Quote Originally Posted by jeemak View Post
Another angle I think about in these close losses doesn't have anything to do with what happened at the death - or leading up to that point in the last quarter, more so, what happened throughout the game.

Looking back at Saturday Geelong were just cleaner and more polished with their handling in close than we were and it released their second ball players better for them than we could for ours. It was a trend that continued through the game.

As we evolve I think we'll eventually look back at this game as one in which we hung on, but were always up against it due to our lack of quality in close. We had colossal efforts from all of Bont, Libba and Treloar, but each of them were at times guilty of fumbling that cost us split seconds here and there across the ground. Geelong didn't seem to do that as much as we did, and I think that's why they got ahead of us early and maintained the lead in a relatively close game.

Talk about strategy and set ups is fine, and I get that Chris Scott gets it right often but we had more intercepts than they did and beat them in just about every mainstream indicator you can think of, except quality at the source and next out (which can't be measured easily) which visually seemed to be an issue for us.

If that's happening all game, it's difficult to arrest at the death.
Agree with this. There?s no stat for fumbles but it?s an important point. It?s one of the big differences b/w our best and worst players.