AFL Rd 8 2024 Post Game Prognostications Carlton vs Collingwood

[Baggers]

Fans want to whack Williams, but what he did players do all the time and do not get pinged. The willingness of fans to throw rocks at Williams goes back to when he signed on, fans bitched and moaned about the dollars, but that is not Williams fault, much like it wasn't the fault of Martin or McGovern before him. But the dollars put him in the sh1thouse with many fans forever more, with the dollars promoting some weird sort of tall poppy syndrome!

I don't think we're throwing rocks at Williams, Spotted One. I think we're throwing rocks at our coaching. Williams is a creative player by nature so giving him a lockdown role is a throw back to our 'bad old days'... square pegs in round holes. He was set up for failure. To his credit he showed character with his determination to make the best of a bad situation and gave his all. But the damage was done; the horse had bolted.

As LAJ noted, I believe very accurately, our losses this year have been of our own making. Not umpires - though in that Pussycats game there were some howlers.

I have no doubts we're a very good bottom eight side, just a whisker from top four, a far cry from years gone by. Against very good top eight sides we either win narrowly or lose narrowly. No more blowouts.

But with such improvement comes much increased attention and expectation. Opposition sides now put a great deal of preparation into stopping us, seemingly successfully thus far. So our coaching needs to be better... obviously. (For the record I'm not in the 'sack the coach' group, or the 'Voss can't coach,' clan... nuh. Nothing could be further from my mind, and I believe nothing could be further from the truth. He's our man and I hope he's a ten year (+) senior coach at the good ship PP, but he's still learning and growing and making mistakes).

So we find ourselves putting all our faith in the return of Martin & Gov this week. Mm. The upside of a Martin return is Fantasia being sent back to the Magoos to work hard on getting his mojo back. No matter how you slice it, OF has been a liability. And small Durds would also benefit from Magoo time... but give him a midfield role, teach him to hunt the aggot, back himself, rack up possessions.

And our midfield coach needs to be smarter re how to combat opposition sides blocking & teaming against Crippa and Walshy. Hoping the umpires will help us is a folly, borderline illegal tactics are a reality. Develop a strategy, give the players tools to combat this. You can bet that the Go Dees will pour over the Rottingwood game and to a degree emulate strategies to blunt our blokes a la what was done on Friday night.