Post Game Analysis: AFL 2020 Rd 2: Carlton vs Melbourne

[ElwoodBlues1]

Rubbish.

Walsh was poor yesterday. Had multiple chances to deliver passes I50 at critical stages and butchered them all. He wasn't alone!

Ed was ok, Muphy bruise free....

Setters chose to leave GWS - should be cherry ripe this year but....needs to be played somewhere where he can find some form (2s ideally in a normal world).

Lang chose to walk - was one of the Cats best in at least 1 of the finals he played before leaving. But shouldn't be picked again unless we have major injuries...would prefer Owies getting a game.

Newnes - was offered a deal at Saints but clearly had had a falling out with the hierarchy there - was never going to be an A grader there or here. In any event, not the reason we lost yesterday but he now has the same malaise that most of our team has....Ikonitis?

SPS - not tough enough? BS. Throw him into the middle, leave him there....

We have the capacity (or did) to pay for another A grader. A Wines or Crouch or the ilk far more important to us than a Tom Papley type....

Need both Wines and B. Crouch IMO......
SPS has the talent but doesnt do enough and when the game is a bit scrappy vs more average players he seems to sit back a bit IMO, the better the opposition the better he plays  IMO. Would expect him to do much better vs Geelong this week.
We are a soft midfield IMO and need some bigger bodies like Wines to take the heat off Cripps

E. Curnow and Murphy are going to be calls we need to make at seasons end...dont think we can go with both...

Cripps, Walsh, Wines and B. Crouch...with M. Crouch a year later is more my type of midfield if you want to go places....

[IvanAwfulbigone]

Total crap. Clearly, no one at the club really has any idea ... about anything.

Remember how Hawthorn never lost close games? Because they practiced and practiced different scenarios and setups. Hodge & co would call the shots and everyone knew what they had to do. No one panicked (a la Walsh in the dying minutes - but I’m not blaming him, one of my favourites). Of course, it helps if, once you have the ball, you can hit a target. Their disposal was elite which was not accidental because Clarkson had a vision and made it ‘happen’. What’s our vision?
Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on Teague - set plays accommodating close finishes are the ‘icing on top’ once the basics have become ingrained - don’t want to overcoach the young boys. Main points being:
1) we still can’t get the basics right
2) we still lack on field leadership

[LP]

Need both Wines and B. Crouch IMO......
SPS has the talent but doesnt do enough and when the game is a bit scrappy vs more average players he seems to sit back a bit IMO, the better the opposition the better he plays  IMO. Would expect him to do much better vs Geelong this week.

He's not helped by the short quarters, he doesn't have the leg speed to play at the early high intensity. The coaches maybe missed a trick leaving him down back late in the game, he's one who could have found some space and finished in the last quarter, but what do you do when you've picked Lang?

Overall I wasn't happy, but it's not as bad as many are making out, the slow starts are a problem, but we had 3 or 4 posters and in the end probably should have won by 2 or 3 goals. Melbourne are over-rated, we aren't the team to judge them by, they barely tripped over the line due to our inability to finish!

[PaulP]

...
Overall I wasn't happy, but it's not as bad as many are making out, the slow starts are a problem, but we had 3 or 4 posters and in the end probably should have won by 2 or 3 goals. Melbourne are over-rated, we aren't the team to judge them by, they barely tripped over the line due to our inability to finish!

Agree.

[shawny]

Need both Wines and B. Crouch IMO......
SPS has the talent but doesnt do enough and when the game is a bit scrappy vs more average players he seems to sit back a bit IMO, the better the opposition the better he plays  IMO. Would expect him to do much better vs Geelong this week.
We are a soft midfield IMO and need some bigger bodies like Wines to take the heat off Cripps

E. Curnow and Murphy are going to be calls we need to make at seasons end...dont think we can go with both...

Cripps, Walsh, Wines and B. Crouch...with M. Crouch a year later is more my type of midfield if you want to go places....

Getting those sorts of experienced proven footballers had to be introduced from early on in the rebuild like loins did while you can still sell hope.

Good luck getting 2 or 3 to come in plus we will still probably want Papely when we finish bottom 2-3 again. Plus word is Cripps has put off contract extension talk. Can’t say I blame him.

