Post Match. Pies down to Eagles. All comments please.

[Jezza]

[Magpietothemax]

Interesting analysis Jezza. I will have to look closer at this. I really thought that the Eagles kept dominating us when the ball hit the ground. One has to acknowledge however that their ability to get numbers at every contest was outstanding, and really blocked our ball movement. Much of the poor decision making from our defensive 50 was caused by the Eagles' unremitting pressure on the ball carrier. Main issue i think is the midfield were not running back enough.

[E]

[didick]

Was like watching us before 2018 with us outnumbering them at contests yet they would come away with it and then find loose players.

[The Boy Who Cried Wolf]

[think positive]

[DT]

Glad to read some good thoughts now on what happened.

How can we improve?

We need Sier fit and firing - he is a big aggressive midfielder who can win centre clearances.

I think we need a fit Ben Reid to play as a third tall. Our forward line is just too height deficient for the Eagles. Reid would change the balance.

A new player or two - let’s hope Quaynor and Brown or Daicos step up this year as we need a couple of young blokes to freshen us up a bit.

Aside from Adams and De Goey, I did not see a lot of onfield leadership last night. Why is this? We don’t have a Dane Swan anymore who could change a game when the tide was turning against us. We need to develop this.

I agree that Treloar Pendlebury Sidebottom and Beams hardly fires a shot☹️. The coaches need to lay it on them to lift. They are not fighting back enough. Perhaps we could run Maynard through the middle too as he is aggressive.

They are my best guess now for what could happen.

Let’s hope we bounce back strongly next week.

[derkd]

Two major problems from last night.

1. After about halfway in the second term our midfield workrate fell away drastically. West Coast lifted. Our midfield did not work back hard enough how often did we see them go forward into an open paddock where Ryan or another small had so much space. Meanwhile our forward line was clogged.

2. Our forward entries fell to bits once they got the backline structure. All last week we were discussing the concern that if we just bomb it in they will just pick us off....what were we doing in the 3rd and 4th quarters??? Just bombing it into Cox. It was far too predictable.


We shall find out how good we are over the next two games. Lose those and I fear for all our "tallent" we may just be making up the numbers this year.

[warburton lad]

Our glass is 'half-full' at the moment; how I wish my health would allow me to get there to see our beloved Magpies train and play.

Ive jotted down some musings after watching the last quarter and a bit on replay this morning and having watched our first two games several times.

Varcoe (speed) Sier (grunt) and Hoskin-Elliott (class and capacity to finish) are required in the 22 when the latter two are fit.

Perhaps Appleby for Aish?

When Hoskin-Elliott gets back, time to rotate Stevo/Elliot/DeGoey & WHE out of the square; each man is potent when given the slightest opportunity one-out.

Sier is a critical component in the centre square set-up; he frees up other mids no end.

Varcoe down back releases Maynard into the midfield which is a risk worth taking- we gain an elite kicker in the back half, losing nothing in aggression, and allow Maynard the chance to further develop his all-round game. Maynard off a wing may allow Sidebottom (an instinctive goal-kicker) to ply his ware closer to goal.

A fit Reidy would certainly improve our stock of talks in the forward line, but I feel that is a forlorn hope these days. Goldsack would be a strong addition, but one could not play him and Mihocek in the same forward line at the expense of a quicker forward.

Our next-Gen Pies (C.Brown, T.Brown, Kelly, Bosenavulagi, Quaynor, Murphy, Lynch, Daicos, and perhaps the two Irish lads) will all be fine players, but offer no great depth in 2019.

As always, defeats make us supporters of this club glum and look at the glass as half-empty. Improved form, supported by a few wins, makes that glass seem half-full again.

Plaudits to the West Coast who bested us again on our own turf; its time for the Carringbush of old to rise to the challenge and go one better in 2019.

[Johnno75]

Especially in the 2nd qtr it was the quality of their Centre Clearances. There is a clearance and then there is a clearance that is delivered 30m out to an open forward line.

