Post match. Pies down to Weagles. All comments please.

[RudeBoy]

Is it just me or is anyone else disappointed with Greenwood?

At least Crisp put in a good one today.

[jackcass]

Unfortunately we dropped away again late and the margin doesn't reflect the amount of good work we put in for half the game. That's one of the challenges under Bucks, when we get down we give up goals very quickly and that needs to change.

Not intending to over simply things, but I agree. If we can get some strategies going to stop the run-ons that other teams can get against us, we'll be highly competitive.
It wasn't all negative today.

The result looks a lot worse than it was. The fact is the Eagles are a very destructive team and have belted teams that aren't Sydney or Hawthorn. Especially at home they were always going to be too good for us. We showed we could match it with them when we were going, unfortunately that late run makes it looks as if we weren't competitive. There are definitely positives to take out of the game but also plenty to work on.

Agree, wasn't thinking we'd win and that there was always the potential for it to get ugly. One comedy of errors completely changed the complexion of the game after we'd busted our arses to get back into it.

[inxs88]

Well it is all too depressing.
If you can't run and carry.
If you can't hit a target most times.
If you keep stopping and propping.
If you keep going backwards.
If you keep recruiting duds from other clubs.
If you keep a zone that gets sliced and diced.
If you keep letting the Opposition go coast to coast.
Then you are going to lose most times.

Think it succincts things beautifully!!

[Pies4shaw]

Is it just me or is anyone else disappointed with Greenwood?

At least Crisp put in a good one today.

Greenwood was very good last week but he's no Luke Ball.

[jackcass]

There's no alternative. You have to play zone defense, everyone does players are no longer in fixed positions so man on man is really not possible. We need to get better at it and you don't do that by not playing it.

I do agree with this theoretically, and my idea of wanting to play man-on-man is most likely a fantasy at best, but our inability to execute it properly is very frustrating.

Is it a coaching problem or a personnel problem?

Team defense is something that gets better as players play more together. I think it's as simple as that. The other thing is that this is what losing looks like now. If your losing a contest the opposition will get easy goals with players in space. It has happened to the Hawks plenty this year as well. That's just how the game has evolved. We have the personnel available to play better defense and I very much doubt it's a problem of coaching, all coaches know how the zone defense should work, it's pretty standard, it's just that bringing everything together is not easy and right now we're just not there as a team. We have shown improvement over the season and will continue to do so, though it looks like we lost another defender today with Langdon's injury.

Love to get a block of games with a NO CHANGE going in, particularly as a consequence of injuries.

[jackcass]

At the start of the last quarter Bux had Pendles on the bench.

Saw that!

FMD! Our captain, and best ball getter, sits on the pine when we need to get the momentum swinging our way. Just genius!

Actually, I thought we did have the momentum until the " slip" debacle.

Exactly. Think Pendles is playing sore and being managed accordingly. Grace intimated as much in his pre-game interview.

[daicos35]

Perfect seats to watch the 3rd quarter dominance close up. Signs of the future, reminders of the past. 1st and last qtrs woeful white noise. Six day break vs eight days a factor? Maybe.

Biggest lesson for a young team as it appeared to me. RUN! Play on at every opportunity. We look and play so much better when we take off and sprint. Magic happens. We explode into the forward line and look dangerous. With such a young team, this is our strength and our advantage. RUN! It's exciting for us all. Third quarter is the model. Smash carlton. Smash them.

Jeremy Howe-kick 5 goals

[Presti35]

Is it just me or is anyone else disappointed with Greenwood?

You think North are missing him?

He needs to put he head over the ball a bit more. And he needs to make sure his opponent isn't getting the easy tap out.

Not our worst, but I want to see more from him. Look at Priddis. He hasn't get a very good kick, but won the damn Brownlow as a super tough ball winner.

Get in there Greenwood.

[cityslick1]

After much excitement and anticipation after the pre season, it now feels like a perfect storm has hit this team and the club.

Many of Our supposed core senior players - Brown, Cloke, Goldy, White, Toovey, Greenwood have gone backwards, whilst senior players at hawthorn, Bulldogs and north Melbourne are thriving.

