Bankers And Anchors - Round 13 vs Geelong

[Mantis]

Re: Bankers And Anchors - Round 13 vs Geelong

Stringer, Bontempelli, Libba take your pick.

Stringer isn't our best player, maybe our most exciting, but isn't consistent enough to earn that tag.

Agree with the other 2, but Bont has had an exceptional last 4-6 weeks and to think a 20yo is going to kill it every week is a bit unrealistic at present... But the time that he will (like when he is the same age as Danger or Selwood) will be good fun... Libba was flat as a tack last night, but probably not unexpected given his circumstances.. I think we could have managed him a little better too, but given the number of injuries it was probably a little tough to do... A week off will help him recharge.

I would also have Wood, Dahl, Murf and JJ pretty high on our best player / most important list.. They were sorely missed.

[soupman]

Re: Bankers And Anchors - Round 13 vs Geelong

Bankers:
Three players who seem to copping a bit of criticism elsewhere for their games, the fist two both being mentioned as possible omissions and the latter for not having enough impact.
1. Bailey Williams. This kid is very talented, has composure, confidence and is creative. I like how much like Suckling he runs with the ball ready in a kicking position as if he is about to dispose of it any second. A good size and will still be contending for a spot upon JJ and Wood's return.
2. Lin Jong. Not a great game but encouraging. Aside from the EF his best game since the hand injury and finally we are using him around the ball instead of exclusively up forward where he isn't clever enough to play for extended periods. Very much a confidence player, and i would like to see him given a bit more time to build on this promising performance because as he showed early last year that when he is in form he fits in at AFL level.
3. Jake Stringer. Not his greatest game and didn;t have a huge impact up forward but I though his work up the ground was good. He broke tackles, used his pace and was always working hard to create something, even though it often didn't come off. I like that he is starting to play higher up the ground and I hope we persist with it because he creates space by dragging in opponents and capable of launching the ball into attack.

Anchors:
1. Composure going forward. In the first half there was none, and as much as 1.9 was "bad kicking" we barely had a shot that was higher than a 50% probability of going in (Hunter's set shots the exception). After two weeks of hitting up leads we reverted to the bomb it long tactic and for some reason our forwards tended to be starting much higher than previous weeks making this tactic even stupider.
2. Pressure around the ball. Geelong owned us here. Usually we can flick it around 4-6 times by hand until someone finds space but Geelong would intercept the 4th handball and quickly feed it our to the player they were sitting inboard an they were away. We looked flat in the first half and ready for the bye. Pretty dissapointing but very out of character for us which I guess is a potisive in that it should rectify itself.
3. Joe the goose's. We got caught over the back way too often and some of Geelong's goals resembled a training drill. It's very easy to be as accurate as they were when half of your shots come from the goalsquare. Despite the stats indicating we are one of the best teams at preventing these goals I think they;d actually represent a fairly large portion of our conceded scores.

Also found it amusing that many of the headlines seemed to focus on our inaccuracy being a major factor. Honestly it was our inability to look dangerous at all going forward for almost the entire first half, even the shots we did have were speculative at best. The second half had a few more costly misses but really only Dickson's and maybe a couple of others were bad misses.