Bankers and Anchors: Rnd 2, 2020 vs St. Kilda

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

This is the round 2, 2020 edition of the weekly Bankers and Anchors thread. Once the game against St. Kilda is concluded post your nominations for:

The Bankers = 3 guys/aspects of the game that we banked on to do the right thing during the game
The Anchors = 3 guys/aspects of the game that weighed us down by their errors or poor play

Please limit it to no more than three of each player or aspect of the game, but feel free to make honourable/dishonourable mentions. As usual try to make it constructive criticism.

Try and restrict it to individual players rather than aspects of the overall match - I will allow more freedom now as the thread seems to be going down more of the aspects of the game path so you can have 3 for each made up of aspects of the game and individual players.

The thread is named in honour of a popular WOOF Contributor, The Banker, who passed away on 22/04/2012 after a six month battle with cancer.

[GVGjr]

Bump

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Bankers

1. Bailey Smith. An out and out gun. Our midfield should be slaughtering teams with him Bont, Dunks and Macrae there...
2. Bailey Williams. he dropped a sitter that cost us, but overall he showed the requisite amount of effort for the whole night.
3. just to round out the 3, I've seen worse debut games than Laitham. There are things to work with here. Well done on getting a goal on debut.

Anchors

1. Defensive pressure from our forwards. Dale, Gowers, LLoyd to be specific, just witches hats. How many times did St. Kilda waltz the ball out of our forward line and score.
2. Our on ball brigade. The stats are misleading. Dunkley doesn't hurt teams, that's ok, he works hard in close and does alot of grunt work. Macrae no hurt factor, Bont- should be absolutely smacking teams, he was a plodder. Smith- Tick he met the level. Lipinski - good numbers no hurt factor... English.. good around the ground... but lamentable in the one category we need him to deliver on, that is essential for his position.
3. Our defense- we used to work as a unit at our best, rarely allowing one on one marking contests, always someone coming over and helping kill a ball. Not now. This might be a result of our inability to slow opposition movement further up the ground. But if you're running with Gardner and Keath as your key defenders.. you're on shaky ground to begin with. Keath has NEVER shown himself to be a lockdown guy. And Gardner hasn't even shown he can play at this level. We're wasting Keath's skills by playing him in such a role. We either recruit Keath because we can use his intercept capabilities and we ensure we have the lockdown key defender to allow him to do this, OR we don't recruit him. Period. Don't recruit him based on what he has delivered as an interceptor and try and turn him into a lockdown defender.....

[bornadog]

Bankers

1. Jong - he ran out of puff but he hasn't played for two years. Has worked hard to get back on to the park.
2. Bailey Smith - the kid is a gun.
3. Vandameer - Not a bad debut

Anchors

1. Macrae - probably played one of his worse games
2. First quarter wasted shots, should have had 6 straight on the board with 4 misses from 30 metres out.
3. Lloyd - Every kick was sprayed, can't believe his kicking

[GVGjr]

YHF and BAD have made some excellent observations

Bankers
1 - The effort displayed by the likes Smith, Williams and Jong was very noticeable in a team with mixed levels of effort and spirit
2 - Vandermeer was a little fortunate to be selected but made the most of it
3 - That goal by Williams caught the eye

Anchors
1 - I'd love to be tipping my hat to the match committee but they didn't get it right and need to have a rethink if we have the right approach.
2 - Effort and desire. It's becoming a hobby horse for me but I don't think we have enough players who are bringing the right hunger for the ball focus.
3 - I hate to single out a player in a poor effort like tonight but gee Josh Bruce needed to be a more prominent player against his old side.

[westbulldog]

Bankers
Smith, excellent 4 1/4 effort
Crozier, gives his best every week
Jong , a welcome return, his efforts showed others up

Anchors
Selection committee - too long in isolation, lost touch with reality.
Bontempelli - injured ? out of form ? disinterested ?
The group of Gardner, Dale, Gowers and Lloyd, we were effectively 4 players short.

[azabob]

YHF and BAD have made some excellent observations

.
3 - I hate to single out a player in a poor effort like tonight but gee Josh Bruce needed to be a more prominent player against his old side.

Apparently we shouldn't be surprised.
I watched this game with my uncle and cousins who are saints fans and I asked what type of game will Bruce have, will he get up for the game or will he be a shrinking violet type.

They said he will be quiet and kick junk time goals regardless of who is wining. Well they got one of the two right.

[azabob]

Bankers

1. Bailey Smith again gave his all. Before last season I questioned his upside. Boy, I got that one totally wrong
2. Hayden Crozier just keeps on keeping on. If only he had the opportunity to truly play the third tall role.
3. I'm glad I wasn't allowed to go

Anchors

1. St.Kilda beat us exactly the same way as they did last year. Clearly we have learnt nothing
2. Macrae, Suckling, Johannisen, Bruce, Dale, Lloyd, Gowers, English didn't have a positive impact on the game at all.
3. Why didn't Macrae attend center bounces? Seems puzzling to me.

