I'll be at this one and going with very fond hopes. Car'n the Blues!
Therefore, I am setting this up now. When the game starts, please be here!
Good start.
If Dow and McKay could kick straight we’d be ahead.
Fingers crossed that we keep it up and avoid and usual fade out.
We have to get tighter 1 on 1 in defence.
The combination of zoning and half hearted defensive running will cost us the game.
Dows main knock is his kicking.
Needs a lot of work.
Its all about clearances, much better today....
Are the umpires swans supporters?
Just can't get out of our D50.
Big fan of fisher but worst game I’ve seen him play.
Why can’t we play two quarters of football?
Another game, another ruck kills us.
Levi Casboult. Over him.
Strange that McKay is still rucking at times
How ist that we have 4 talls down back and on multiple occasions not one of them has gone up to spoil a marking contest?
I'm not Jones' biggest fan, but credit where it's due - up to now, he's done a fair job on Buddy. Well done.
Would also have to be the cleanest, most honourable and honest player I think I've ever seen.
f&ck, f*ck and double f%cking f$ck! >:(
Looking at the stats sheet, 9 of the 10 players with the fewest disposals are from Carlton.
Gibbons hasn’t even got a disposal.
Polson, Lobbe and O’Brien have 2.
Thomas and jones 3.
Think of it this way. Our leading disposal winner is first year player Walsh. He has had more possessions than 6 players put together.
Won’t win a game with so many passengers.
O’brien, Polson, Gibbons, Lobbe are they playing?
Add in Dow and settlefield as having ordinary games and I’m surprised we are not 6-7 down.
Weitering and Jones down back and Cripps and Walsh in the middle have been huge but unless we get a more even spread in the second half the flood gates will open.
Cripps must be getting very tired of having to do it all.
Jones's 3 earns him the "Robert Klomp TV award". ;D
He's having a good battle with Buddy.
Jones doing well on Buddy....Lobbe getting caned by Sinclair though, need our forwards to work better together, they just look like individuals playing their
own game....Cripps doing well even though being tagged by Kennedy who is going ok himself....
Dow winning the ball well but gone back to his TAC cup days with some poor kicking...needs to use his hands more and give the ball off....
What I want to know, is why is the club so good at drafting guys who simply don't have the basic skill set required to play the game.
F@cking Dow. I don't think one of his kicks spun correctly or hit a target. This is not the first time either. I was concerned by it in his first year, but it's continued on this year.
How can a pick 3 have basically no idea how to kick? Doesn't surprise me considering the number of first round picks who we've drafted just can't kick. If it's not not Murphy or Gibbs when he was here, then it's Dow.
I get a horrible feeling Dow is another bust.
It's why I wanted Cerra Spanner. Dows kicking at junior level was very ordinary.
No, he needs to kick straight. His first miss was terrible.
Should we just call time and let the umpires hand the win to the swans?
Three weeks in a row, opposition ruck BoG.
I dont know if it's bad coaching or lazy players but we give the Sydney mids 5 - 15m space all over the ground. None of our mids want to wear their opponent. And they pick their way through us every single time we play them.
Barb, I'm starting to think we call time on the coach :o
Rabble.
Only some terrific individual efforts kept us in the game.
We're the kings of the cameo appearances. The very opposite of cohesive.
Lobbe is a hopeless. Turtle slow.
Polson is back to being polson.
Gibbons irrelevant
O’brien irrelevant.
All 4 would not get a game on any list.
I'm also seriously wondering if the bloke actually knows what he's doing... sure doesn't look like it. Way too much confusion for a well drilled side.
What’s wrong with Gov?
Samo is fast becoming our best ball user, and doing it consistently. Starting to feel very comfortable when he has ball in hand.
Not much competition though.
I mean, who is second best?
Same old same old
One way traffic since the twenty minute mark of the first quarter. The "mission critical" light is flashing...
In Bolton's defence, can't win with this side. Too slow. Too many lazy players. Too many passengers. Not enough intensity.
Really disappointed in blokes that should be all over this... Maybe some of these blokes are just happy to accept a cheque and play half arsed seconds footy. Because they aren't bringing it game day.
Still waiting to see why Setterfield is deserving of a game... why the huge wraps? Seems every time he gets the aggott it takes him half an hour to decide what to do... not an instinctual player at all, thus far.
Dunno, clearly we need more like him, but IMO he is close enough to elite. Very nice to watch.
Hard to believe it’s only 19 points and we’re alomst in it.
Still young and inexperienced.
But worth sticking with for now. Wouldn’t mind seeing him play at half back to try getting him to run more and learn to link up with team mates. Kicks long in panic a bit too much at the moment, but I still have hope with him.
But where do we play him to best use those skills and his speed?
I’d almost say put him off half back because we desperately need run and carry off the back line from someone who can then dispose of the ball cleanly.
If we get one back early this quarter we are a chance. Looking for Harry to start converting, hope McGovern is okay. We could use him as that link player perhaps.
Too many Passengers?
How many times have we heard that since 2002?
It seems when a player pulls on the Navy Blue jumper he does't want to work hard for it or bleed for it.
ALL contracts should be performance based!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
McGovern done for the day....hamstring tightness
IMO : wing, outside receiver and as you say off the HB line setting up play. He could be elite in all 3 and it's a very nice problem to have. I can see him rotating between those 3. My 2 lire.
