Carlton Supporters Club

When a full squad is up and running everyone has a job.
Cripps has one, Gibbs and Murphy have one, Curnow usually takes a tagging role on one of the opposition midfielders.
A player like Cripps draws a lot of attention from the opposition.
If he goes down that attention switches to the next most dangerous tier....Gibbs and Murphy.
If Curnow goes down a dangerous opposition midfielder also enters the equation.
Gibbs and Murphy now not only have to do their own jobs but they need to pick up the slack left by the absences....and they have to do it under increased opposition scrutiny.

One soldier out, another in....but our problem is the replacements are still in cadets.

It's the lot of supporters of lower teams to criticise their best players and always has been.

These 3 players have to appear from somewhere.
We aren't drafting 3 champions any time soon or taking a Dusty type player unless we give something up.
We need to be realistic.
Murphy and Gibbs have had a good go.
Just not elite.
Time to move forward

We've had more 1st round picks than any club over the last 15 years, and if we're not No 1, we would be 2 or 3. We've had first dibs on plenty of talent recently. And yet here we are, 17th with a few games left.

You need to look further than first round picks, how many of our second, third and fourth rounders from 2008 to 2014 are still at the club?
Add to that first round bomb outs like Watson, Bootsma, Lucas, Yarran and Boekhorst and it isn't hard to see why we are where we are.

You need to look further than first round picks, how many of our second, third and fourth rounders from 2008 to 2014 are still at the club?
Add to that first round bomb outs like Watson, Bootsma, Lucas, Yarran and Boekhorst and it isn't hard to see why we are where we are.
Geelong's great sides had Enright, Hunt, Chapman, Johnson, Ling and Rooke all taken at pick 25 or lower.

Where we are now can be summarized in 2 words - bad decisions - across all fronts, coaching appointments and sackings, player recruiting and player movement in and out, the board, questionable development program. All based one bad decision after another.

We've had more 1st round picks than any club over the last 15 years, and if we're not No 1, we would be 2 or 3. We've had first dibs on plenty of talent recently. And yet here we are, 17th with a few games left.

High end talent is not the answer. Been there done that. I look at the Hawks, Cats and Swans, and I want what they have, i.e to be able to stay competitive, without bottoming out. Those clubs haven't had many 1st rounders over the last few years, and yet they seem to pluck decent, AFL ready players from somewhere. I watched the Hawks Swans game on the weekend, and marveled at the number of names I'd never heard before, marveled at how they looked big and able to deliver AFL quality footy.

Bottoming out stinks to high heaven, and once you've been down there too long, it's very hard to get back up. The Dees have taken an eternity to look decent. I fear we may end up following them, rather than the 3 I mentioned.

You also have to look at the effect of the players Gibbs and Murphy play on and what damage they do...often their opponents are allowed to run around rack up 30 possies themselves
No use Murphy and Gibbs getting 30 possies if Pendlebury, Treloar, Sidebottom as an example get the same for the opposition etc and by virtue of being better users of the ball impact the game more...
You often look at the stats and see Murphy, Gibbs with high numbers but then look at the opposing teams mids who have about 5 players with similar numbers....Scott Selwood had more ball than Gibbs yet people say Gibbs went well and gave him votes even though Scott Selwood was his direct opponent for most of the night..

Scott selwood is whom they got to scrag Gibbs whilst Gibbs spent most of his time trying to get to either Joel Selwood or danger when he went into the stoppages.   Scott was just interfering and wasn't Gibbs matchup opponent.

Either way our issues lie with the fact that two of our mids get good numbers and the rest are on L plates and only get it 5-15 times.  Our opposition regularly get players with 25+ and hitting the scoreboard.

Nailed it Thry - with one minor correction.

No worries, thanks DJC.

It's amazing what you notice at the ground when you stop following the play and start looking at the overall picture.

I noticed that Geelong did what the Western Bulldogs did to us a few weeks ago.

Whenever we were kicking in, they actually gave us the back pockets to kick into and had compacted the rest of their team from the HFF line to the Centre Square Circle, effectively leaving us only a long kick down the line on both wings, or if we were brave enough, the corridor.  We only got out when one of our players was brave enough to take the players on, and gain an extra 10-20 metres, before the ground opened up but it was under heavy pressure due to the Cats "flooding forward".

It feels a little as though we have been found out and I'm looking to our coaches to help our boys through it.