Post Match v Cats...all comments here thanks!

[3rd degree]

A loss is always hard to take, but we went down swinging and showed a lot of jam tart , needed to not over possess so much, the hand ball in the corridor killed us. Elliot was great and H gave us run , god sack was tough all night , a brave effort by a very young back line tonight. Keep fighting lads, cruelled by the umps and injuries again.

[Brenny]

^^^

The big thing I take out of last night, well a few things, is:

1) Our best is still very good, up there with the best (watch Q2).
2) Our poor is still very poor and the gap between 1) & 2) is still too large.
3) We played in patches last night and we had good patches where we did get on top then poor patches where we allowed Geelong to break away.
4) Geelong were more consistent and the gap between their good and bad last night with much narrower than ours and in the end, that consistency got them the win.
5) If we're challenging for a spot in the 8 at the end of the year, we're doing ourselves no favors at the end of the season playing catch up footy.

I think we need to bridge the gap between our best and worst footy if we are to challenge and shake up the 8 this season.

How, I don't know, but I think our ball useage and ball handling skills need some serious attention.

The biggest thing I think is how we delivery to the forward line and our forwards (big, med and small) need to learn how to create space better and how to work together so we're:

1) Not constantly seeking out cloke even if he's 4 V 1
2) Able to better the delivery inside the forward 50 to give our other forwards a chance. Elliott did it the best last night and was rewarded with many goals.

[roar]

Just had a look at who people voted for and I am very surprised to see lots of people had Beams in their votes. I don't think he was terrible but he was soundly beaten Selwood, IMO.

[Dave The Man]

[Brenny]

^ At this rate we wont have a team to field on Friday!

[Pies4shaw]

[rocketronnie]

Good individual efforts by the players but never quite looking like we are playing as a team. There seemed to no discernible system in the forward line again. Geelong's discipline and adherence to systems eventually overwhelmed us.

Another orphan left at the door of the Spud....

[Dave The Man]

No Reid and Brown. Enough Said

[GreekLunatic]

you cant win a footy game playing 30 mins of good football

[melliot]

Our team defense looks better. There weren't easy goals kicked against us that I remember.

Our ball transition from defense looked ordinary and together with general skill errors was our main problem.

Considering we are missing most of our backs to the extent we are tthrowing Faz down there to fill the void.

We also had plenty go down throughout the game. Which made it hard to make any come back and run over the top.

hope we don't lose too many through the week. If we lose to many more we'll struggle even against the Tiges.

[RudeBoy]

The only reason we lost was because of Swan's poor showing...again.

If he'd played like we've come to expect from him these past 5 or 6 years, we'd have won convincingly.

If he's injured he should be rested. If he's not injured he should be dropped. It's that simple.

[neil]

Next week will show how we go against an average side

[didick]

Still think we're on the right track. It's going to be a year when we win a few, lose a few but I think the realistic of us know we're not contenders this year. The team is going to be unsettled for quite some time; we can't take a trick with injuries. But we'll be getting games into promising young fellas. I'm quite positive after how close we got last night. We never really looked like quite getting there but we kept at it. We'd have to be running around with experience in the range of GWS at the moment wouldn't we? At least in defence. Langdon, Frost and Keefe? Grundy in the ruck. Jeez. Important positions and what, 30 games or so between them? Chuck in Tooves and Faz just coming back after a season away, young about 4 games in two years. Aside from just raw age and inexperience there's no way the team can actually gel as a team yet with the youth and the interruptions.
We're not going to be contenders every year. Fact. But we're heading in the right direction. I'm looking forward to these young fellas having 20 to 30 games in them rather than 2 or 3.
Oh and I forgot the class of some of those who are to come back.
And finally, our list is in much better shape than the Blooze!!!!

[Brown26]

I watched some of the game again, and a couple of points I think deserve a bit of a mention, the number of players we had who went down during the game with minor bits and pieces meant we didn't finish as strongly as we would have, and the non-free against Dawson Simpson is actually the worst umpiring error since Wayne Harmes.... - and we would've been kicking into the forward 50 straight after Elliot had just kicked 2 great goals, with 3 minutes left, with all the momentum. But no, umpires don't have any impact on the game or momentum. Sigh.

- Ben

[John Wren]