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Take a breath & debrief - Round 18
This one’s gonna be a long one, I’ve got some feelings. Another big game, another failed test. This has been the story of the season. Once again we were competitive against the top team, but just couldn’t get over the line. In a season where the gap between top 4 and finishing 9th is so close, being 1-7 against the top 9 is what’s going to cost us top 4 and possibly even finals.
We have 3 more games against top 9 sides but basically we need to win out from here to be a chance for top 4 which as a Bulldogs supporter all my life, I just can’t see happening, we should still win enough to play finals but why do we insist on making it hard for ourselves every season.
Quite simply, our backline this year is just not good enough to be a premiership backline, part of this is our system being very offense based but it’s also personnel. JOD and Lobb have battled incredibly hard all season but just aren’t quite at the level needed and our star studded midfield at times has been a real let down for our defence, who simply doesn’t have the tools to hold up when it’s 1v1 against the best
Some of the broken tackles and lack of pressure in this game was ugly to watch and in the end that’s what cost us the game, need that old school “bring your mouth guards to training” method this week. We MUST bring our best to the Gabba to be a chance at causing a boilover up there
On the other end, when teams bring pressure to us, and it’s happened this way all year, we seem to completely crumble, we turn it over way too easily and once we do turn it over it feels like they score every single time
I’m proud the boys didn’t give up and caught hard to the end, but we took way too long to start taking the game on and to be honest, at no point did we actually look like a chance to steal a win.
Last thing I’ll say, and I’ll pre-emphasis this by saying that I will NEVER blame the umpires for costing us a game, it’s swings and roundabouts each game and at the end of the day they didn’t lose us the game, Adelaide just was the better team, BUT. They were absolutely deplorable in this game, and it’s not that some of their calls for Adelaide were wrong necessarily but they were only being called one-way. How many goals did they get directly from free kicks, while once again our forwards were getting beaten up in every contest and barely got a single call, as fans all we want is consistency.
There were a number of horrific calls or non-calls that led directly to Crows goals, there are three that really stand out (without a rewatch). First is that centre bounce that should have been recalled and wasn’t that led directly to a Crows goal. How on earth do they not recall a bounce that went clearly out of the circle and Tim English doesn’t even get close to being able to get to is beyond me and it’s a joke.
The second is that Rankine free kick right at the end of the 3rd quarter, he was holding and shoving JOD that whole marking contest, but Rankine gets the free kick for a hold that you could barely even see on the replay, technically that free kick may be there, but what about the 3 different free kicks that Rankine should’ve given away to JOD in that same contest beforehand
Finally, it was that ridiculous non-call in our goal square when Bont laid the tackle and the Crows player literally just handed the ball to his teammate, I can somewhat understand when they try to handball it and it looks 50/50 but this was one of the worst non-calls all year, how did not one umpire see a CLEAR incorrect disposal.
So those examples right there lead to a 3-goal swing directly, among plenty of other examples all game. And again, I think Crows were the better team and who knows how it would’ve played out if they were correctly called, but the simple fact is, the umpires need to be held to account when there’s disgraceful, one-way decisions like that all game
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