Autopsy Round 10, 2024: St.Kilda v Fremantle

[my name was taken]

We need an assistance package from afl house.
It’s gone on for too long now.

Quick response from the afl

 

[Armitage2Riewoldt]

That was Ross the boss fault yeh? Because of his gameplan

I found it to be more a combination of a poor kick from Bonner, a poor marking attempt from hill, and 30+ years of pent up misery to be honest.

 

[Hayes4PM]

He basically said he doesn't have the cattle.

Between the lines yeah. Also thought it was interesting right at the end that he said Pou was happy to stay in the 2's but they wanted him in the team to play midfield time. Shit decision, we cannot afford to carry Pou in the middle right now without Crouch. Our midfield is already our weakest point, adding Pou who is still learning to that is just shite. He's shown an aerial presence and forward craft somewhat, but as a mid he is still very, very raw.

Bank a top 6 pick, trade or draft a mid and see if we can't poach a mid FA as well. It's Steele and then a big drop off at the minute.

 

[Chuckie357]

I watched the replay - Bonner’s kick did Hill no favours

He should’ve marked it. He is soft as butter and this pathetic club is too pathetic to drop him because they paid so much for him and don’t want to look stupid like north did with polec snd pittard

 

[PandaG]

The players that Richardson had Lyon would be getting flogged by more every week with his game play - if you call it a game plan

Ummm no

 

[MrFoster]

Between the lines yeah. Also thought it was interesting right at the end that he said Pou was happy to stay in the 2's but they wanted him in the team to play midfield time. s**t decision, we cannot afford to carry Pou in the middle right now without Crouch. Our midfield is already our weakest point, adding Pou who is still learning to that is just shite. He's shown an aerial presence and forward craft somewhat, but as a mid he is still very, very raw.

Bank a top 6 pick, trade or draft a mid and see if we can't poach a mid FA as well. It's Steele and then a big drop off at the minute.

Even last year with Steele and Crouch both playing, it was left to too few.. now with only Steele, it’s just not fair how much of mess our midfield is..

I get it people wants to play an attractive brand of football, but if we can’t win the ball Cleanly consistently.. we’re always against it.. so we play defensive to over compensate for a non existent midfield

 

[CursingFijian]

Love our Rowan, but his game contrasted so much with Jackson’s. I feel like we’ve allowed him to develop some bad habits.

Windy is going to learn similarly bad habits if we don’t get him to be more proactive when he wins the ball.

That last Centre Bounce though, win the contest, handball to a centre who hits a back man on the burst (Naz) it’s a radically different look from the old swivel kick.

I honestly can’t see why we are persisting with Jones. Offers nothing in the modern game. I honestly see more in Phillipou and Collard.

We would be better off with Seb ahead of him, but I’d rather Hugo continues to get opportunities.

Max was much better today. Is that because Caminiti is there?

I guess this is what non linear development feels like to supporters. If you go to the Cats thread by the way they are lamenting their midfield the same way we do.

Go Saints.

 

[StCicatriz]

Even last year with Steele and Crouch both playing, it was left to too few.. now with only Steele, it’s just not fair how much of mess our midfield is..

I get it people wants to play an attractive brand of football, but if we can’t win the ball Cleanly consistently.. we’re always against it.. so we play defensive to over compensate for a non existent midfield

and Steele is hardly an attacking mid. He's a defensive one. There's no pointy edge to this midfield. There's no real hurt or offence to it.

 

[Simon Templar]

When we had the ball coming out from defence, we avoided the the centre square like it was a huge open cut mine pit. We zig zagged deep in defense then predictably went down the line & turned it over on the wings. We rarely play on, we are always giving our opposition time to get back in defence... This has been our basic play for most of the season apart from our first couple games this season, when it was the exact opposite.

Clearly most of of the team isn't playing to the best of their abilities & a number are in desperate need for more game time. I really don't think we a far off being a reasonable team but the game plan is up to sh*t Same old Ross Lyon style.

 

[projectv]

Even last year with Steele and Crouch both playing, it was left to too few.. now with only Steele, it’s just not fair how much of mess our midfield is..

I get it people wants to play an attractive brand of football, but if we can’t win the ball Cleanly consistently.. we’re always against it.. so we play defensive to over compensate for a non existent midfield

I'd be fine with accepting our midfield sucks if I could see a way forward with our kids filling out the roles we are lacking.