List is severely unbalanced and trying to fix it in one draft smells of desperation. I’m afraid the horse has bolted.

[ElwoodBlues1]

He's not helped by the short quarters, he doesn't have the leg speed to play at the early high intensity. The coaches maybe missed a trick leaving him down back late in the game, he's one who could have found some space and finished in the last quarter, but what do you do when you've picked Lang?

Overall I wasn't happy, but it's not as bad as many are making out, the slow starts are a problem, but we had 3 or 4 posters and in the end probably should have won by 2 or 3 goals. Melbourne are over-rated, we aren't the team to judge them by, they barely tripped over the line due to our inability to finish!

Problem is Melbourne are crap.....we should have whipped their Ar$e by 5 goals minimum, we have a history of losing the close games to rubbish teams. Even if we won by 1 point it wouldnt have been great....Gold Coast flogged West Coast, thats the type of improvement we need to be seeing after 5 years...
The will to win, the love of the contest...its not there, we have no spirit, all those weeks off and then turn in a scoreless 1st quarter, disgraceful...we lose to Melbourne and then have to look at GC who are young and on paper poor beating WC, doesnt get more depressing IMHO.

[laj]

Unless Cripps has a big game we can’t win. Simple as that.

No star quality apart from Cripps in the midfield and we are usually playing catch up as we can’t compete early on when the heat is on.  It’s bloody hard to improve when we give away so much week in week out where the majority of games are won and lost.

Was a game we just had to win against a bottom team and we failed again.

Will start 0/3 after next week. Not exactly the start needed for a team supposed to leap up the ladder this year.

Can look for positives all you want but the reality is we will again be a bottom team and will struggle to lure the midfield support form Cripps which we now already 2-3 years overdue for and every year we are more desperate for it.

Said it time and time again - until it happens we will stay a bottom team. End of story.

We won a few without him in the second half of last year. If we had started with the commitment we should have we'd have played a cliff hanger against Richmond, might've lost but it would've been damn close, and pumped Melbourne. Then we wouldn't be talking as much about players. The issue was we had a highly winnable game, a "should win", and we pissed it down the drain through a lack of early commitment. In last year's late run we started like dogs against Brisbane, Dogs, Freo, Melbourne, Richmond and fell over 4 goals behind in the 2nd qtr against the Saints. We won 3 of those of those  and lost 2 others by less than a kick, not to mention giving up a 6 goal start against the premiers and getting pretty close late in the wet. Now this year we started even worse against Richmond and Melbourne. Sick of praising great fightbacks, even if we win, because we shouldn't be in that position in the first place.  Too often and not good enough.

[PaulP]

...................................Gold Coast flogged West Coast, thats the type of improvement we need to be seeing after 5 years...
..............................and then have to look at GC who are young and on paper poor beating WC, doesnt get more depressing IMHO.

No doubt that win was good, but I'd be waiting for a larger sample space before seeing whether they have really turned a corner or just had one of those flukey wins. Just my opinion.

[laj]

Problem is Melbourne are crap.....we should have whipped their Ar$e by 5 goals minimum, we have a history of losing the close games to rubbish teams. Even if we won by 1 point it wouldnt have been great....Gold Coast flogged West Coast, thats the type of improvement we need to be seeing after 5 years...
The will to win, the love of the contest...its not there, we have no spirit, all those weeks off and then turn in a scoreless 1st quarter, disgraceful...we lose to Melbourne and then have to look at GC who are young and on paper poor beating WC, doesnt get more depressing IMHO.

Yes, no good loving the contest once you're 7 goals down. Nice to see some spirit rises to the top eventually but it has to happen from the start. We've had commitment/attitude problems for years, essentially the whole century bar a few years, and that's the job Teague has, to eradicate those problems. Essentially an on-field culture. That is going to take a while to instill as it rarely happens overnight.

[laj]

No doubt that win was good, but I'd be waiting for a larger sample space before seeing whether they have really turned a corner or just had one of those flukey wins. Just my opinion.

Yes, GC tend to have a good win or two early in the year before falling off a cliff.

Good to see their young one's are committing to the club early.