Three things you've learned finals week four 2021 Grand Final v Melbourne

[Doc26]

1. We had the resolve to respond in the second quarter when all looked lost but couldn’t go with them again in the third. Petracca during this period was sublime.
2. We have some excellent midfielders but there is a sameness about them.
We need to find / develop our own version of an ‘explosive’, efficient and big bodied mid ala Petracca. Maybe Bailey Smith can develop into this in time but it’s a gap for now.
3. We’ve said it over and over, but a decent tap ruckman who can play out the four quarters remains a gaping hole.

[soupman]

3. Selection favorites don't cut it in a GF. The deficiencies in Cordy's game showed tonight, but it did not help that the ball was being coming in at full throttle. Wood sadly is done. His lost his speed and leap. The game does not slow down in finals. Gardner should have played ahead of Cordy.

Thought Cordy was ok tonight. Last quarter is irrelevant, the whole team was defeated mentally. Thought for the most part he competed well in marking contests (lost one or two which he could have done better in and Gardner may've but I'm not convinced there would be a big difference there), was pretty good at ground ball stuff and was a big part of our ball movement when we were up and about providing that link option who could take the mark under pressure and move the ball on quickly.

I like (and prefer) Gardner but considering how nervous we were in that first quarter I'm not sure adding the most nervous player on the list would've helped and thought Gardners superior aerial ability was cancelled out by Cordy's work in the defensive unit to rebound.

Gardner may've been a good option to move onto Fritsch or whatever but thats more a conversation about Wood. Imo Wood should've been subbed, Schaceh sent back and try to bring Vandermeer into our forward mix. We often lacked numbers at the drop of the ball around half forward and an aggressive and explosive half forward like Laitham could've been handy there instead of watching three tall and slow Melbourne defenders handball it around till they find the one of them who can kick.

[AshMac]

1. If you'd asked me in R23 who'd ne playing in the GF i wouldnt have said us. Would prefer to be there than not be, regardless of the outcome

2. Losing grand finals really sucks

3. Caleb Daniel is a big game player

[westdog54]

1. Melbourne are 100% the real deal and well be hard to catch. They've got two of the best clearance winners in the league, a 21yo ruckman who tore us to pieces and little to no weak links. Petracca was a beast last night. Best Grand final performance by any player ever. And I'm counting Dusty from last year.
2. We've got some work to do to capitalise on the foundation we're building. An established ruck is a must.
3. The two classiest captains in the league were on display last night.

[Bullies]

1. We have no Plan B when we go 4 - 5 goals down. We are very good one trick ponies when the going is good but when it goes against us we struggle to react.
2. English has not been the same since his concussion. Martin was on the bench for that 10 minutes in the 3rd quarter and English was destroyed. In saying that Jackson is an absolute gun.
3. We need a ruckman and KPD. Hopefully Bevo saw the importance of 2 elite ruckman. We need 1.
4. Our mids need to be so much stronger in the contest.
5. Petracca's game was one of the best you will see.

[Mutz]

1. I've been racking my brain trying to work out what happened from mid-way through the 3rd qtr. My mates are saying the physical exertion of the past month caught up with us but after cogitating on this overnight I put it down a collective drop in mental fortitude. The centre clearances from then on were extraordinary. They didn’t get clean outs. Tim and Stef were competing (even against Jackson), the ball came to ground and we were in the fight. To my mind, a difference for the GF versus the rest of the season is that the umps were inclined to let the play go, especially when the ball was tangled up amongst several players. It seemed that we were expecting the whistle to blow when the tussle on the ground was sustained and so gave up the ball. Furthermore, when the tide was turning I saw heads go down – not a good sign. I don't know how close to reality this musing is but it certainly doesn't give me any comfort when I think back to Bont's third goal and I internally called the Norm Smith for him as well as the flag.


