My interpretation of the comentary and my own not-so-well-informed observations (of what I had the strength to actually watch) bring me to the conclusion that, whilst we lack forward 50 pressure and options atm and far too few precision entries, this reefs back to our poor midfield performance. This also results in excess pressure on the defence.
Our midfield is nowhere near good enough to push forward quickly due to poor skills that lead to punishing turnovers. We can win the ball alright (in large measure down to Cripps) but its what happens (or doesn't happen!) after that. This cripples us and constrains our ability to mount effective attacks on goal especially our poor F50 pressure because we have to stay further back in an attempt to cover the inevitable errors. Too many imes our F50 entries were just gifting the ball back to the Crows. To make it worse we could not cover the Adelaide spread and we did not tackle anywhere near effectively enough
There are probably plenty of other areas of problems but imo that is the major one. We had Lang, Mullet, Murphy, Kerridge, O'Brian, Wright and Ed Curnow (and some would argue others too) all pretty much ineffective last night - we were not surprisingly slaughtered. We just didn't come close to a competitive AFL grade collective midfield . Result - defence under seige again and tall forwards left just looking on for far too much of the time.
Our midfield is nowhere near good enough to push forward quickly due to poor skills that lead to punishing turnovers. We can win the ball alright (in large measure down to Cripps) but its what happens (or doesn't happen!) after that. This cripples us and constrains our ability to mount effective attacks on goal especially our poor F50 pressure because we have to stay further back in an attempt to cover the inevitable errors. Too many imes our F50 entries were just gifting the ball back to the Crows. To make it worse we could not cover the Adelaide spread and we did not tackle anywhere near effectively enough
There are probably plenty of other areas of problems but imo that is the major one. We had Lang, Mullet, Murphy, Kerridge, O'Brian, Wright and Ed Curnow (and some would argue others too) all pretty much ineffective last night - we were not surprisingly slaughtered. We just didn't come close to a competitive AFL grade collective midfield . Result - defence under seige again and tall forwards left just looking on for far too much of the time.
Reality always wins in the end.