AFL 2024 Elimination Final 1 Post Game Prognostications Carlton vs Brisbane

[Thryleon]

Maybe our mistake wasn't so much not playing some of these youngsters last night....but not giving them more game time through the year.
The Hawthorn youngsters have been given lots of opportunities through the season...often against tougher opposition than  Lord (albeit only half a year) , Moir and Binns have experienced.

The Hawthorn mob are growing together and are ready to take on the challenge of finals.

Binns should really have a lot more than 3 games (one as sub) already.
Others like Lemmey should have at least been blooded.

The kids settled OK in the final couple of H&A games but finals are different.
We'll never know how they would have gone now, but it was probably as big a risk as playing underdone players...and the result may not have been much different.

Yep.  I think I may have written it here a few times, but when it became obvious some of the senior players weren't performing our inability to put faith in any of the kids cost us dearly.  That being said not many of them showed the requisite form to demand selection which was another problem.

Ultimately we ran out of fit bodies.  The season fell away as much by list management decisions last year as it did this year.  Sure dow and fisher needed to go to play seniors but they would have made a much bigger difference across the season than any of the kids and might have been easier to take into a final like yesterday.

What TV wouldn't have shown was how challenging the conditions were.  There were breezes that popped up at times through the games that were very strong and much like gusts.  It's why the goal kicking was a variable. The ball would move 10 metres if it kicked up and the kick was a bit of a floater.

We had 24 inside fifties on the scoreboard in the first half last night to return 2.1.

The smalls played their putrid part.  Durdin and motlop gave us doughnuts.  Orazio works a but differently to the others.  He isn't a small forward solely and you can see him organising things and getting people to take up different spots.  When the game is hot like that some smarter choices need to be made.  Walsh was on the boundary line in the latter stages of the match.  I think it was a 5 goal margin at that stage but he ended up with the footy near the boundary and instead of wearing contact and taking it out for a stoppage tried to find a handball around his oncoming opponent and go forward.  The handball went out and it was deemed insufficient intent.  That's what a lack of fitness does.  You don't wear the contact and make a poor call.  The insufficient intent free was a mark and goal to Brisbane to make it a 40 point margin again. 

That sort of thing happened alot last night.  It's not pressure, it's a result of the mid year holding the ball rule change and fitness. That's the one that makes me wonder if the rule interpretation for holding the ball did as much to change our squads mindset as anything else.  Wear the contact.  Now it's riskier.