2. Ben Brown was a protected species last night, getting awarded tiggy touch frees and a couple of dubious marks. I suspect this was something the umps had decided to focus on pre-game. I'm not saying the umpiring was unfair but this emphasis didn’t work in our favour because Naughton, Schache or English never had clear one-on-ones to compare with. I'm going to go further and risk being heretical here. In my view, the grey zone of interference calls in marking contests is the most opaque of any rule (yes, even worse than lack of intention boundary calls). It is inconsistent and frustrating for fans and players. I think there should be *no* touching of an opponent with anything below the elbows; any contact on an opposition player with elbow, forearm, wrist or hand should be a free against. No little push or nudge in the back as the ball approaches in the air. For example, that mark by Brown in the goal square when he pushed Cordy (I think) was obvious interference. Such a rule would be easy to spot and rule. I'll go further - it should apply when pushing off opposition player's shoulders with their hands to take a speccy (yep, that magnificent grab by JJ would fall afoul). If you can’t leap onto another player's back using the spring in your legs (think flyin' Ryan and Liam Picken) then you don’t belong up there. Jack Riewoldt is the absolute worse at this because he literally pushes players down beneath him but if he takes the mark then it's not an infringement. This rule could be extended to ruck duels. Use your body strength to manoeuvre your opponent out of position, not a sneaky late push to put them off balance.

3. I said before the game that I was afraid of Fritsh getting off the leash. Whoever was on him wasn't paying enough attention. Also, the backline works better with Gardiner and, in my view, he should have played ahead of Cordy who was by himself in free space a lot of the time.

Extra. On a personal note, I'm glad providence didn't allow me a ticket and travel to Perth (from Adelaide) to watch the game. The last 45 minutes was just horrible and I would not have been a humble loser and graciously acknowledge the winners. I would have ended up wandering the streets of a foreign city in a completely dismal and inebriated state. When at home with the family you have to maintain some semblance of equanimity! Hopefully, the boys will learn from this and be the stronger for it next year – go Dogs!

[Mutz]

It feels good to say that but we aren't miles off it

Anyway let's just enjoy losing like this entire forum has decided to.

I'm not happy.

I'm *!*!*!*!ing pissed off.

What a failure.

I'm pissed too. Something went very seriously wrong and the team must identify it and fix it. It's more than just another ruck or KPD.

[jeemak]

Haven't we been calling out for this for a few years now? I know many thought we had enough talls even before Bruce and Keath arrived but it's been an ongoing challenge for us for a while.

We did bring in Keath and Bruce and Gardner and Martin. People who thought we had enough talls, well at least speaking for myself, thought we had enough talls who our coach would actually play.

Remembering that Bevo refused to play Minson, Roughead and Trengove. Plus seemingly maligns Young but plays him but doesn't malign him, and the same with Schache who he maligns and doesn't play but also does.

It sounds like I'm being a smartarse and I probably am a bit, but what I'm really getting at is that we've clearly tried to bring in talls who Bevo would actually play, but with that caveat on recruiting talls we limit our playing field dramatically. What type of ruck or tall would want to come to us unless they were specifically targeted by us, were compensated financially for doing so compared to what other clubs would offer, and actually thought our coach would want to play them?

I have no doubt we're trying, if we're not then the much lauded Sam Power is a hack. And I don't think he's anything close to that. The players we're looking to find sit within the most constrained part of the market, a lot of stuff has to align to land the players we want and instead of lamenting what we've not been able to do we should perhaps actually be pretty impressed by the fact we've been able to land the quality we have. Particularly in Keath and Bruce.

[jeemak]

1. Playing three games in thirty days (forget about one in 28) and only moving once or twice is easier on the body than playing four in the same period and moving six times and having to quarantine for much of it. Melbourne were atop the ground much more readily than we were and I think on balance their preparation was preferable.

2. Skill errors from prolific ball getters who are suspect with usage are bad enough (i.e. Dunkley's kicking). But hot hands from the likes of Bont who blew the faces off players with some shitty handballs that were hard to receive to stifle opportunities (he was actually awesome by the way, generally) and the likes of Williams, Caleb and Dale not doing what they know they can with the footy due to a lack of composure just gave Melbourne too much of a look. All of Williams, Caleb and Dale need to understand they are in the elite bracket and need to play accordingly if we are to be as good as we can be.

