Well guys here is my humble acessment of the Intra Club Practice match at Echua. I say that becasue I am no expert in these things and I get to see very little live football so might be a crappy judge. I also found it very hard seeing everything that was going on from ground level yesterday. Another thing was that there was 24 players listed for each side and many of our better players might of played only a half a game so it was hard to judge who was the better players
Goods things
1 . NO IJURIES that I saw anyway - this was the best thing to come out of the day
2. Good crowd, free admission, great surface
3. The team looks bigger and taller on the whole, we have many taller boys on the list.
4. They went hard at it most of the time which was good to see.
MY best player are the ones I noticed the most doing good things. As I said before, lots of our top players didnt play anywhere near full games so you cant realy judge. Some of these guys I didnt expect to be in the best. JON. Patto, King, Morton, Lids, Tuck
I loved Patto. I realy dont now what postion he has in the side but he will be a nightmare for opp coaches to matchup on because of his height and his motor, He just gets around the ground.
JON was good running out of defence and he hit his target mostly. He sometimes didnt take the first option and ends up running around in circles but he has the speed and look confident today.
King was his usaul self and although I generaly favour big players I just love the way this guy plays.
Morton got a couple of goals and looked like he has something. Will be interesting to see if he breaks into starting 22 in R1.
Tuck got a lots of the ball inside which was good.
Lids kidded three I think and show his class at times. He was on the lossing side and he wasnt playing agaist a top defender so again its hard to judge if this is the right move for him to FF.
There were other performance that were ok but these are my top 6 (hey who am I to judge)
Bad Things
1. Game Plan. In that there didnt seem to be one. I know they are all tigers playing each other but I expected to see some sort of structure and didnt. Agian I will say I was at ground level and not sitting up looking down so it can be hard to see.
2. Skills. Many a target missed again.
3. Players missing were Tambling, Brown, Thursfield, McGuane, Cotchin, Graham, Myer. As far as I know that was all.
4. I dont see any of the players we drafted this year making a impact this year. Silvester did some good things so he might get a chance if we have injuries.
5. What I would of though was close to our best forward line setup for the season was in the black team and the were soundly beaten by nowhere near our best backline. I am talking of Richo, Pettifer, Polak, Deldio, Riewolt. It was very windy so it was hard for these bigger guys but it was the same for both teams.
6. Simmo looked fit but his ruck timing seemed off. It could be a lack of actual contact practice and lets hope he get back to his best. He didnt play that much of the game.
6. We went to the huddle at 3/4 time of the white team (thas why you didnt get 3/4 time report). Before David King (coach of this team) arrived there was no talk at all. The just all stood there, no leader seemed to stand up in the group.
I had a good time seeing the boys but it was one of the strangest things where all these people watching and nobody realy cheering for anybody. All these car parked around a ground and not a single horn hooted
. I also discovered that somebody in my age bracket cant do text reports of a game (well some might but I text about once a month). Between changing glasses and looking a team sheets etc its just not for me. So sorry for the crappy reports.
Well "Go Tigers" is all I can say but I am not confident we can turn it around this season
