AFL Rd 4 2023 Post Game Prognostications Carlton vs North Melbourne

[ElwoodBlues1]

I found that game very annoying & irritating.

We we were behind at the first two changes even though they were fielding a seriously undersized defence.

Furthermore, when we booted 10 in a row to get out to a handy 40-point lead, instead of powering on further to a 10-goal percentage booster, we rested on our laurels and allowed them to reduce that to the final margin .

McKay should have kicked 10 on his own, he had everything in his favour to do so ...... and as for that OOTF from the goal-line ........ FMD !!

Our players are not desperate enough, our players prefer to let a team-mate pick-up the slack plus we have some serious brainfades & yips when kicking for goal. I'm also frustrated at the skill level when it comes to player disposal, we make it near impossible for ourselves at times.

Granted, North are a better team this year under Clarkson but they are not a big player in the scheme of things. They were ripe for the picking but we either didn't want to do it or didn't have the ability to which is IMO, unacceptable.

The draw against Richmond was good, the win over the Cats was 'okay' (don't forget, they haven't won a game yet and got rolled by the Suns) & the win over the Giants was nothing special either.

It's great that we are sitting on top of the ladder for the moment but we need a collective improvement if we are going to challenge for a flag.

Serve up that crape next week in Adelaide and they will make us pay for it.

Richmond are still an unknown quantity and hard to measure imho, I dont rate them as yet and it will be interesting to see how they go vs another midpack 50/50 team in the Bulldogs who are also hard to fathom.
The North game wasnt a great spectator watch imo and was full or errors but you often get dragged down into the gutter with these crape teams playing their type of football which doesnt suit our skillset.
The good thing was we won comfortably enough and that was an improvement on last season where we lost these types of games.
The Crows will be the same type of game and another test in our ability to get the game on our terms for long enough for our greater talent to take over and win us the game.
The brand of footy we are playing isnt great and we have been lucky with umpiring(GWS) and injuries to other teams ie Nth in key areas that helped us but this is the best start to our season since 1995 and we know what happened that year so I'm going to expect the brand of play to improve and our wins to improve by greater margins as we get our best team on the park.