Greetings, True Believers.
Believe me, there is a long way to go and we will have our ups and occasional downs.
I did not enjoy that.
Statistics. Interesting general statistics: Centre – we lost 8 to 16 (love to see that by Quarter), but the Hit-Outs were way in our favour; Tackles – we were out-tackled 67 to 84 and Disposals – 425 to 339 (Sometimes the much higher number can reflect ‘playing around’ (like Essendon) but in this case we just didn’t have the ball (love to see those numbers by Quarter too). Under the FULL-TIME STATS / ADVANCED STATS, our Disposal Efficiency was a bit better than Geelong’s, but you still have to have the ball.
Observations. We were quite clearly ‘rattled’ very early on (with the first 6 goals scored by Geelong) in the First Quarter and didn’t recover until Half Time. 7 goals in a Quarter is outstanding for any team; against 1, it was unbelievable. Under those circumstances, the age and experience of the players come to the fore – remember we have a very young side. Grundy was, again, trounced in the starting Centre ruck and the ball was tapped by Geelong, driven forward by Geelong and marked by Geelong; and goaled by Geelong. It took a while for the coaching decision to put Witts into the Centre ruck and Brown onto Hawkins happened. Sometimes I think coaches need to do the unexpected – maybe shift Trav onto Hawkins (you want to talk about matching strength?), shift Karnezis to FF? The observations about goal-kicking are fair, but applied equally to both sides. The exception to that was Trav’s kick OOB from right in front because of its impact on the Pies momentum at that time. We were always going to struggle to get back from a 9-goal deficit at Half Time.
What was good? Not a lot, actually. Pendles was ‘Pendles, the Captain’ – well done. Brownie – simply outstanding. And Witts and Karnezis both did okay.
I really do not like Mr. Macavaney as a commentator.
Other. GWS’ win – outstanding. And well done Eagles.
My thanks to my brother, Andrew, for his contribution – and my congratulations to him. And yes, I heard from one of the others from Heathrow, UK on Saturday morning just in case I hadn’t seen the result.
Next week? Richmond. Not to be underestimated.
More on this later in the week.
Go Pies
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