AFLW North Melbourne Football Club AFLW - Season 2024

[King Corey]

Evening on a rainy Wednesday is such a dumb time for a game.

AFL is absolutely doing AFLW no favours as they try and grow this league.

Actions outrank the words eh?

They can spout all the supportive comments and feel good campaigns they like.

But the disdain shown towards the AFLW fixture each year reveals their true feelings.

That's before even thinking about the inequities which make the AFL fixture look like it was written up in Geneva.

 

[Colby Cheer Squad]

Evening on a rainy Wednesday is such a dumb time for a game.

AFL is absolutely doing AFLW no favours as they try and grow this league.

You do know that the weather forecast wasn't available when they created the fixture right?

 

[Only Forwards]

Tbh I'm amazed that Laura Kane, who understands W intimately, went for it.

I"m not she is just another mouthpiece for the greedy AFL overlords.

 

[The Nostradamus]

bit of rain atm predicted for sundays game also in Launceston

the footy and weather gods hate us

 

[Gumble Frankieton]

Tonight could be an interesting game to watch for any adjustments to the style of play. Going in with one less tall makes sense given the rain plus it allows us to rest a 35 yr old key forward. Resting Bruton also makes a lot of sense given the injury that she has just returned from.

As for the 'North don't play well in the wet' thing it seems to be a tag that has been hastily attached, which is fairly standard practice for the modern footy media. When we played Geelong one of the main things I noticed being there was the amount of pressure that Geelong applied. They did a great job of pressuring both the player with the ball as well as the likely next link in the chain. If anything I felt that we were fortunate to be 18 pts ahead at half time. But if you just looked at the scoreboard you might think we played well in the 1st half and then played badly in the 2nd when it was wet. Our skills were a bit off for most of the game, not just when it rained. But, we did persist with short passes and risky kicks into the corridor when we could of gone more direct using our tall targets and then tried to lock the ball in our forward line using O'Loughlin, Bruton, Wall and Eddey etc.

If it is wet tonight you think it would suit players like Wall, Martin, Eddie and O'Loughlin. I've been really impressed with O'Loughlin this year. Feels like she really took a step forward during last years finals series and has just continued on with that level of performance this season.

If anyone has seen Shierlaw attempt to kick the ball off the ground then we have possibly been robbed of some funny moments (think Bambi on the ice).

 

[Hearts to hearts]

Tonight could be an interesting game to watch for any adjustments to the style of play. Going in with one less tall makes sense given the rain plus it allows us to rest a 35 yr old key forward. Resting Bruton also makes a lot of sense given the injury that she has just returned from.
As for the 'North don't play well in the wet' thing it seems to be a tag that has been hastily attached, which is fairly standard practice for the modern footy media. When we played Geelong one of the main things I noticed being there was the amount of pressure that Geelong applied. They did a great job of pressuring both the player with the ball as well as the likely next link in the chain. If anything I felt that we were fortunate to be 18 pts ahead at half time. But if you just looked at the scoreboard you might think we played well in the 1st half and then played badly in the 2nd when it was wet. Our skills were a bit off for most of the game, not just when it rained. But, we did persist with short passes and risky kicks into the corridor when we could of gone more direct using our tall targets and then tried to lock the ball in our forward line using O'Loughlin, Bruton, Wall and Eddey etc.
If it is wet tonight you think it would suit players like Wall, Martin, Eddie and O'Loughlin. I've been really impressed with O'Loughlin this year. Feels like she really took a step forward during last years finals series and has just continued on with that level of performance this season.
If anyone has seen Shierlaw attempt to kick the ball off the ground then we have possibly been robbed of some funny moments (think Bambi on the ice).

Agree. Big surprise there was an overreaction last week - in the second half the conditions were so horrible it was very hard to score, which is why only one fluke goal was kicked in the whole half. Commentators made it sound like North were completely outplayed because it rained.

 

[Colby Cheer Squad]

Agree. Big surprise there was an overreaction last week - in the second half the conditions were so horrible it was very hard to score, which is why only one fluke goal was kicked in the whole half. Commentators made it sound like North were completely outplayed because it rained.

You're right and the other factor last week was that it rained throughout the first half but just not to the extreme conditions of the second half. In fact, the first half conditions on Friday were similar to the second half conditions against Geelong. There was a steady breeze favouring one end and there was light rain. If anyone wants to compare how well we responded to the Geelong game and what we learned from playing in those conditions, then just look at what we did in the first half on Friday. If anything, we could have been another 3 goals up at half time.

In the second half on Friday, another thing that wasn't really mentioned on the broadcast is that an addition to the torrential rain, the wind had swung around and was blowing across to Gordon St and it was very strong. I said to my daughter, there's a good chance that we won't see any more scores for the rest of the game. I was almost right. I don't think we played poorly after half time. There were maybe two or three decisions to handball that were ill-considered but otherwise, kicking long to the dead wing was the smart choice to ice the game. And as you say, with the Port Adelaide goal, they got a little bit lucky with a free kick in front of goal as a result of a body check in a marking contest that doesn't always get paid. We got ourselves into position to kick a couple of goals in the last qtr but just lacked a little polish.

To say that we have a problem with wet conditions is to ignore the learnings so far as well as further improvements and adjustments that we will no doubt see if the opportunity presents.

 

[Gumble Frankieton]

Agree. Big surprise there was an overreaction last week - in the second half the conditions were so horrible it was very hard to score, which is why only one fluke goal was kicked in the whole half. Commentators made it sound like North were completely outplayed because it rained.

Yep, and in between that the commentators also managed to build some gallows for Alice O’Loughlin.

 

[Only Forwards]

When we played Geelong one of the main things I noticed being there was the amount of pressure that Geelong applied.

The main thing I noticed was that we looked to play just as aggressively in the wet as we did when it was dry.

Rather than playing the territory game we continued to attack the corridor and were punished because we weren't as clean with the ball wet are we are dry.

I have little doubt had the game last Friday rained from the first quarter we still would have won. Without our lead I think the free that resulted in the Poorta dleie goal probably doesn't get paid.

​