Carlton Supporters Club

I reckon we'll miss Jack.

I reckon we'll miss Jack.

No Pitt, no Carlton. Back to the Carlton of old, LOTS of passengers with a bare half dozen trying to drag us across the line. We have been lucky for a few weeks but we may now well be on downward trajectory. Don't even know where to start.

I suspect that those who are shattered by the loss had little respect for Freo. As I noted in the pre-match thread, I was initially in that camp but the more I looked at them the more I realised they are a top side. A loss against them is no more cringeworthy than losing to Melbourne or Brisbane. Freo will make the finals comfortably.

Freo are good team that put us under plenty of pressure. We struggled especially to get quality F50 entries and to hold it in there. Freo caught us out too many times with their quick rebound. Plenty of room for improvement especially going forward  but at least we did fight it out to the end.

[1] Fair dinkum, we were good in the 1st quarter. We really did well, considering that Pittonet and H were off.
[2] Tom de Koning did try his best, but he us too light: too easy to get out of the way.
[3] Fair dinkum, we don't get rewarded for our tackles! I know that Freo get an armchair ride from the Umps in WA, but ...
[4] We need to make changes this week. Too many guys not doing enough.
[5] Fair dinkum, our mids were phenomenal, under the circumstances.
Cripps: 32 possessions, 3 goals, 4 marks, 5 tackles and 8 clearances! What a player!
Walsh: 36 possessions, 4 tackles and 4 clearances.
Cerra: 32 possessions, 5 tackles and 7 clearances.
Hewett: 30 possessions, 8 tackles and 6 clearances.
But the rest ...
[6] How many times did one of our players slip over?

Young shows potential and is a handy player to have on the list but its not like having Jones down back and that's the reality.

Losing Jones is a double whammy because Weitering now seems to be playing much more defensively

Completely outplayed and we were never really in that contest.

Parks, Newnes, Cottrell & Boyd are way out of their depth, Williams looks like being a bust and Fisher doesn’t have the body strength to play midfield. Our leg speed is a huge issue and all of
Williamson, Dow & Philip can help that in the short term.

In the longer term, McGovern, Honey, Cunningham & Dow will provide the leg speed and class that we need.

Parks and Boyd are duds and I'm not sure why we knocked ourselves out to get Setterfield. Young shows potential and is a handy player to have on the list but its not like having Jones down back and thats the reality.
Freo are an ugly team to play against and of course losing your main counter in Pittonet to their main driving force in Darcy was about the worst thing that could have happened. You add in Harry copping a knock which rendered him useless and Jack being out it just all added up to Freo winning. Cant stand Longmuir and I hope we play Freo in the finals and give them the "old heave ho" in straights sets out of the finals and back to mediocrity where they belong.

Lods, there's no doubt TDK will be able to rack up more possessions around the ground than the traditional big unit. That's true also of Jack. But the problem is that we're currently a clearance driven side. We need a ruckman who is able to either tap the ball to Cripps or at least stop the other ruck from punching the ball outside the contest. Then our mids can go to work and win the clearance.

The more mobile ruckman who can rack up possessions around the ground is of more use to a side which bases its game more on turning the ball over and then slingshotting out of defence.

St Kilda lost its ruckmen against GWS leaving them exposed to a very big unit in Preuss. Their fill-in did rack up possessions too but the key to their win was that Ratts closed down the game, congesting the ball-ups to ensure Preuss couldn't clear the ball. It was ugly to watch but was effective on this occasion. But it would be a mistake to read such games as showing that the big units can be taken down by a midfielder opposing them in the ruck.

I'm also not sure the more even pacing we displayed through the game was evidence of increasing fitness. I suspect we went into the game with the mentality of a boxer who is wary of his opponent's ability to counter-punch; we tried to get into clinches with Freo. Rather than the helter-skelter attack that allowed us to open up big early leads against the Hawks and others, we tried to go down the line and limit Freo's ability to get some width. That produced more subdued scoring and also reduced the amount of flat out sprinting.

Absolutely, That's why I said it was as a 'second' ruck he's tracking OK.
I think he'll be an upgrade on a player like Levi

However the situation that faces us at present is that Pittonet will be a big loss...and unfortunately Mirkov isn't ready yet.
So in the meantime term it will fall on DeKoning.

Now the worry here is that there is a danger that players like DeKoning, Silvagni...even Young will be up against bigger units and the risk of injury is probably high.
We have a problem...mid-season draft perhaps, as a short term insurance.

Absolutely, That's why I said it was as a 'second' ruck he's tracking OK.
I think he'll be an upgrade on a player like Levi

The way Darcy hit Pitt was bone crunching even from a short run up. Buckley commented on it in the post game show, saying that it was a "skill" that had been perfected and refined over recent years.  It makes Ruck a very tough gig for skinny young ruckmen.

