Rd 15: Post Game Passion: Carlton vs Adelaide

[mateinone]

There is a fairly significant difference Paul and that is that under Ratten the issue was that once the ball was in our defensive half we seemed vulnerable. Under Bolton we have had a team such as GWS bombarding us, but they have backed their structures and held strong.

Our teams under Park and the great West Coast teams under Mick were defensive greats. If you are a team that is very hard to score against it makes sense you need to score less to win. If our team does hone their defensive skills at this time that we are (at times) seemingly under some fairly relentless pressure then it should be that as the rest of the team continues to evolve and we take greater possession and greater control of the game that we should be scored against even less.

If doesn't always work and we will get some bad blowouts along the way Richmond and Port both scored over 130 points against us and that is ugly as hell, but then we have managed to restrict GWS and Adelaide to a combined total of 160 points and gone 1/2 in those games.

Perhaps take a look back to 2015 where we had 107 points against us as an average or even 2014. In those years we were actually trying to play a defensive game plan, but getting picked apart easily.

The difference with Bolts is that he has come in with a lot of young kids and he is teaching them defensive structures that are working. If we open the game up to please fans, then we essentially  need to get rid of the coach as we are saying this doesn't work and I can't see any metric which suggests Bolton isn't working. The whole philosophy is on pressure it is on putting the team ahead of personal glory and running free ahead of the ball.

Honestly everyone needs to sit tight. We have blooded so many young players in the last 2 years and are infinitely harder to play against than we were. With that being a stated aim... then surely it means the club is on the path it set out on.