Next Thursday is going to very busy, so I'm getting in before the rush.
I've got a ticket, so I'll be there! Car'n the Blues!
Ruckman frees x 2 = 2 goals
Sheesh... Ed's kicking hasn't improved
Jack. You ripper 👏🏼
Am I in the right thread 🤔
Charlie Harry goal.
Hope there's plenty more
We are the better team just need to calm down a bit and hit targets
Reasonable q.
Motlop looking composed and dangerous. Albeit well up the ground.
Debutants have settled in well.
Love Hollands composed back pocket clearance
Good around the ball. A bit loose btw the arcs. Need to tidy up.
Go Blues
Well done Owies 👏🏼
It’s funny I haven’t been on the site for a while and didn’t really feel that huge surge of excitement in the lead up to the season starting - being back at the G today I’m reminded of the last time we played here and think I’m still in a state of shock from that last game 😂 still slightly heartbroken!
Anyway in game looking ok, am Really tempering my expectations so hope for the best!
Go blues
Wow, if Harry stays fit (touch wood), he’s going to have a massive year. He has already put heaps of kms in and he’s looking like Nick Riewoldt Mk II. He’ll pose real problems for many teams - have they a 200+ cm defender with elite endurance? He has tied up Balta who would have preferred to run free in the guts and Balta has no answers.
When will LOB come on and for whom? Ed has done a few good things but it’s hard to see what his role is from the TV.
3 goals in 4 mins. Sounds familiar 😔
Finally off the plane in Lisbon. Players need it put in no uncertain term that 2023 allowing opposition bursts, especially after breaks, is just not on anymore.
Missing gettable set shots won't help
Same old same old isn’t it.
Its a real arm wrestle at the moment.
Game can and will open up soon. Gotta be prepared to go up a gear when it does, otherwise we'll get blown out like previous years.
Just watching Cowan in the background doing some big stretches. Reckon he's starting to feel it in his first game. Might be a candidate for subbing off.
Horrible third quarter - we are hanging in there in a tight contest. Ball movement hasnt been great
Nankervis is BOG giving TDK a bath.
That guy is tackling everything
i50 differential will open us up. Hope not🤞
We got a 3q lesson.
What have you got Vossy?
Are we really good enough to rope a dope?
For all the commentary about our fwds v their defence, we ain't showing much
Cripps having one of the more quietest games I have seen him play in a while
Need better players than Fisher and Martin - Richmonds equivelants Graham and Bolton are actually productive.
Having said that I reckon Weitering , Young and McGvorn have been superb...
But need to do something with Fisher and Martin imo
Harry still has the ability to break supporters hearts with his kicking.
Agree no flow in play at all. No transition. Flat footed.
Stop start slow play won’t get it done. Need to take them on and run hard.
Not confident
He's productive and dangerous though
Called it,
Cowan off.
LOB on.
Bloody McKay missing goals that qtr. Same traits, a lapse, especially after a break, get on top again, kick points then an opposition goal. Typical! Must be put to the players now that it is not acceptable this year.
Arms all over Charlie and no free kick what a joke
Wow. Doc. Wow. The r1 inspiration
What a Goal.
Charlie you freak
You know we'd have a lot more members if they didn't give us all these heart attacks!
Now a point will be handy...lol.
f*** me we've missed McGovern.
McKay is fu**ing useless
Draw..
McKay is *&%*)^)*)*%&)&*%*)%)%)&%%)&*%&%)&*%&*)%&*) USELESS
It happened again!!
McKay lost it
Get his brother
Good performance by the defence. Unlucky with Lynch's mark marked it one v 3 right in front.
This is a good result guys.
Unlucky again - I maintain Fisher and Martin not good enough.
What ifs. If only Acres took the mark, ran to 50 and bombed it long. If only LOB had kept running or Harry didn’t fall over.
Feck, should have won !😕
Other years revisited.
Lapse, especially after a break
Point kicking when on top, then the opposition get one
Give up a lead in the last seconds.
Only difference is we didn't lose. Didn't win but didn't lose. Felt like we blew 2pts.
A lesson in tackling and i50
It's hard to judge until 5 or 6 rounds into the season, but I'd say neither side is likely to feature deep into the finals based on what we saw tonight.
We were behind third quarter - Cripps and TDK cam alive in the last quarter hopefully that form carries on and put the Cats to sleep next week.
Round 1 can be ugly. Sides have played much worse round 1 and won a flag.
Equal top of the ladder....haha.
Fed up playing Richmond round 1......they are crap and we should have won, knowing our luck this will come back to haunt us and we will miss finals by two points.
Ugly game to watch too, really average skills from both teams and I cant see what the fuss about Richmond is, how people are picking them for top 4 is bewildering....
Remember we have North in Rd 4. We’ll have 1.5 to 3.5 wins by Rd 4. We’ll be competitive after the 1st month of footy no matter what happens with Sam Walsh to return at that stage.
I think tonight showed we've come a long way defending since R23.
Obviously not quite there yet, but we stood up under a $h!tload of pressure at the end to almost hold on to 4 points.
That was a carbon copy of rd 23 except the Tigers were crapola. Stay away from the G next week.
We need to beat the premiers next week.
Some changes but not many - no injuries first round which is a pleasant surprise.
Can't accept that performance from Fisher and Martin I know I might sound dogmatic but desperately need ground ball players forward of center instead of depending on the mids to cover for their ineptness and thats what it looked like.
Motlop is a good one and give him a contract extention pronto
Positives.
- I thought TDK did better than I expected him to.
