Not a bad start at all.

This week the football returns to Ikon Park on a Saturday afternoon (1400 hours) for the big game against the Casey Scorpions (aka Melbourne 2nds).
Casey have had the wood on us in recent times, especially on their mud heap. Now we have a chance to show how to the play at a ground with real stands (no matter how dilapidated).

The line up for this week's game is very much up in the air at the moment. Carlton will definitely have to replace Gibbs and Armfield due to their injuries. Jamison is also uncertain after his concussion last week. So, whether he plays or not, another tall defender will certainly get on the plane and fly to Perth with the seniors.
Will we retain Fields in the seniors? Tutt? I am not certain that either will play in Perth, so there looks like there will be a significant number of changes.

I've been having think lately about how our early season games have impacted us over the past couple of years.
Generally Richmond is a given for round 1 (or 2 for 2014), but it's the flanking game that seems to impact us the most.

Port Adelaide:
PA finished 2013 in the 8, but were eliminated in the first week of the finals. In 2012 they were the laughing stock of the AFL.
We played them in round 1 2014 with high expectations of the win. We lose, we have a crappy year the rest is history.
PA Win and end up 5th for the season (including winning 9 of their 1st 10 games).

West Coast:
WCE finished 2014 just outside the 8 and 2013 was a fairly poor season finishing 13th.
Our rd 2 match this year was an expected win as they "didn't have a back line". We lost, we've had a crappy year, the rest will be history.
WCE win. They've now won 12 of 15 games and sit 2nd on the ladder.

So my question is, are losses to the early season "surprise packets", in games we expected to win, having an impact on the rest of our season?
Would we rather play teams from the top 4 the previous year to remove these expectations? We lose round 2 this year and then immediately after that match "we're re-building"! Would that have been mentioned had we have know what WCE were going to produce so far this year?
Let other teams work out who the surprise packets are and then we can play them in later rounds.
Thoughts?

Fremantle v Carlton
Round 16 - 17:40 AWST, Jul 18, 2015
Domain Stadium

Sheesh - where to begin. No Gibbs, no Army. Fyfe in. Playing on their dung heap. They will be looking to "make a statement" after being embarrassed by the Hawks.

This will be one to avoid.

Frockers by 70.

SBS say the girl is here / or was in Melbourne!

This topic has been moved to Committee Room.

[iurl]http://www.carltonsc.com/index.php?topic=2257.0[/iurl]

It is the morning after and we were ordinary. I wasn't starting off this thread last night after I drove back - I wasn't trusting the train after last week!
In some ways we were back to the Malthouse days, but....
Time to mark our guys on a night where we showed that we really lack skill. Here it is. Poor out your feelings. We'll see how many want to vote this time around.

Remember:
[1] At least 3 players need to get a mention.
[2] No more than 10 votes for any one player.
[3] Give a rating of team performance. It can be anywhere from A+ to F.
[4] Votes must add up to 15.

Oh well, our skills were deplorable but we still battled for four quarters and never gave up. Hard to win with passengers like Yarran and those umps cost us at least three goals.

Gibbs starting on the bench.

http://www.carltonfc.com.au/video/2015-0...ick-holman


Nick Holman

Classic
Q Tell us about Kyabram
A:Kyabram is a town there's a lot of locals..... )

NH:I do a fair bit of cooking.... probably once a month.