The Soaring

Recap

Collingwood 5.5 12.8 19.10 27.11 (173)
West Coast 1.4 7.6 8.8 10.13 (73)

Well the good news is after the Carlton debacle of Round 7 we have solved the problem with our second quarters. Other than that, the news is all bad.

You get that after being thumped by a record 100 points by the Magpies. Seriously, 100 points.

That is the magical mark of shame in football. Sixty points or ten goals is a flogging. One hundred becomes historical, forever remembered in embarrassment and pain.

That we are no good in 2008 is evident. But after a 9 goal win at home last week, how do we dish up a 100 point loss the week after? It’s not THAT we are no good, it HOW did we get so bad?

On Saturday, our defensive pressure after the first five minutes and for a about 15 of the second term was completely absent. This was brought home by Dale Thomas running through the middle of the MCG for about 50 metres without a player getting within 5 metres of him - and he first won the ball in traffic! (Incidentally, I think Embley should take Daisy to the sexual discrimination tribunal for that celebration. Keep it at home.)

If we thought we were going to beat Collingwood in a shoot out our minds must’ve been fried. Collingwood’s skill by foot going inside 50 highlighted how bad our forward entries really are. Time and again we failed to kick the ball to our forwards advantage which has come home to roost in the fact we are the worst scoring team in the league.

Some say it’s a chicken and egg argument - is it the forwards’ positioning or is it the delivery. Probably both. But it is pointless winning the ball 350 times + a game if you are not going to be damaging with it. Somehow we need to work out what our strengths are down there and work a game plan around it. The object of the game is to outscore your opponent after all, not merely rack up Dream Team points.

Dean Cox was the absolute stand out for me. He was the one player who comprehensively beat his man (Selwood on Heath Shaw was good also). I know I just said statistics can be useless, but 30 disposals, 36 hit outs, 7 marks and 2 goals is a pretty phenomenal game in anyone’s book. He’s got to be on his way to his first Club Champion award this season, as he has been our shining light.

Yeah, the kids were ok again in patches. What worries me though is what are we teaching them right now? How to process a thrashing with a Gatorade after the game? Great.

Our senior players might be winning more of the ball but we need them to lead and lock down a game like Saturday’s so that teams just can’t go on a rampage and blow us into history. The Eagles don’t represent that sort of game and the senior blokes need to be hard nosed about it otherwise all we do it say to our younger guys, our supporters and the like - 100 point flogging, they’re ok.

I’m not going to try and decode the imploding style of play that has got us into this mess. I’ll leave that to the coaches (on this occasion). But let’s hope we learn from this.

If we want to rebuild our forward line - Collingwood’s is a great place to start. They don’t rely on a flying Franklin or a hulking Brown - but on the rotating, highly skilled and dynamic small/ medium forward types of Didak, Medhurst, Thomas and Davis with Cloke thrown in for overhead support. We build something similar.

I get irked when I hear McKinley needs to be dropped because LeCras is coming back as though they can’t co-exist in the same forward line. Why? Both can run up the ground and both have a knack for goals - play them both because they are both going to be good forwards in our future.

Let’s hope the pride in the jumper returns this week and we run out as we did against the Crows in Round 9 and not as did against the Magpies in Round 10.