Teams have worked out that we depend on getting centre clearances to score.
We'll get over it, but we have plan B. We need to develop one and quickly.

We now play North, who play well against us, without the man that wins us games (Pittonet). We'll probably have to play Mirkov, no matter how raw he is, because Tom de Koning is not enough, no matter how he tries.

Hopefully, Pittonet isn't too badly hurt, because he is the missing link when we fail.

Not knocking the kid but can anyone explain the logic behind using a half back flanker as the sub?

Hard one to explain. I would have thought we had that area covered better than most.

Thought TDK battled on ok when Pitto went down. Our mids still got a lot of the ball with our starting 4 mids getting 30-37 touches between them - they had no player over 27. 

Our forwards were soundly beaten by their backs and their small forwards as usual were damaging kicked 7 goals between 3 of them against 1 from our smalls. 

I'm not in the camp we cant win without Pitto as we now have a strong midfield group who will win enough of there own ball. Last week we had Pit and he was against a first gamer and we only scrapped over the line. 

Next 2 weeks are both must wins if we are wanting to play finals. No excuses these are 2 lower raked teams that while no game is easy we still must account for them. 

I made comment in a post-match thread a couple of weeks ago regarding the spuddage we keep giving senior game time to. Last night, it was the same second tier rejects that let us down again. I also said pre-match that if we were to lose, its all about the context of the loss. We were horrible in so many ways that the context was ripped away and the poor decision-making & lack of talent was on display for all to see.

Setterfield - spare me .... he is a liability
Newnes - saw him run past an opposition many times, in other words, ran away from the contest
Boyd - he crapped his dacks more than once and then gave away a 50m penalty by trying to be a faux toughman
Parks - what has this guy done to warrant selection anyway ??
Cottrell - first rule of football, you need to be able to kick to play the game, why then does he get selected ??
Martin - took some angry pills early, snapped a nice goal and then fluffed a set-shot soda, over-priced dud     
Newman - I have been a supporter of his but time has run out now
Fisher - not good enough for long enough
Owies - crapped his pants and dropped a regulation chest mark, this is the AFL you know !!
Durdin - where were you all night ..... you are better than that crapful effort

Philp, Stocker, Carroll, Kemp,  .... any of them would be better options than the charlatans we have masquerading as footballers out there right now.

What did O'Brien do wrong to get dropped ?? He's no star but at least you know he cares and wears his heart on his sleeve.

We were critical of Teague for playing his faves at the expense of others, now it appears that Voss is reticent to make smart changes too.

And with so many players hobbling into and out of the medical room, I'm starting to question if that Andrew Russell chap is as good as his reputation says he is. 

The most sensible thing the Mark Robinson has written in years......

"Fremantle has been working for three years to implement a well balanced defensive and offensive game style under coach Justin Longmuir. The Blues are six week into Michael Voss’ grand plan which means the Blues are a work in progress. Voss is focusing on the contest and clearance and the remaining layers will come over time. That is their ability to transition the ball and to defend transition, which is the hardest part of the game to develop and implement. They can’t win the flag this year, and might even end up in scrap for the eight, and that’s not sweeping criticism of the Blues, it’s just that they are not capable in all facets of the game."

Watched the game again last night, hopefully with a more objective view.

Probably stating the obvious but a few bad habits from years gone by were on display - playing safe, bombing it out of defense and bombing it into the forward line from the wings... hence landing around the 50m arc rather than deep into the forward line to give the small forwards opportunities.

Saad seemed to be the only defender trying to launch attacks after gaining meterage and breaking lines.

The wings were playing safe.

Missing (in fact the last 3 weeks) was the boldness and quick ball speed of the first three weeks.

Parks, the Gov replacement, seems enthusiastic to spoil whereas the Gov intercepts and launches attacks. Newnes is another safe selection.

Player availability has probably affected our ability to be bold. Gov, Willo, LOB, Stocker, even Dow are all risk takers who run and carry and have dangerous/penetrating disposals.

We'll probably be able to sustain bold meterage gains once we've regained blokes who can deliver on this rather than safer selections of blokes with limited abilities/experience. For starters, would prefer to see blokes like LOB, Willo, Walsh or Dow on the wings.

Saad is great but like a lot of our other defenders needs to have cover for his man when he does launch attacks,

Ties in with what I said and have been saying for weeks, too many unaccountable attacking types and not enough manning up.

https://www.afl.com.au/video/749825/-biggest-cop-out-the-area-blues-must-improve-to-take-next-step?videoId=749825&modal=true&type=video&publishFrom=1650945448001
Ties in with what I said and have been saying for weeks, too many unaccountable attacking types and not enough manning up.