Our coaching panel is not mature or progressive enough. Harvey looks to be there on reputation as a player, and fails to impress, with cliches and generic comments and thought any time he opens his mouth. Bucks is still learning the caper and would make a v good 2IC. Rocca is our ruck coach, and jared rivers is our development coach, with zero experience and qualifications.

Our leadership team is poor, with Brown and Macaffer lucky to get a game at all, and riding high on their 'good bloke' reps. A lot of our recent draft picks have shown promise and patches of ability, but have been overawed in the contests, and just aren't showing high level composure or skills.

Skill levels across the board are poor, and nothing seems to be being done about it. Bucks has to be big on this, as you would expect from possibly the best kick to ever play the game... so does he just expect players to develop themselves, have we drafted poorly over many years, or are they just not up to it and maybe never will be...?

Rucks are learning but get soundly beaten in every game. Grundy gives away frees every week and Witts is slow, can't jump, and is a v poor decision maker. Cox looks to be our best all round player in this position, and the guy has been playing for 2 years!

Throw in the drugs saga, recent draft picks leaving or not progressing, and the injuries.... oh the injuries... the longest list in the league again? Dumb luck, bad training methods, poor recruitment of troubled but supposed 'bargain players with issues'... Or inferior players struggling at the elite level?

All in all... it's not good, and will take a lot of things to turn around... or personnel to be replaced, before our fortunes change.

[Mugwump]

Watched the replay, and the comments above probably summarise it. We have a way to go, but we can threaten. The way we fell away after the "ice follies" goal at the start of the last quarter says to me that we are too influenced by emotional reactions (hope, optimism, belief), and this is probably representative of a young side.

I presume it'll simply take time and shared experience in a relatively settled side for us to improve, but I think it'll come.

In hindsight, any team that loses Swan, Elliott and Cloke (for different reasons) year-on-year is going to find it hard to move forward immediately. Amid all of that, we are rarely playing anywhere near full-strength, with Adams, Sidebottom, Varcoe and Williams all missing at various times these past few weeks.

The slow starts are a serious malady at the moment, and it seems that our centreline struggles to get going quickly. Maybe nerves, who knows ?

I thought there were several occasions when our decision-making was poor at critical moments. Grundy and De Goey both missed simple pass-offs late in the second quarter and early in the third that would probably have resulted in goals. Both are young, and both will get better. De Goey has been a slight disappointment this year against high expectations, and I suspect he is having second year blues.

On the positive side, Cox had his second good game, and as he gets more and more comfortable I think he can become a possible match-winner. For a man of his size he is mobile and the brain impulses do not seem to take too long to travel to the arms and legs : he's got football smarts. Moore, too, will continue to improve but he's a work in progress. Given how young he is , it is remarkable that he is already capable of causing opposition concern.

Finally, it was great to see Crisp starting to get back to his best. I wonder where that form was a few weeks ago. He needed to be, as Sidebottom was unusually ineffective, I thought.

There is much to like in this young side, and I think they will gell as they play together more - but like all inexperienced sides, they badly need to iron out the slow starts and maintain their intensity as fatigue settles over the game.

[Pies4shaw]

That's where we are at, we accept the Josh Smiths of this world, nice kid, has a dip, but guess what? Can't kick! Another one...the cycle continues. And why does everyone we bring in from another club fall into the land of the bland? Greenwood? 2nd in the Kangaroos B&F? Now a plodding tagger. Aish? Another plodder, can't hit a target. And what is the plan? "Draft picks - ? - 2018 Premiership!" - from where? We aren't within 5 years of GWS in development, St Kilda and Melbourne are coming...and we have no picks early next year. This is the group folks, we're stuck with...this.

The losses are just so inevitable, so predictable, you feel like doing something else with your time. There's no one to rally around, no one that stands out. Just a parade of plodders and good blokes.

I seriously don't know where this clubs next finals appearance is coming from, but it's not from this group and this strategy that's for sure.

Things can turn around quickly in terms of making finals but I don't particular buy into this illusion that we'll be contending for a flag in 2017-2018 all of a sudden. Sometimes we forget how hard they are to win and with GWS' era beginning and sides like the Bulldogs showing far more upside than we are currently it's hard to see how we'll compete with that right now.

