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Robert Heatley Stand / Re: AFL Rd 7 2025 Post Game Prognostications Carlton vs Geelong
Last post by Baggers -King for mine is a very good analyst, right up there alongside the best. I definitely think we handballed too much to stationary players in the first few weeks which teams cottoned onto use it to their advantage (ie tackled and stopped us in our tracks). I guess we practiced wave running and receiving (no disrespect intended) against WC and NM and applied it against a good side on Sunday. Make no mistake, our kicking lets us down and we need to recruit some elite ball users by foot. The run and HB somewhat covers for that deficiency by as you say, giving the person on the end of the chain more time to execute a good, more measure kick. It also compensates for the lack of real break away leg speed by putting our blokes ahead of the chaser quickly. If you look at some of the kicks into the F50, many were poor and if we tidied that up, we would have one by plenty (yeah I know, grandmother/balls/grandfather).
My appreciation of David King's analyses varies considerably but I think that he was on to something when he said that we were one handball short of winning our previous games. That's one extra handball in each chain of possession and I think that we got there on Sunday. We are dangerous and hard to stop when we run in waves and use forward handballs to give the ball carrier room and time to get an effective disposal.
One thing I've been meaning to comment on was how Sam De Koning saw the funny side of the smallest bloke on the field using him as a step ladder. Corey has taken a couple of nice grabs now and will have his opponents thinking about his marking and not just his leading, crumbing and defensive work.
Same page here, GTC old son.
King seems to actually think things through, not just take situations at face value... and he was right about us, but it was pretty apparent in our first 4 outings - defensively strong (great foundation), but offensive game was soft when confronted with real pressure... handballing to witches hats, panicked sky-high disposals into forward 50, etc.
It was great that the Pussycats hit us with real, quality, sustained pressure -- especially at the beginning of the 3rd and 4th qtrs -- forcing us to 'face our demons' and we responded in the best way possible... and that's the road to being mentally tougher, offensively as well as defensively.