Windy will be that midfielder we need, but he needs time.

Owens is too good at being a forward to get consistent minutes in the midfield.

Pou is clearly struggling.

It's concerning. The worse this run of form gets the more likely we will be to gamble a first rounder on a hail mary trade. But is one gun mid going to be enough? I doubt it.

 

[Premium]

All is not lost , if we can get to break even in the midfield - if it is possible when we get Crouch , Steele , Windhager , Dow and Clark together we may be able to put together some good performances.
We need to for the development of the kids.
At least Lyon attempted something tonight , he gave the kids a crack - it might not of worked but at least he tried.
We could well get Crouch , Higgins and Clark back in the next couple weeks and hopefully this will get a bit of flow back into the game.

 

[Saintscomemarchingin]

Even last year with Steele and Crouch both playing, it was left to too few.. now with only Steele, it’s just not fair how much of mess our midfield is..

I get it people wants to play an attractive brand of football, but if we can’t win the ball Cleanly consistently.. we’re always against it.. so we play defensive to over compensate for a non existent midfield

Yeah, Steele the only one doing the tackling & Ro the clearances.Clark & Crouch back, may help?

 

[luca77]

For the 50th time.

Ross' gameplan doesn't instruct the players to:

• miss 2m handballs
• kick it out on the full going foward when Max is out by 15m on his opponent
• Find the 1/100 way to mess up an obvious counter attack
• drop an uncontested mark off a kick-in in th back pocket.

We have a TALENT and EXECUTION problem

The whole footy world knows where our list is at.
Doesn't stop people from double-dipping, criticising the list and the next minute blaming the coach.

The lack of continuity culminating in 6 changes giving opportunities to players who haven't really done their time and produced in the VFL is a reflection of where we're at. The coaches are sticking fingers in to stop the leaks but there are too many leaks and not enough fingers.

I unfortunately watched the 2nd half first tonight and it was like watching the 1s versus the 2s forgetting Freo's inaccuracy. We just don't have players capable of handling pressure, running with the ball and delivering with awareness and composure.

We're not a player short in the middle we're up against teams in this comp with 3 to 4 mids better (in damage at least) than our best mid (Dees, Port, Giants, Blues etc.)

There are really only 2 ways forward from here. We get lucky with a good mid in the next draft and pick up a free agent better than any of our current mids. Or next year is basically a repeat of this year and we play the patient game, trying to draft 3-5 good mids (with a couple of stars in there) in the next 3 years and hope they all improve quickly enough to team well with Max and our current young brigade. We're going to need Keeler and Arie to come through while we focus on mids (and rucks as Heath is looking more unlikely than likely).

Anyway, forgetting draft picks. We need some wins to get some confidence back into our kids. Their progress means everything.

 

[MUFASA12]

Feels

 

[projectv]

Yeah, Steele the only one doing the tackling & Ro the clearances.

The two of them combined for 17 out of 24 of our clearances for the game. They can't carry the team themselves.

 

[Hayes4PM]

Even last year with Steele and Crouch both playing, it was left to too few.. now with only Steele, it’s just not fair how much of mess our midfield is..

I get it people wants to play an attractive brand of football, but if we can’t win the ball Cleanly consistently.. we’re always against it.. so we play defensive to over compensate for a non existent midfield

Yep. Billings and Gresh were not real mids, Gresh was a forward who could rotate through the middle a bit but is limited by his kicking, Billings a winger/high half forward/half back at different stages of his career. We tried both too much through the middle when we should have just looked for cattle. It's the same sort of thing as playing Sinclair in the middle at the minute, he is an AA halfback who can go through the middle a bit but honestly is being pushed up due to lack of personnel. I'm confident Windhager will come on in the next 12 months, but that still leaves us at least 1 quality mid short.

 

[PandaG]

Why havnt we pushed harder for compo picks..? North played in
final 2012
Prelim 2014
Prelim 2015
Final 2016

Have won 10 premierships and 2 in my lifetime! Why the Fu-k are they getting compo picks and the saints arnt..??

 

[Chuckie357]

I actually wouldn't be completely surprised if RTB quit in the next month or two. If he can't get through to the players then he might think the game's not worth the candle.