Do we actually have the leg speed to go man on man as a defensive unit?

As they said in the video, nobody mans up anymore. Everyone plays zones.

Yes, it looks bad on Saad because he is in 2 of the clips, but previously it would show plowman and people would lambaste him for the same thing.
Its a bit funny, but the player you see closest to the ball once a mark is taken is usually the least selfish player as they actually tried to get there in the end, rather than everyone else who didn't even bother trying to get to the contest.
That is, Plowman would always be trying to man up 2 players because someone else left a man and ended up being 'the guy' who drew the attention for letting 'his' opponent get an easy mark. Reality was that he was covering 2 at once and could do no more.

In short, its more of a breakdown of the zone, than specific poor individual performances.

Marc Pittonet will be sidelined for the next couple of months with scans confirming a ruptured posterior cruciate ligament in his knee.

Called it at the time. PCL - 8 weeks.

Grundy gone for 12 weeks....knee on knee too......do we end up with ruckman wearing knee guards...
Darcy lined up Pittonet IMHO, he had eyes only for the player and was intent on meeting him physically rather than the ball.

Everyone attacks but the good teams have a couple of players who rotate over to backup their mate who has gone on the attacking run like I was saying...Saad turned to look who had rotated over to Schultz but saw only fresh air...
Petty does a lot of that for Melbourne when May and Lever go off intercepting, been made worse by losing Jones for us, as much as he was a mad hatter with ball in hand at times he had the speed to get over and spoil for teammates.

Grundy gone for 12 weeks....knee on knee too......do we end up with ruckman wearing knee guards...
Darcy lined up Pittonet IMHO, he had eyes only for the player and was intent on meeting him physically rather than the ball.

The AFL must act on this asap. Two big blokes running and jumping at each other (180 degrees apart) with raised knees is a recipe for disaster. When did these knee on knee things start?

We have a few that do/did that.
Weiters, Gov, Marchbank, Doch....

Obviously, Jones was the best at it.

Probably when the quality of the grounds got better.
Previously you were playing in a mud pit and could barely get up off the ground.

Used to be that the rucks came more at each other on a 45 degree angle than opposite. Nevertheless, change needs to happen.

I suspect allowing opposition sides to get 'runs of goals' is more between the lug holes than anything. Establishing a system (and trust in that system) that becomes 'habitual' in countering this will take time, and we need the personnel to carry it out.

Yeah, 2-3 months for Pitto.

Knee guards? Maybe.

Probably just easier they either do a jump ball (Bball style) or run in from the same direction (ala boundary throwins).

Firstly, fans often get the PCL confused with the Patella, thinking the damage is in the front of the knee but it isn't. It connects from the middle of the upper to the rear of the lower. The cross section on the right below shows the knee facing left.
(https://www.jorgechahlamd.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Figure-1-PCL-Anatomy.jpg)

Knee guards are not the solution, the problem might even be worse because of them, they can be used like the NFL body armour as a battering ram to increase the impact forces. Knee / shin guards mostly protect the patella tendon in the front and prevent skin damage and calcification which is a common problem.

I'd ban raising the knees altogether, it's just not required, it's a tactic that was introduced by smaller ruckmen like Newman in the 60s and 70s to compete with the giants.

I would also penalise the rucks for watching their opponent and not watching the footy like Darcy did to Pitto.

Allow the rucks to wrestle a bit more with the fend offs, give them the choice of jumping or not jumping, it's a skill. I'm not talking about guys who step through past the fall of the ball and prevent a fair contest, that can still be penalised as a block. But they should be able to meet body to body without jumping, as long as it is under the fall of the ball. Pitto and some other rucks have been wrongly penalised for this in recent times, and that is actually contributing to the PCL problem.

The AFL might be even better off to just ban raising the knee, ban shin/knee guards and also make the circle a little bigger to allow the jumping type rucks a fair run at it against a wrestling type ruck. Almost a bit of going backwards to go forwards. The rule on raising the knee could be as simple as the upper leg has to be below horizontal at the time of impact, PCLs occur when the upper leg is at or above horizontal at the time of impact and the lower leg gets push back stretching the PCL. In the image below Darcy is using his kneecap / patella to drive into Pitto's shin, if Pitto's jump had been a touch lower so that he made contact below Darcy's knee, they both could have sustained PCL injuries in the one contest.
(https://resources.afl.com.au/photo-resources/2022/04/23/19ef9fbe-84b9-410d-b21e-739c741a5efa/LReWU5Fa.jpg?width=342&height=216)