Post Match v Cats..all comments here thanks

[RayByrneForPOPE]

Why do we persist with Bryan and Medhurst? Guy Richards is the best ruckman we have and Reid surely is a better option than Medhurst. Geelong had 22 players yesterday and we had 19 Rocca Medhurst and Bryan were pathetic.

[ad4eva]

Ray, im not sure if you were at the game yesterday but i have to disagree with you on Rocca. Sure he didnt have an ifluence but the amount of kicks that a full forward gets roughly depends on how its delivered to them.
Once again Rocca was scragged all day long and in a time that we are giving frees away like its netball im baffled hes yet to snag one. The mids and half forwards were playing dumb football and disadvantaged Rocca time and time again. People say that all you have to do is sit the ball on Roccas head and he will grab it. Yes thats true but theres a crucial factor in that he has to be one out or give him a chance to run and jump at the ball where he is at his best. You cant let him wrestle against Scarlett and set the ball up to be punched away by Harley or Milburn every time.

You could say the same for Medhurst but he is just not doing enough in the crumbing business. Hes a small and needs to be at Rocca and Travs feet instead hes playing more selfish football providing his own option which then gives the defender a chance to leave him when they dont go for him to spol Rocca. If hes at the feat of the ball his opponent cant leave him, and if he does its danger.

Bryan was useless yesterday and not having a decent back up ruckmen just may cost us a chance at the flag.

[DaVe86]

Zakal, that fast leading player you talk of is Travis Cloke. 4 goals and a stack of marks and possessions up the ground is better than anything Tarrant did for us in years. Rocca drew the attention which left Trav free. I doubt we could play Rocca, Tarrant, Trav, medhurst all in one forward line

[DaicosMagic]

In all honesty, I thought it was our WORST performance of the year. If the Cats had've kicked straight in the 3rd, we would've lost by 30+. Our pressure was horrendous, our tackling was patehtic, we let them make short pass after short pass with little pressure. We didn't run at them with any sense of urgency when they hemmed in on a boundary or called to play on. We were pedestrian at best. Once Pendles missed the shot to put us 18 points up early, Geelong kicked the next 5 or 6 and never looked like losing.

It reminded me of the final vs the Bulldogs last year. No movement between half back and half forward. When we released a player from defensive 50m, where was the next lead from half forward? Geelong took it the length of the field time and time again, whereas we stalled.

This is really bugging me. When we find a loose man at half back, we are not smart enough to make the next lead before the opposition can figure out what's going on. We stop, wait for all players to be acounted for, kick to a one-on-one on the wing, out of bounds, back to a 50-50 contest. GOOD teams take it smoothly from one end of the field to the other. We have really missed Clement in these instances, because his penetrating 60m kicks released players up to the wing from defensive 50m. Now, we kick to half back, and the next kick can't reach our forward 50m.

Painful performance to watch yesterday.

The fact that we were down just 9 with 6 mins left, and eventually lost by just 2.4 bugs me, 'cos if we had've turned up to play, we really could've tested the Cats.

Geelong's goals that won it for them:

1. Horrendous 30m pass misses Daisy in the 1st quarter, Cats mark and play on - GOAL
2. Wakelin puts his arms up momentarily to show the umpire he didn't infringe in the goal square, Stokes (I think) bumps an off balance Wakelin out of the way, strolls in for an easy goal in the 1st quarter.
3. Second quarter, opportunistic snap bounces over Goldsack's head and dribbles forever, misses the post, and rolls through for a bullsh!t goal.
4. Final quarter, Wakelin, instead of bashing the ball through for a behind, does god knows what, ball stays in play, Cats kick to top of square, Bartel ices the game from 15m out.

That's FOUR lucky goals from nothing, 2 that we easily could have avoided, and in a low-scoring contest, that's ballgame. Yes they missed a lot of shots, but so did we, especially in the 3rd (Leon, Cloke, etc.)

P.S. Ben Johnson, please get smarter and stop wandering into a teammates space and taking your opoonent with you when a teammate is leading up for the ball ... MOVE OUT OF HIS SPACE AND THINK ABOUT THE NEXT PLAY!!!

[jeff corfe]

so we've lost to the arguably the best three teams going around this year, hawks, cats, and eagles.


GO THEE PIEEES!

Yeah and got walloped by over 100 points in all three games...anyone getting my drift here

[Culprit]

We have lost to every team we have played above us on the ladder and that pretty much is where are at this year. Rocca went missing when we needed him and we can lay blame against players in our squad which is taking it away from the Cats. They are playing good football and good luck to them.

Main thing is it's JULY, I would rather lose now than when it counts if we make it to September.

[Cuthbert Collingwood]

they beat us to just about every contest, they ran hard and showed good skilful disposal. they never let us in after the 10 minute mark of the first. they brilliantly covered some of our better players.

cloke was awesome, must have been his best game for us. burns, licca, shaw, o'bree, davis, pendles, lockyer worked hard around the ground all day but we needed someone else to stand up and be counted. davis could have been that person if his half chances at goal had have turned into a half chance (ie. two goals).

bryan looked fat and slow, his kicking is atrocious. didak looked unfit and labouring. rocca looked like he had no support. thomas was unable to break the shackles and get a grip on the game. isles needs to go back to willy. bj and swan were well held, it's been a while since i've seen a game where at least one of them was not on top of their opponents.

obviously MM was p*ssed at the boys for not following the game plan. i was annoyed that we never looked like we could win. our undermanned backline has been great recently, but on saturday far too many cats got the ball in the forward line without too much trouble - very uncharacteristic.

funnily enough - i know no-one has whinged about the umpiring - but my good friend, Jagdev the Geelong supporter, said he was happy with the umpiring for the cats, but there were some terrible decisions or non-decisions paid against us.

still looking ok for september, but it makes this weeks game very important, a loss could see us well down in the eight.