You’re joking right? He will suck the club dry and take everything he can get while leaving a tornado of damage in his wake, he doesn’t care about anyone but himself, he’s done it before - already started by bringing in his mates. The only way he leaves early is if he is sacked for something like what happened at Fremantle

 

[projectv]

Why havnt we pushed harder for compo picks..? North played in
final 2012
Prelim 2014
Prelim 2015
Final 2016

Have won 10 premierships a d 2 in my lifetime! Why the Fu-k are they getting compo picks and the saints arnt..??

We played in a final last year.

In what world would we be entitled to comp picks?

 

[BigPowerForward]

Brad Crouch

5

Brad Crouch

Age

30

Ht

186cm

Wt

86kg

Pos.

Mid

Career

Season

Last 5

D

26.1

5star

K

12.1

4star

HB

14.0

5star

M

2.7

3star

T

5.5

5star

CL

5.0

5star

D

20.3

5star

K

11.1

4star

HB

9.1

5star

M

1.5

2star

T

3.9

5star

CL

4.6

5star

D

21.6

5star

K

10.0

4star

HB

11.6

5star

M

3.4

4star

T

4.2

5star

CL

2.6

5star

named for Sandy tomorrow. IMO he's been a huge loss this year. Hope he has blinder because the sooner he is back in the team, the better for us. He definitely will make us more competitive and hopefully get the ship pointing in the right direction again.

 

[Plugger35]

I'm starting to think we should've brought back GT to coach us rather than RTB or even Stan Alves or Ken Sheldon.

We played much better footy under all of them and we sacked them. it might be time to give them a second chance.

Tim Watson and Malcolm Blight can GAGF though, they don't deserve a second chance.

 

[moirae42]

The whole footy world knows where our list is at.
Doesn't stop people from double-dipping, criticising the list and the next minute blaming the coach.

The lack of continuity culminating in 6 changes giving opportunities to players who haven't really done their time and produced in the VFL is a reflection of where we're at. The coaches are sticking fingers in to stop the leaks but there are too many leaks and not enough fingers.

I unfortunately watched the 2nd half first tonight and it was like watching the 1s versus the 2s forgetting Freo's inaccuracy. We just don't have players capable of handling pressure, running with the ball and delivering with awareness and composure.

We're not a player short in the middle we're up against teams in this comp with 3 to 4 mids better (in damage at least) than our best mid (Dees, Port, Giants, Blues etc.)

There are really only 2 ways forward from here. We get lucky with a good mid in the next draft and pick up a free agent better than any of our current mids. Or next year is basically a repeat of this year and we play the patient game, trying to draft 3-5 good mids (with a couple of stars in there) in the next 3 years and hope they all improve quickly enough to team well with Max and our current young brigade. We're going to need Keeler and Arie to come through while we focus on mids (and rucks as Heath is looking more unlikely than likely).

Anyway, forgetting draft picks. We need some wins to get some confidence back into our kids. Their progress means everything.

Yeah pretty much the whole top eight right now, and maybe three more sides have three or four mids that are better than ours. Full stop.
When you throw some seriously poor form into the mix we are just flat out bottom four. No back six in the comp can hold off that many inside fifties coming in that quick.

Such a disappointing year.

 

[MrFoster]

and Steele is hardly an attacking mid. He's a defensive one. There's no pointy edge to this midfield. There's no real hurt or offence to it.

True. Steele is a re-active/defensive mid.. he can rack up big tackle numbers because he doesn’t win the ball first..

Our real problem is basically we don’t have a midfield of 4-5 quality mids.. we have no chance playing 1 quality mid(Steele) against 4-5 most sides have…

All of our defensive issues / forward entries issues can be solved by fixing the midfield problem, even if we just break even..

So I’d rather play the kids, draft / trade for 3-4 high potential mids then go again next year.. beats finishing 9/10th and be in no man’s land again..

 

[PandaG]

We played in a final last year.

In what world would we be entitled to comp picks?

Good coaching got us there not talent.
we have been shit for 14 years and arguably most of the 150 years in the comp.

 

[projectv]

Good coaching got us there not talent.
we have been s**t for 14 years and arguably most of the 150 years in the comp.

Yes I understand that, but if West Coast can finish bottom 2 for 3-4 years and get no assistance, then why would we.