3. Whilst it's clear the centre mix needs to be improved by having an excellent ruck on hand, the mix of the receivers needs to change because they can't be trusted to break even when the chips are down. I've suspected that for a long time, but I think I've finally learned this group of midfield/ centre players just can't be trusted and won't ever be trustworthy. I get they're good most of the time, but the times they aren't are just too damaging.

[macca]

Great Analysis Mutz, and I am glad to hear your safe in Adelaide.

Ben Brown plays to his strengths, and Melbourne play a game that allows it. Good leading forward, with long arms and strong hands and leading patterns. His rubbish below his knees, but melbourne have good crumbers in Alex Neal-Bullen,Sparrow, Spargo, Pickett, with mids can run all day and play fwd in Brayshaw, Pettracca , Harmes to provide that support. It doesn't help that Cordy is terrible with body on body contact, and shorter than Brown, and the ball was throttling in, so Cody playing forward just gave Brown all the time in the world to lead.

Fristch is just a great player to watch. His deceptively quick, natural with lead and leap and his an exceptional kick on the GF day. The whole team were exceptionally accurate after half time. It does not help that Wood was slower than him.

I am afraid Gardner had to come in to play on one of these two.

It still hurts this loss, writing, hearing and reading all the media talk. Sadly coming second in a season does not count, its a brutal
assessment.
I don't want to come across as negative or super critical, but the Club would be hurting from this and would want to go through every inch of the game to disect what went wrong. I have faith and hope, as a supporter as thats what keeps me going every year. And of course the great conversations on woof.

Keep the faith woofers... we finished 5th.. did the hard road to the GF.. and got blown away from a team that has a few gears to go up, it was truly frightening what Melbourne transformed into. The collective and personal journey in our club achieved to get here should be recognized and acknowledge internally within our club, as lots of positivies.


Questions I would have for the club:

Q Where/How/who can we find these extra gears?

Q Address those achillies heal in:
- stop those centre break bursts ( it happened with essendon, north melbourne, Carlton and Brisbane final)
- find genuine ruckman in his prime. McInerney was playing for Casey in 2016, Why were we not into him ???
- played 2 key backs who have deficiencies in their game.
- find 3 crumbing forwards who can terrorize oppositions players, and have stints in the midfield, aka Stringer, Aelx-Bulleen, Zorko, Gray and previously RockCliff.
- get some speed into our mids. Campbell Brown , said himself he was one of the slowest at Hawthorn . He mentioned he worked with a sprint coach to sort out his running technique. Do we have anything of that sort, is it sport physics/dynamics? Its small, its finite, but 1% may add up in a GF. Rioli worked with a sprint coach to sort out his running as he use to injure his hammies alot. Melbourne's frantic playing on, speed and pressured just smashed us.


Q. List management: We need to go through our list and seriously ask if some players we have been developing are going to genuinely make it?

See where Geelong is, they have thrown picks to trade in players to try to get best team to win them the premiership, and still got them only to 1 GF last year.

Most of Geelong players who have moved on, have not set the world on fire or were continually injured: Motlop, Vardy, Gardner( maybe exception, or we got lucky) , McCartney ( continual injured) , Narkle ( continual injured)

Ed Curnow( Crows 2008 rookie) and Heath Scotland are 2 good examples. Malthouse regrets letting go of Heath, but the pies had a deep midfield, and he had a good run of games at carlton . The Crows were up there contending for that period around 2008/2009

Q. Who are the players going to improve on our list next year?

This year, B.Dale was phenomenal at HB.

Duryea has found another level as a full back. His had a fantastic season.

Astrotrain took off, and his going to be a year stronger.

Schache has found belief he can play several roles in our team.

B.Smith played all the games this year and had influence for one so young.

Q. Who do we need to recruit , to improve our list and chances?

I call on the Power to make it happen . ( He-man pun)