Pre Season Hit Out vs Geelong

[Lods]

Something to watch out for, and I haven't paid much attention to it....
When Harry takes a mark downfield, and not in a shot at goal, does he run a bit of an arc on the man on the mark to take him out of the equation?

Does that differ to his 'straight' shots on goal... as opposed to his round the corner shots which are on an arc.

[Lods]

It doesn't help the more people pile on and bang on about it, we might think he doesn't hear or read it but he does. You just have to listen to his social media stuff to know how much it impacts him, directly and indirectly through his family and friends who are forced to listen to the bullcrap fans hand out in the stands.

There's only one way he'll stop the specualtion.
Fix the problem.

[madbluboy]

His biggest mistake was listening to people tell him not to kick around the corner.

[Lods]

Field kicking is not a useful measure, don't let that suck you in, especially when BigH tends to be kicking longer.

The AFL moving targets cover so much ground really only Harry knows whether his kick was marked where he intended. For AFL players on the lead it is just two steps less or more, and those two steps are more than the difference between centre of the goals and a behind.

With field kicking he puts it to a position where the player will/can run onto the ball.
The target will often determine the accuracy by getting to the ball....that's true.
But if it's an accurate enough kick to get in that general space it's an accurate enough kick to get within cooee of the goal posts.
Some of Harry's misses are well wide of the mark and poorly executed.
It's an issue because it has at times been a momentum killer for us.
You can't hide from that.

McKay is too good a player in general play to not be in our best 22.
The solutions are for him to improve his goal-kicking to his Coleman days or find a position a bit further away from goal
And KPD might be the best option.

[Lods]

I think part of the problem here is that we've been told pre-season the efforts Harry has been making to address his goalkicking issues.
Now yesterday he was amongst our best.
I actually thought he was our best.

But the goalkicking was pretty much the same 'hit and miss'.

[LP]

McKay is too good a player in general play to not be in our best 22.

I haven't watched the game so I can't comment, a lot of media have initially talked him up as BoG, then secondly gone on to bag his kicking. The second part of those reports is more about throwing rocks at Carlton and winding up supporters.

BigH is not as bad of a kick as the media make out. Out at range he is as good if not even better than Charlie, I wouldn't be surprised to find their stats not all that different. In fact I think we did just that comparison last year and there was barely a percentage difference. To me that means the close range stuff is almost 100% a head space issue, but he is not on his lonesome in this regard.

Over the last couple of seasons, I'd say Owies has been probably our most reliable from inside 25m, and even he has had some unexpected misses.

It's the bad misses that fans remember, but I'd assert BigH has made as many spectacular around the body goals from very long range deep in the pocket as he has had spectacular misses. Those spectacular misses are what fans remember but I doubt in the bigger picture if there are as many of them as they recall.

Two or three years back, we sat through a lot of games and listened to loud mouths like Dunstall and Mooney in their special commentary roles bag the hell out of BigH about taking the long range shots, they wrote BigH off before he even kicked the ball, and back then he was getting the goals from around the body on the point of the 50m arc. They almost sounded disappointed he actually scored, I gather they felt bitter like when you are made appear a goose. But when he had a bad trot they piled on and become the "I told you so" crew, doing a Caro Wilson and erasing the historical times they were dead wrong!

[Lods]

I haven't watched he game so I can't comment, a lot of media have initially talked him up as BoG, then secondly gone on to bag his kicking. The second part of those reports is more about throwing rocks at Carlton and winding up supporters.

BigH is not as bad of a kick as the media make out. Out at range he is as good if not even better than Charlie, I wouldn't be surprised to find their stats not all that different. In fact I think we did just that comparison last year and there was barely a percentage difference. To me that means the close range stuff is almost 100% a head space issue, but he is not on his lonesome in this regard.

Over the last couple of seasons, I'd say Owies has been probably our most reliable from inside 25m, and even he has had some unexpected misses.

It's the bad misses that fans remember, but I'd assert BigH has had as many spectacular around the body goals from very long range deep in the pocket as he has had spectacular misses. Those spectacular misses are what fans remember but I doubt in the bigger picture if there are as many of them as they recall.

I was watching a highlight package of Harry's 2022 earlier on.
He was kicking them from all over the place and looked confident in his kicking.
While they wouldn't have shown his misses...with 45 goals-31 behinds he was travelling OK.
He can do it, but something's gone wrong somewhere...and it may be as simple as MBB and LP says when they tried to correct his kicking around the corner...they've messed with something that was working OK. (58-33 in 2021)

[LP]

I was watching a highlight package of Harry's 2022 earlier on.
He was kicking them from all over the place and looked confident in his kicking.
While they wouldn't have shown his misses...with 45 goals-31 behinds he was travelling OK.
He can do it, but something's gone wrong somewhere...and it may be as simple as MBB and LP says when they tried to correct his kicking around the corner...they've messed with something that was working OK. (58-33 in 2021)

Yep, I don't understand where the the historical perception came from that his kicking was bad, the stats don't support it.

Are we( the fans ) are putting too much emphasis on the bad miss and not enough on the success?

Now the media know they can beat the drums and get a reaction every time it happens, but for Carlton that's not a new feature, we have been bullied into behaviours by the media for decades, we have basically been mob ruled with the mob being the media, that is why they go to the likes of Bruce Mathieson for comments.

[DJC]

Two of Harry's kicks for goal were perfect, his others not so much.  BUT he wasn't Robinson Crusoe with missed shots at goal; from memory, Charlie kicked two OOBOTF, Gov kicked one, and there were several others.

I thought that Harry was our best player by quite a margin and his ruckwork has improved considerably.  Geelong rotated four players through the ruck to our two (Young did contest one hitout when our ruck couldn't get there) so Harry's effort was quite impressive, as was De Koning's.

And, speaking of Young, I don't really understand the criticism.  We had one tall defender against three tall forwards - McGovern was conceding 13cm to Neale - and that's not really sustainable even if we had Weiters in for Young.  Besides, our focus was very much on pressing up rather than dour defence and even Weiters would have struggled with Geelong's ball movement into the forward line.

At the other end of the ground we had Ashton Moir playing as a key forward.  He has plenty of talent and could probably hold down the third tall spot but it's a huge ask to expect him to get the better of an experienced key defender.

[shawny]

It doesn't help the more people pile on and bang on about it, we might think he doesn't hear or read it but he does. You just have to listen to his social media stuff to know how much it impacts him, directly and indirectly through his family and friends who are forced to listen to the bullcrap fans hand out in the stands.

My daughter and her boyfriend went to the the Sydney Elimination final and she said she was so disappointed with the blues fans treatment of Harry. If it wasn't my own daughter telling me i wouldn't believe it but she said there was loud groans when he took a mark within range and then when he missed they booed him!!

I know its frustrating especially in a final but i would never treat any player like that. The bloke is has mental demons and that sort of added negative noise is just making it harder for him.  Stay quiet when he misses and clap and support like mad when he nails one.