The same noises were being made about 2016-2017 two or three years ago and here we are we haven't displayed substantial improvement despite incorporating a younger team with far more upside and potential.

Based on what I see right now we're a long way off winning a flag.

That's what the clubs mantra is, "2018 is our year", well, we keep pushing it back and pushing it back...there's no potential flag in this group. We can't kick. It's sometimes that simple. The talent isn't there after all this time, this whole rebuild, we still wheel out the Josh Smiths and the "great stories"...

Beating Carlton is a must, and enjoyable, but it doesn't solve anything. The club is stuck. I'd love to know how this coaching group, with this strategy and this list, is going to ever achieve anything. And I HOPE like hell in 2022 someone digs this post out and calls me an idiot, but today, I feel we are so far off elite, it's not even funny.

I think you're being too hard on Smith. In the pre-season he showed that he can be a beautiful user of the ball. Personally, I think he's been exposed to senior footy too soon (he's played about 4 inter-club games, including his two senior matches) and he's struggling to bridge the gap. Consequently, he's putting pressure on himself and playing without much poise.

That said, I certainly didn't think he'd be having 29 disposals in a game so early in his career - really, outside the usual midfield suspects and Tommy Langdon, we don't have players who get 25+ touches.

[Culprit]

Expected loss and I wake up still peeved about the first quarter. We won't be the first team to get pumped over there and we won't be the last. Forget injuries as every team has them. We are under performing per expectations. The expectations obviously far too high. A few youngsters getting exposed to big games will help going forward. In saying that, the disposals at times is frustrating. I see better disposal at local football games.

We played last years Grand Finalist and we are not up to that level. That's the reality and you can call me Captain Obvious.

[mudlark]

I can't help but think a split-second moment was pivotal early in this match.

2nd goal for the Eagles..Brown tracking the ball back towards the goal-square and let's it run on for a goal. He should have been diving at that ball in the same desperate way Heater and Maxy would have, taking any "lucky" bounces out of the equation. Piss-poor effort. Wanted to turn off the tv after that. Doesn't exactly inspire his teammates when they see a "leader" of the club doing that.

I also noted a few times, we had the opportunity to nail Eagles players accepting a handball, while our player was running at him with full momentum. Instead, our players put in a few short steps, to then lay a ho-hum self-preservation regulation tackle. Remember that tackle by Maxy against that Geelong player in the centre of the MCG when that Cats player was running full tilt and Maxy tackled him like he had hit a brick wall? That's what I"m talking about. Make a statement Pies. Play like you mean it.

Yes!!I remember thinking the same thing when Brown did that Bally.His 3rd qtr was a abad as I've seen from a defender and could well have cost us not being in front at 3/4 time.He is finished as far as I can see.If they dropped Cloke for being inept then he surely must be next.

[slangman]

Our senior core is hopeless and that is putting too much pressure on the younger players.

The new brigade are being thrown in the deep end with little help or guidance from the older players. De Goey should be a jet but is getting heaped with to much responsibility in his 2nd season. He really should have spent his first couple of seasons as a forward pocket the same way sidey and beams did when they arrived.

[mudlark]

Is it just me or is anyone else disappointed with Greenwood?

At least Crisp put in a good one today.

I was disappointed all right. His hand balling skills were"Perplexing"to say they least.When he handballs he appears to want to turn the other way from which we want the ball to go,then fire it off at their feet,their outstretched left hand at head height,or right hand or even sometimes at their opponents and usually hits them on the chest. Crisp seems to have lost last years form and after a sloppy start he seemed to turn a corner and did a whole lot better as the game went on.Although extremely disappointed,we miss,Adams,Varcoe,Swan,Elliot,Ramsey,Williams Witts and Cloke!!!For those who can count,that's only 4 less the Essendope have out of their run on team.And I am going to add that the "Play Broomhead every game" brigade lost all cred yesterday.This guy has had a few shots at the title and hit the canvas everytime.He seems to be not up to it and even though Smith turned nearly everything he touched,over,he GOT the ball which is what is required.