The disconnection between Grundy and our mids was completely off. Their midfield got first hands on ball out of centre (when damage was done in 2nd qtr) mostly from Grundy.

[LaurieHolden]

[burnsy17]

Absolutely right. No idea how Grundy and the mids can have such a disconnect considering the train together every day and you’d presume they’ve worked out a few strategies at the bounce!

Grundy pretty much played for west coast last night!

His tap work to the mids was shocking. The mids roving to his ruckwork was shocking. Who is our mid coach in 2019?

[swooper]

[Pies4shaw]

Our number one problem is that our midfield needs to be reconfigured. When your ruckman has 40 hitouts and 11 clearances and his opponent has 7 hitouts and 5 clearances (and not one after half time), you should have the ball going your way and be dominating. However, our next three best clearance players last night (Adams, Pendlebury and Sidebottom) had another 11 between them and then no-one else had much impact at the first contest.

Also, if you try to get past the total disposals figures and look at what use our mids are making of their touches, only Adams and Sidebottom had more than a dozen kicks. Meanwhile, Howe, Maynard, Mayne and Langdon had more kicks between them than Pendlebury, Treloar, Beams and Phillips did - we're not going to win too many games of football when that happens (because it means much of our kicking is happening too deep in defence). Putting aside the question whether it helps the team's cause for Adams to be doing so much of the kicking (rather than feeding it out to the better users), it doesn't look to me like the players are working well together or that our midfield, as a whole, is playing as the sum of its parts.

Also - and I said this last week during the second quarter of the Richmond game, some of the mids' decision-making is bordering upon the childish. They keep getting caught on the spread because too many of them run at the opposition player with the ball - in that situation, it just takes one tiny half-handball or knock/fumble the other way from the guy they have all run down and suddenly Brodie is left trying to chase 3 opposition midfielders. That, generally speaking, ends badly. I don't know whether we are doing this because, as a group, our mids don't have confidence that one chaser/tackler will be able to do the job or whether, as yet, our mids haven't really worked out how to play together.

Finally on our midfield - and I say this advisedly - Beams is getting too much of the outside ball. He is as slow as a coach (well, probably slower than our coach - but you know what I mean) and is, too often, forced to kick down the line to a contest. It is the wrong mix for us for him to be getting 2.5 or 3 times as much outside ball as inside ball. If you look at his stats last year, he got 16 of his 18 Brownlow votes in games where he had at least 14 contested possessions (his other 2 votes came in a 10-goal thrashing of Hawthorn when, it's fair to say, he probably wasn't needed on the inside too much). Last night, he had 8 contested possessions and 19 uncontested - in round 23 last year, he had 17 contested and 16 uncontested against the same team - even with that more inside game, he managed 2 goals and got a Brownlow vote. The problem for us is that when he's getting the uncontested ball on the outside, Treloar (who can run out of sight on a dark night), Pendlebury and Sidebottom (both of whom are much better users of the ball outside goal-kicking distance than Beams) are not.

Hopefully, the midfield coach can sort out these balance issues because, if they aren't fixed, I doubt that we can be more than a mid-tier team.

I'm not really a fan of Wills and Sier still looks a fair way off playing AFL but I wonder whether at least the tackling problem in the centre might be reduced if one or other of those players could play as a defensive, tackling workhorse mid. I'm not especially confident in wondering that but I do think that something needs to change promptly or we are going to belt the poor teams (because, whatever the structural problems in our midfield, our midfielders are collectively, by and large, better than most of our opponents') and struggle against the good ones.

[Mr Miyagi]

One moment stood out We had three players to one (Yeo) contesting the ball on the wing. Our players stood there, allowed Yeo to pick the ball up and kick forward. They were holding back as if scared of giving away a free kick for holding the man. Get the f******* ball ffs!!! There were three of you to one!!!