[Ozza]

Bankers
Smith, excellent 4 1/4 effort
Crozier, gives his best every week
Jong , a welcome return, his efforts showed others up

Anchors
Selection committee - too long in isolation, lost touch with reality.
Bontempelli - injured ? out of form ? disinterested ?
The group of Gardner, Dale, Gowers and Lloyd, we were effectively 4 players short.

It wasn't Bont's best game, but as I said in another thread, too much of the heavy lifting was left to him and his execution suffered.
You've given Jong a banker and Bont an anchor. While I'll accept that our expectations are enormously different between what we should get from either player - they both played mid with some fwd time. Bont had 24 and 7 clearances while being tagged, Jongy had 17 and 1 clearance. Bont ran more Km's than any player from either team - to put the word disinterested in the comment as a question, I just can't have it.

Absolutely we should expect 3 or 4 times the impact on the game from Bont than Jong - but to put one in the anchors and the other a banker - I just can't agree with that at all.

[Remi Moses]

Bankers - Bailey Smith
Not having to attend
Anchors - where to start ?
Why On earth isn’t Macrae in at all at center bounces
Just bizarre
The team picked ! Just don’t get it
The pointing , the lack of effort , the lack of pressure !

[Axe Man]

Bankers
1. First quarter intensity - that was the best we have played since the end of the 2019 home and away season. Pity it was only for 1 quarter.

2. Bailey Smith - just repeating what others have said but struggling for positives. Kid is a bull.

3. Ummm, at least if we have to suffer through a horrible season it's shorter than usual?


Anchors
1. First quarter goal kicking and defence - we should have been at least 2-3 goals up at quarter time. Instead we fluffed straight forward chances and allowed St Kilda to score almost every time they went inside 50.

2. Basic skill errors. Most error riddled performance I can remember for a long time, the majority of which were not under extreme pressure. Missed handballs are the ones that really irritate me, it's probably the easiest skill in the game and we missed far too many.

3. Kick to handball ratio. I am certainly not in the "just kick it" brigade that scream out at the footy and understand the need for handball chains, but it seemed out of whack last night. We got smashed in mark numbers as a result and it just doesn't give the players any respite. We need a better balance here. Only 7 players had more kicks than handballs and one of them was English - despite being a decent kick your ruckman is a player that should be looking to give off the handball when possible.

Banchor - Bont. Despite his execution being off I thought he tried his guts out. He led the team in metres gained, inside 50s, centre clearances and equal most clearances with Smith. Had his disposal been more Bont-like and perhaps clunked that forward 50 mark and converted he would have been close to our best.

[comrade]

It wasn't Bont's best game, but as I said in another thread, too much of the heavy lifting was left to him and his execution suffered.
You've given Jong a banker and Bont an anchor. While I'll accept that our expectations are enormously different between what we should get from either player - they both played mid with some fwd time. Bont had 24 and 7 clearances while being tagged, Jongy had 17 and 1 clearance. Bont ran more Km's than any player from either team - to put the word disinterested in the comment as a question, I just can't have it.

Absolutely we should expect 3 or 4 times the impact on the game from Bont than Jong - but to put one in the anchors and the other a banker - I just can't agree with that at all.

This is the sort of assessment that makes WOOF so great. I was totally guilty of throwing Bont on the s*** pile but this has made me reconsider. He's definitely the victim of sky high expectations, whereas we're more just happy for Jong not to completely stink it up.

[Ozza]

This is the sort of assessment that makes WOOF so great. I was totally guilty of throwing Bont on the s*** pile but this has made me reconsider. He's definitely the victim of sky high expectations, whereas we're more just happy for Jong not to completely stink it up.

Again, not saying he was the usual Bont by any stretch, but 24 possessions 7 clearances in 16 min quarters is a pro rata 30 and 9, with opposition hanging off him all day. None of us will watch the game again, but I'm confident a second look at the game would be kinder to Bont

[Sedat]

Again, not saying he was the usual Bont by any stretch, but 24 possessions 7 clearances in 16 min quarters is a pro rata 30 and 9, with opposition hanging off him all day. None of us will watch the game again, but I'm confident a second look at the game would be kinder to Bont

His numbers are good but he did his best work late when the sting was out of the game, as he also did against Collingwood. He actually did very little to alter the course of both matches when they were in the balance, which might appear to be a tough assessment but not for someone in the top 5 players in the competition.

As a contrast, Cripps willed Carlton back into the match against Melbourne through sheer force of will even though they were 42 points down approaching half time. Fyfe also did similar against Brisbane on the weekend. We haven't seen this impact yet from Bont as skipper.

[Sedat]

This is the sort of assessment that makes WOOF so great. I was totally guilty of throwing Bont on the s*** pile but this has made me reconsider. He's definitely the victim of sky high expectations, whereas we're more just happy for Jong not to completely stink it up.

Shouldn't we be comparing Bont and his output/influence to the likes of Cripps, Fyfe, Danger, Dusty, Pendles, etc.. and not to a player who is 22-30 on our list? Bont had a poor first 3 quarters by the standards he has set for himself, which was where the match was won and lost.