Review Round 7, 2024 - GWS vs. Brisbane Lions

[dlanod]

dlanod virtually unsighted here this week. Might have jumped ship?

Thank you for your concern, but I've been staying about 15 minutes outside Mareeba with absolutely zero mobile reception for the last week and a half. Haven't seen a minute of our games or any AFL - even when we went to the pub for dinner, it was 90% NRL and 10% darts.

 

[McIvor]

Yes, it stood out like dogs testicles on the night, would not have taken much investigative journalism from Nathan Brown to find it unfortunately.

There’s a lack of care and respect with this team, including for each other; they’ve clearly put the cue in the rack otherwise no one puts up that crap if you’re 100% invested in thinking or wanting to win a flag.

Even more reason I suspect an exodus of players will occur at the end of this and the next season.

 

[Squizz89]

Thank you for your concern, but I've been staying about 15 minutes outside Mareeba with absolutely zero mobile reception for the last week and a half. Haven't seen a minute of our games or any AFL - even when we went to the pub for dinner, it was 90% NRL and 10% darts.

I wouldn’t waste your time watching us this week.

Your Giants played well though. Their game is probably worth a watch…

 

[dlanod]

I wouldn’t waste your time watching us this week.

Your Giants played well though. Their game is probably worth a watch…

Judging by the omission from your comment, I can only assume the Geelong game was a good one? I'll queue that up.

 

[Grasshopper17]

I flash back to Charlie deep 3 or so years ago and carving up. I guess that's 3 years ago an not relevant any more.

He carved up maybe a handful of games over say 2 or 3 seasons and I would say the vast majority of those were against non-top 8 opposition.

i.e. not sustainable in finals, as came to pass in those seasons.

 

[Grasshopper17]

I'm not sure where to go with all that Grasshopper but the one observation I have is that when we take risks and play quicker it comes off more often than not.

Yes, and the point about taking risks and playing quickly is that you don't necessarily have to know exactly what you're going to do when you decide to play on. Guys like Jiath for Hawthorn and Blakey for Sydney, I reckon a lot of the time they take off and they have literally no idea where or how it's going to end.

But the important thing is that their team mates know they are going to do that and can respond accordingly. So in a way, that's actually predictable. But it's still proactive. A guy like Wilmot is made for this sort of role, but I'd like to see more of us do it.

We had 73 score involvements on Thursday night. Across our 17 scoring shots (plus 2 rushed behinds) this implies we average 4-5 score involvements per score. Considering that some of those possession chains probably only involve 1-3 players, others might involve say 8-9 players.

That's still half the team who's NOT going to be involved in any particular scoring chain. Let THOSE GUYS worry about defending in the event of a turnover. The guy with the ball has to be able to TRUST that this will happen and be able to devote his focus 100% to attack. This is what all the good teams are doing now, and that is exactly why we drowned in the orange tsunami. When they got the ball, they went hell for leather forward and "to hell with defending".

This whole concept of "defending with the ball" is nonsense, it doesn't stand up in September, and if we are doing it (as I suspect we are), this has to change and quickly.

 

[Grasshopper17]

Swear we’ve been practicing with our goal posts a further meter apart

Would make sense given the regularity with which we've hit the post the last few of weeks.

At training it's hard to replicate the pressure of an actual match. BUT you can still increase difficulty of those shots. I know people think I'm crazy for suggesting this (probably warranted to be fair) but I still think we should be training with a narrower goal front.

And get people to stand the mark. If the defenders are all busy doing their drills or whatnot, get some of the VFL lads or Anthony Corrie or whoever else to do it. Just somebody to replicate an actual game.

Whilst I'm sure our guys do practice their set shot kicking at training, I'm also sure more can be done to replicate game-day pressure.

One more thing, and this probably sends me to the nuthouse... But rugby league and ESPECIALLY rugby union kickers are exceptionally accurate with their conversion and penalty kicks. The place kick has never been banned in Australian rules football, it just lost popularity in the 1930s.

We often see trainers dotted around the perimeter of the playing surface. Could one be stationed either side of the forward 50 and within the 30 second timeframe, rush out a kicking tee whenever a mark or free kick is awarded?

Obviously this would require a great deal of practice over a prolonged period of time so not something you could roll out in-season (unless, hypothetically, said team was already out of premiership contention ), but with a proper preseason doing it, why not?

 

[spotthedog1]

Every time I watch a presser at a Canberra game... gee the journos there are switched on! You could see Fages was ready to tee off when they started, but their questions were real and insightful... actually discussed our tactics, their tactics, differences and similarities... impressive.

 

[Kernel Kurtz]

I remember thinking this was horrible viewing live. It’s even worse on replay.

Joe’s Joe, we know that and love him for it but his “care free” ways look far worse when the team is losing.

Joe is joe
I can live with a key forward slash ruck man. Being crap at defending
Now
Watching clugga watch a player run off his immediate vicinity
That’s what hurts us.
I mean imagine you had a job
It was watch the perimeter at Bondi for sharks
You don’t see the fuss the lifeguards will protect the swimmers. It’s not like life threatening
No f. ….g commitment from what one of our most important leaders .
You could of stopped their progress but hey,sweet the defence will pick up the slack.
Case closed

 

[martinson]

Would make sense given the regularity with which we've hit the post the last few of weeks.

At training it's hard to replicate the pressure of an actual match. BUT you can still increase difficulty of those shots. I know people think I'm crazy for suggesting this (probably warranted to be fair) but I still think we should be training with a narrower goal front.

And get people to stand the mark. If the defenders are all busy doing their drills or whatnot, get some of the VFL lads or Anthony Corrie or whoever else to do it. Just somebody to replicate an actual game.

Whilst I'm sure our guys do practice their set shot kicking at training, I'm also sure more can be done to replicate game-day pressure.

One more thing, and this probably sends me to the nuthouse... But rugby league and ESPECIALLY rugby union kickers are exceptionally accurate with their conversion and penalty kicks. The place kick has never been banned in Australian rules football, it just lost popularity in the 1930s.

We often see trainers dotted around the perimeter of the playing surface. Could one be stationed either side of the forward 50 and within the 30 second timeframe, rush out a kicking tee whenever a mark or free kick is awarded?

Obviously this would require a great deal of practice over a prolonged period of time so not something you could roll out in-season (unless, hypothetically, said team was already out of premiership contention ), but with a proper preseason doing it, why not?

Yeah . Tony Ongarello was the last player at Fitzroy to use the place kick as I recall.

The AFL are just going to love that aren't they.

 

[martinson]

Joe is joe
I can live with a key forward slash ruck man. Being crap at defending
Now
Watching clugga watch a player run off his immediate vicinity
That’s what hurts us.
I mean imagine you had a job
It was watch the perimeter at Bondi for sharks
You don’t see the fuss the lifeguards will protect the swimmers. It’s not like life threatening
No f. ….g commitment from what one of our most important leaders .
You could of stopped their progress but hey,sweet the defence will pick up the slack.
Case closed

The last half was plain embarrassing and it got worse than that into the last quarter.

We've given up at various stages in 4 games this year. So it's not as if we were tired ,which we probably were , and it's a one off.

Lots to work on. The attitude has been concerning since the first game.

 

[Big Sauce 21]

No fatigue excuses next week. Massive break.

 

[McIvor]

If you’re sensitive to having your feelings hurt about how diabolical we were against GWS, best you avoid Talking Footy; again hard to argue with any of the footage and the why. Yet some of the footage of the Giants was stuff I’m not sure we even reached during 19-23.