Being a bit hard on Crippa there BP
Ed moved to the middle it would seem
Lose next week and Bolton is close to finished.
I'm puzzled why Casboult is still on the list. Can't ruck. Can't play forward. Refuses to move. Total waste of time.
I have never believed that Brendon Bolton was a coaches bootlace, and watching this game, has re-confirmed my opinion.
We can't and will not win a game, with the current game plan whatever that is. The coach, and I use that term loosely, still has them going wide. They are still playing stop start football.
As Garry Lyon has kept saying the whole game, you have got a big bloke like Harry Mac who is taking contested marks and should stay near the goals no matter what, and there he is playing on the wing because he's being dragged up the ground by his opponent. Surely the instruction from a coach with any intelligence would be, "I don't care what happens, you do not, under any circumstances, move any more than a maximum of 20 metres from goal".
Yes we have got passengers. Gibbons and Polson aren't good enough and never will be. Kennedy needs game time. And yes, Dow is making mistakes, but he's got the ability, Walsh is and will continue to be a gun and will, barring injury, get better and better. Setterfield still has a way to go but hasn't played much and will hopefully get better
I believe that with our full team in, Krreuzer, Charlie Curnow and a couple of others, and we can win games.
And with some decent pick ups next year, who knows, we could play finals in 2020.
BUT, we will NEVER play finals with this bloke as coach. Once his plan A, whatever that is fails, he has no plan B let alone any other plan.
I don't care how many Robert Wall's you have so called mentoring him, nor do I care that Walls has said according to today's paper, that "he can coach". He can make as many barbecues as he likes, and love the players as much as he wants, but the quicker he's gone, and Barker replaces him for at least the rest of this season, the better.
Maybe I need to single a few, I have 10 fingers...
He must be utterly incompetent if you want him replaced by Barker, our tremendous "forward line" coach. FMD, he couldn't instruct Buddy how to kick goals.
I thought Teague was our forward line coach?
Is this ANOTHER honorable loss Bolton talks about?
That's the game. Too big a margin now.
Time to start Tanking again, uh oh we have competition now with Melb losing so well.
Maybe another Kroozer cup is coming?
McVeigh, Parker and Rampe are still their go-to players. When these guys go out, you have to wonder about the quality behind them. Heeney is class, but plenty of bit-part players. They play as a team in a system they know, that helps.
What's this thing playing as a team? I'm intrigued, tell me more!
I just want him replaced, and Barker is the obvious choice, unless they want to give it to David Teague.
This year is done.
We actually have a better team than last year even allowing for the passengers, so we will have lots of so called honourable losses.
So get someone to coach out the year, and spend the next 6 months interviewing every available person that's out there.
Who would've thought Ed kicking 4?
By the way, if we fluke a win, ignore everything I have said :-X :-X ;) ;)
Well I already called it Game Over, we are definitely a chance now.
Boys are pressing. Hopefully they can take advantage of a few Swans injuries.
GO BLUES !!
No, side doesn't know how to win. Casboult miss was critical, killed momentum.
I actually expected him to miss. Hitting the post was closer than I expected.
Umpires again.
Pretty bad today.
Any excuse to find a free to the Swans, and they'll find it
Does Marchbank know he needs to kick to the guys in blue today?ie. his team mates, not the opposition.
For a bloke given a golden opportunity Gibbons needs to take it very soon or he can F off back to nowheresville.
Shameful performance.
The first two misses, Dow's and Harry's were solely due to a lack of concentration and technique. Dow tried to steer the ball through rather than kick through it, and Harry just didn't give a stuff. Thought this is easy, and missed.
That's another symptom of poor coaching.
Two more things,
1. Have you noticed how many of our blokes run past the opponent who has got the ball, rather than at them in a real desire to tackle?
2. If you want to know why Bolton can't coach, he's a good talker but can't coach, think back to the first quarter against Richmond.
Game 1 of the season, 85,000 people, and the coach can't have the players up enough to want to run through a brick wall for him and the supporters. So what do we get, a 5 goal to zero first quarter.
Forget what happened in the next two quarters, that first quarter cost us any chance of winning.
That said all that needed to be said about Bolton for me.
Another loss, but there's plenty of improvement from last year. Swans have plenty of stars and plenty of quality - there were never going to be zip-3. I thought we'd lose by 2, so 3 is about right IMO.
Yes. Yes i have.
If by run you mean jog?
Yet for one quarter today we got it right and found some intensity. Then it all stopped. And we just started playing a zone and jogging around.
Hey mods, please lock this and the pre game thread please.
But he hasn't actually, thus far, shown an instinct for the game. His reaction times are so slow, most top picks show something in their early games. Early days, I know, and maybe with more team success around him... sorry, but not optimistic at this stage.
Sorry Paul, I'm struggling to see positives, it just the same old crap, different season. Now we have injuries and don't have our best 18 we're struggling to be competitive. Winning is a fantasy ATM, they just aren't intense for long enough.
Where is the post game thread?
I am. I watched the 2nd, 3rd and 4th q, and I thought he did some nice things. Certainly not write off material IMO.
I think they're all at the football.
I'll do it ;D