Didnt want to comment until I rewatched it this Morning. So many ponits have been made, most of which you have to agree with after a loss like that. With our abity to get the ball and the amount of possession we had we should of won.
There are several reasons we lost.
1. Skill errors. Every single player today turned the ball over at least once. Some many more than others.
2. Wrong choices. Sometimes im not sure if our players are dumb or trying to follow some sort of team rules. Handballing to players under preasure is not smart.
3. Not taking chances. Bad kicking is bad football. Many guilty here. Again some more than others
4. Game plan. Kicking sidways and slow movement up forward.
5. Lack of leadership. Leaders change the game, ours didnt.
6. Passengers. Which leads me to
The final point was that this game was lost at the selection committee. Lets hope it doesnt take till middle of the year to realize the mistakes and fix them. Im sure they think they are doing the right things but they need to step back and have a good hard look .
This. Well summed up Fluffy.
Our total lack of awareness of where opponents were was incredible
.
We still have too many players that are mentally soft and/or lazy. I was behind the goals on Saturday, so I had a good view of what our defenders with the ball were seeing upfield. The number of Tigers standing still or slow walking was astonishing. Either in transition (both offensively and defensively) and on the spread, Bulldog players lead us to position by 20m. It was disgraceful. It just summed up an attitude of leaving it to someone else to do the hard work and just destroyed any chance of us moving the ball quickly and directly.
On the few times we did out-flank the Dogs have someone hard running into space, the ballcarrier failed to hit the target by some margin or we would overuse the handball
until we literally handed possession back to the Bulldogs. The latter was like we were trying to play too perfect football or we were just selfish and passing the buck of responsibility. Trying to avoid taking a risk to the point of ridiculous insanity
. There were many instances but the two moments that summed up our day was ...
(i) In the 3rd quarter, we had kicked two quick goals to get back into the game and had the momentum. We won the contested ball on the members-side HF flank at the Punt Road end and sweep a chain of handballs back to the central corridor 50m out. Rather than anyone having a shot at goal, we continued handballing sideways and a Bulldog intercepted and they ran it down for a goal
.
(ii) The one already pointed out where Batch switches a long kick to outer wing. We again had the game momentum at that time. The kick doesn't hit the target and Ellis and Vlastuin ballwatch expecting the other to go for it (Ellis from memory peels off expecting Floss to get and give him the ball). Only the Doggie player goes for the ball and they get an easy goal. Another momentum killer
.
As for your point 5, Fluffy. He wasn't the only 'leader' to do it and I love Cotch as a footballer but as captain when we are 3 goals down with 8 mins to go, you can't just chip 15m sideways on a HBF. He did this twice in about a minute. I'd rather he take a risk and stuff up than just concede. It's poor body language to the rest of the team. Then there were other senior players who just produced sloppy aimless kicks out of frustration. Our leaders have to mentally much better than this.
I hope the match review is shown a number of times. Most of the team should be totally embarrassed and ashamed by their soft, lazy and selfish 'efforts' on Saturday.