- Charlie and BigH got plenty of first hands to the footy, just couldn't hold many.
- Hollands is a keeper, not too bad for a first game in that environment.
- Cowans got plenty of footy, but needs a bit more composure and awareness, great experience for him.
Negatives.
- Skills across the board were pretty poor, I just don't understand how professionals get to this point after a whole pre-season and can't complete simple skills.
- Game plan exiting D50, what game plan!
- Midfield was soundly defeated.
- Lots of players looked rusty, or perhaps are carry injuries.
- Acres was a bit underwhelming, I expected more from him but I was more impressed by Hollands.
Weiters 100% game time, was pretty good, but our defence looked a bit disorganised compared to last season.
I think it's a dead-set certainty that we have two rucks next week.
Typically we struggle with small forwards so we actually did ok containing Martin and Bolton.
They fumbled and burnt a lot of opportunities though, out of character for them.
Just don't get how Dusty keeps getting away with fend-offs, he gets pinged once out of every 3 or 4.
Did we get any frees at all inside F50, Charlie was very stiff in my opinion and could have easily got frees for holding or high contact several times in the first 1/2?
We got pinged for blocking several times, Nthmond's small forwards jump around like lunatics metres off the ball staging high contact or in the back, blocking our defenders, but didn't get pinged once.
My voice is gone. Worst umpiring I have seen in a while.
Hopefully Geelong are still in party mode and under done, thought Nankervis beat TDK overall, our man was ok but the Richmond thug was important getting his big frame in traffic and making everything an ugly contest.
With just a bit more composure TDK would have taken the points, he got big possessions then did the hot potato a few times which brought his efforts undone.
We got comprehensively beaten on every stat lets take the two points and beat Geelong.
Several times Nthmond players made unrealistic attempts to mark, not even getting within 2 or 3 meters of the ball, but taking out our blokes to force a turnover, and I can't recall the umpires penalising one instance.
Except we won 3 qtrs and led the vast majority of the game. Felt like 2pts blown, which is an improvement on 4pts last year...lol.
We are dreaming if we expect to make the final 4 with a pretend full forward. Harry the heartbreaker has been playing with us since 2016 and tonight showed that he still does not know how to kick for goal.
Contrast his 2 set shots for goal in the third quarter with Lynch's. One a match killer, the latter a match winner.
Just on the exits from D50, being at the ground I really noted how effective Richmond were at blocking the avenues out of our defence. I'd have to watch it again but us streaming through the middle in particular looked like a rarity. The game was played mostly on the interchange bench side of the ground.
Whilst he he won't be happy with his game, its round 1, give them a chance.
Lynch was soundly beaten for 90% of the night but yes he did better with the opportunities presented. One frustrating thing for me with H is his immediate desire to wield around onto his left and play on (not talking about his set shot routine, just in general play up the ground). It might be on instruction to move the ball quickly but it seems a bit hit and miss. At the start of the game, we often moved it slowly and precisely with short kicks (like the Swans did in our praccy match). We mixed it up. I thought this strategy went almost out the window as the game wore on.
Because there is now four umpires I suspect the AFL has directed them to lay off the whistle so that it doesn't become a free kick fest.
But the same old problem remains, it's not the number of decisions, it's the variability in them that kills the game. For example, the holding on to Charlie all night, and yet in his contests I think he was pinged twice for holding the defender, yet as far as I know he did not receive a free for the same thing happening to him, you know it to be bad when BT starts highlighting a Carlton player as "A bit unlucky!"
The small Nthmond players continue to tunnel opponents, or throw their bodies at players well off the fall of the ball, yet almost none are penalised, is it a bizarre consequence of Dimma's continual complaining? You can see it in the Nthmond players attitude, they expect to beg and be rewarded, did you notice Dusty begging in puzzlement for being pinged for the fend off?
If TDK does what Nankervis does then TDK gets pinged for blocking, but Nankervis can charge across the centre line at the bounce and put out a straight arm or elbow free from repercussions.
Cotchin hardly had a play at the ball all night, he basically spent his time on the ground charging at opponents off the ball, yet he wasn't pinged for blocking once, at least twice Carlton players were pinged for blocking while shepherding a team-mate!
It's not the fact free are or are not awarded, it's the asymmetry.
Fans will point to Carlton getting more frees than Nthmond, but they must be reading stats and not watching the game, most of Carlton's frees last night came from successful tackles, pegging opponents with the footy, which is a huge plus for us.
I don't get why Cripps isn't protected to the same level as other players, he get's his head ripped off multiple times a match and is never given a free. It's like he is being penalised for being too strong to tackle, they try to tackle him, he shrugs it off and the tackle slips high, but he gets no reward. In the meantime, Dusty pokes another player in the throat and gets offended when once out of every 3 or 4 times he gets penalised!
There was a really bad one. Unrealistic attempt to take a mark, that a Richmond Defender jumped knee in back, didnt even make contact, and play on was the call.
Happened on the wing in front of me in the 3rd quarter.
Then you see Rioli get the softest holding free kick in the history of holding in the first quarter, and charlie has a bloke on his back, arms around his waist, and somehow cant buy a free.
Only block payed all night was against a Carlton player, who fair play to Moo mistimed his bump, but its a bump in play and not an illegal hold.
The Nthmond smalls and mediums did stuff like this all night penalty free, it's purely because whingers are winners, ask Dimma.
We are idiots to think AFL is a level playing field and that you can succeed by playing fair. FFS, Cook must know this better than just about anybody else at our club!