. They don't have the height to do the jobs of the guys who have left.
Our mids have done their best, but they don't take pack marks or kick many goals.

Can we overcome our major structural weaknesses to overcome the biggest failures of 2026? I'm not feeling confident.
2
Robert Heatley Stand / Re: AFL Rd 19 2026 Post Game Prognostications Carlton vs Collingwood
Last post by crashlander -
We were in trouble when Pitto didn't come up. We were in worse trouble when McKay went off. We were our own worst enemy when it came to finding a team mate. We had at least 5 shots at goal inside the 50 that didn't score, total shanks. We work like trojans and get no reward.

 :-[  :-[  :'(  :o  >:(

OK, time to think analytically:
[1] Champion rucks do not always get premierships, but uncompetitive rucks lose games.
For the second week in a row, we were obliterated in the ruck. Reidy did better than Riley did, but not good enough to give our mids any chance of getting the ball into our forward line quickly. And with H off, there was no other option.
So, what do we do about it? It didn't work last week, yet we repeat the same structural mistake, with the same outcome.
We all know that Pitto is not the sort of ruck to lead us to a premiership. He is, however, a real competitor who gives his all and can nullify other, better credentialed rucks.
Unfortunately, the other 3 rucks on our list are not good enough yet. Maybe they will never be good enough. Yet they have to play one out. It is a recipe for disaster and it isn't their fault.
There have been many debates over playing one ruck or two, but we have demonstrated all too well that having one ruck that is not good enough and no reasonable backup doesn't work.
What can we do about it?
This is a problem, as we know we are low on alternatives. I would have played one of Riley or O'Keefe, simply because we have no other big bodies available. They are not great targets, but they would have offered something different than a forward line of dwarves.
We need to draft or trade for a ruck. Badly. There are some rucks coming through, but I'm not sure one of them would solve our problems. We won't get van Hattum: he'll be gone by pick 6 at the latest. I like Benji van Rooyen, but he isn't a jumper. He may well develop into a Pitto replacement, and he does a lot more around the ground.
I'm not a huge fan of Hayden McLean, but he, at least, can play forward and isn't useless at ground level. I wouldn't touch Amartey: he is Charlie Curnow without as much talent.
Most of the rucks going around are bulls, not jumpers, due to the former ruck rules. 

[2] Our skills simply are not good enough:
We had more shots on goal tonight. At least five shots from inside 50 didn't score, didn't get close to scoring. Kemp's shot after the siren was deplorable, Patrick Cripps' left foot snap wasn't much better. I really don't want to think about them ever again. But we kicked points when Collingwood kicked goals. Had we kicked reasonably, we would have won: we had more Inside 50's.
Brodie Kemp is too unreliable to our forward target going forward. He can kick them from the boundary, but he misses too many easy ones and doesn't get enough ball. He gets out-marked far too often. He doesn't bring the ball to ground.
McGovern wasn't bad, but he doesn't hold enough marks. He certainly offers more than Kemp at the moment, but he also shanks kicks too often. Give him an important shot and he usually misses. Sometimes he doesn't even score.

But that was only one aspect of our poor disposal. The number of times we ran ourselves into trouble or kicked to turnover were lethal. That was how Collingwood got almost all their goals, from our turnovers.
Even when it came to spoiling, we seemed to smash the ball directly to Collingwood players, who snapped cleanly. After quarter time Collingwood didn't kick a goal that wasn't from a turnover.

[3] Our mids were prolific tonight, but we still could move the ball quickly into the forward line.
I don't know that I have to expound on this, it is mostly self-evident. Our mids worked really hard, but didn't get rewards. We didn't kick directly, we always went short and wide and a lot of our players did this.
Nick Daicos gets a lot of ball because his team mates feed him. He had 36 possessions, but he earnt maybe three. He had 4 clearances, while our guys had many more.

[4] We went back to our old game style:
We moved the ball slowly. We didn't capitalize on turnovers. We didn't open spaces to allow our forwards to move into. We bombed it long, even though we didn't have any talls to take pack marks.

I could go on, but I want to flush this crap from my mind. Insomnia is bad enough when we win, let alone when we lose.
9
Robert Heatley Stand / Re: AFL Rd 19 2026 In Game Angst Carlton vs Collingwood
Last post by laj -
Quote from: cookie2 – on
Quote from: laj – on
Goalkicking has killed us tonight. At some stage it was going to be costly.

Yep, we don’t have the killer instinct. Pussycats through and through.
We're ok at beating pussycats....lol.

Fact is we had to win 7 games in a row to just get where we did. That is damn hard to keep up. Richmond game showed us we were flattening out and shown more the last 2 weeks. Still, we pissed this game down the drain. Must kick goals when they are there to be kicked. We missed easy ones and they kicking 14.6. We have more scoring shots and lose by 21pts. Go figure. Knew out goalkicking would bite us one day. Since the first half of the Port game I have never seen us kick so poorly at goal. Then blokes don't make the distance from 40m out. Fk me!
10
Robert Heatley Stand / Re: AFL Rd 19 2026 In Game Angst Carlton vs Collingwood
Last post by LP -
We are so easy to tackle, and not strong at tackling, it's a huge asymmetry.

Also, multiple times tonight we take the footy and dodge contact, contact that would ack of teh otherwise earn a free kick or even a 50m, it's contrary to the way the rules are currently implemented that we don't draw basic frees.

Further, look at that last clearance, a Filth player is pushing Cripps in the back of the head and it's play on. How can someone just a little short of 200cm get so much high contact and earn so few frees?