[sq3]

Hawks, Cats and Eagles have 22 players who tend to make LESS skill errors on game day than the Pies players when we play them.

All players at this level have reasonably good skills - but THE hardest one to get right is the match day timing of the fitness staff.

The first thing that shows when you have been overtrained is skills - Rocca missing easy marks, missing easy handball targets and the biggest sign fumbling the ball (Harry many times and very costly).

Now you can never get 'taper training' 100% correct and the conditions etc., of the last game through the week to the next game make it a far less than exact science.

Most times this year the Pies have got it right - last week no - way off target.

Or has Buttifnat followed the Crows, Swans and Aussie Cricket team's philosophy of loading at the mid way point (and increasing the work load) and then tapering into the finals run ????

I would be expecting a light week on the track this week and Rocca's first mark against the Bombers he will just about burst the ball - with the grip on it.

Fitness staff will get it right this week and the Pies will be cherry ripe and give the Bombers a pounding and that will be just the start.

I don't think the Pies will lose another match in the Home and Away fixture this year - and will give the finals a real shake.

[spoljar]

Hawks, Cats and Eagles have 22 players who tend to make LESS skill errors on game day than the Pies players when we play them.

Its also our penetration in our kicks that are a bit of a problem. For example, Buckley and Clement are two players that can give a 50-55 metre flat precision pass where some of our players like Licca and O'Bree struggle with the 45-50 metre pass.

Thats what makes a quick switch of play difficult for us at times.

[magpie57]

There were some interesting stats thrown around yesterday on the radio regarding Anthony Rocca, since 2003(I'm sure this was the date but I may be wrong), against sides in the eight he has averaged approx. 1.3 goals per game and against sides outside the eight he has averaged approx. 2.3 goals per game.

Now if I had an investment of around $400,000.00(which would be close to Anthony Roccas salary) and my returns on that investment were only very mediocre like his goal kicking average then I would have no hesitation in moving that investment to another portfolio that would give me a much better return.

My point; are we getting good consistent value from Anthony Rocca?

Can we win a premiership when our main forward focal point is only returning the averages as mentioned previously?

I believe that we can win the premiership this year provided we all click on the day however it would certainlly give me more confidence if we could rely on our full forward to give us a more consistent return.

[noddy,]

i thought both teams seemed to play worse than they have been. there were a lot of skill errors, maybe it was a result of opposition pressure.

re: selwood, he got more of the ball and I thought he probably played a bit better than pendles. he looked like a pretty good midfielder but when i think of the evasive skills of pendles and when plays like he's got more time than anyone else out there, i'd rather have our boy. i also thought the commentary about him was ridiculously over the top.

everyone has played each other once and that's where we stand - sixth.

with the weagles and crows going down it could be a very good year to make the top four. if we're good enough, we'll do it.

[Zakal]

Zakal, that fast leading player you talk of is Travis Cloke. 4 goals and a stack of marks and possessions up the ground is better than anything Tarrant did for us in years. Rocca drew the attention which left Trav free. I doubt we could play Rocca, Tarrant, Trav, medhurst all in one forward line

Yeah i suppose you are right....Travis was playing up the ground for most of the game, ....but he still got 4 goals. Just a fantastic effort by Clokey...but the way he was being playing at CHF...his forays into the 50 himself were more surgical strikes than a constant presence there, and thats what i was kind of getting at.

Trav had about 6 shots on goal, so if we say he took 6 of his 10 marks on the lead inside 50....thats only really about 6 contests that Rocca being mauled allowed us to capitalise on.


What i was getting at, was on a more consistent basis. If a tarrant-type...in fact lets not use tarrant as an example because hes no longer with us....if Rusling or Reid was playing inside the 50 on a consistent basis...Geelong would HAVE to do something to counter it. If every time the ball came towards our half-forward line, Geelong had to decide whether to cover the kick to the top of the square aimed at Rocca, or a potential kick to a fast lead....they could not consistently just play the percentages and blanket Rocca...because everytime they did that, it would be a pretty high risk of Reid or Rusling taking an uncontested mark 45m out on a lead.


Maybe im looking at it the wrong way, but i think its about pressure, and if 9/10, the only leading player was Travis Cloke 60m with the ball in his hands looking to pass it inside the 50, and the only target was a flatfooted Rocca...then the decision of the Geelong defence is quite simple....peel off and cover Rocca, pretty certain in the knowledge that there won't be any dangerous lead coming.

[PeterWH]

I made the comment about NOT being able to beat the top teams,way back on the early pages of this post.......we just arent good enough to beat the top teams.!!!!!!!!!!!

[jeff corfe]

Ok I am so confident that we have so much to look forward to come finals!

Just sit back & look at this point:

If Scarlett (Presti), Harley (Clement), Bartel (Buckley), Shaw (Mackie), Holland (Ling), were out for the cats & we had all our senior players in, I honestly believe we would of won comfortably.

With our run home & Presti, Clement, Buckley, Shaw & Holland due back in the next 3 weeks & our run home top 4 is a certainty!

So when we meet the pussies again I can gaurantee you that the result will be in our favour!!


Trust guys we are on a real thing this year!!!!

Thank you..easily the best reply in this whole topic

[Lazza]