TOPIC:

Pickett has made the cut. In: Pickett, Luff, Johnson, McPhail. Out: Pullman, B Verrier, Donaldson, Vandeleur.

Pickett has made the cut.

In: Pickett, Luff, Johnson, McPhail.
Out: Pullman, B Verrier, Donaldson, Vandeleur.

Unfortunately we cannot go goalless in a half & expect to win - full credit to the very dangerous Claremont who will shape the finalists along with Perth this year

With the Dees winning today this race is wide wide open now - very interesting games in the next few weeks

losing Higgins didn't help either - having to use Ryan Cook as a ruckman is absurd

Insipid performance in the first half and then tried to play catch up football after half time. Full credit to the Tiges who came prepared to scrap and fight from the first bounce and were far to good.
Alarming signs for me even before the first bounce WTF is with the selection of Luff had a month and half off pre season and gets a game ahead of other players FFS what message does that send to other players? Also late withdrawal of Higgins and we go in with no recognised ruckmen. We ruck Zac Strom who is best a pinch hitter / support ruckmen up against good quality rucknmen, we leave languishing in the reserves a young developing ruckmen in Josh Branchi who has shown at times to to be very promising player what the hell is thinking. We then continue to persist with Maskos and Laurino the writing was on the wall very early we were in desperate trouble.
The bye has come at a very good time for us hopefully we get some healthy bodies back and the Coaching staff refocus on our game plan and selection decisions atm they are quite baffling to say the least. Very dissapointing effort from everyone concerned and IMO we are at the junction with our season the next few games will tell us whether or not this group are hungry or are just making up numbers in the finals race.

Baffling to say the least Dwert. They decided not to go in with a ruckman when Higgins pulled out and instead made Strommy & Cooky pinch hit in the ruck. When has Cooky ever been a ruckman. They should have played Branchi who for whatever reason has fallen out of favour with the match committee. At the very least give young Noah Strom a go. At least he has the height to combat those Tigers giants in Andrews & Cameron to some degree but certainly not Cooky.

And why drop Vandeleur for McPhail. His physique wouldn't even hold down a young Colts kid. Vandeleur is not in the best of form but he's not alone.
At least he has some physicality which you need in those conditions we had.

I could go on and on with selections and half the time I know that the game is lost before the bounce because they get the selections completely wrong.

Like I said in my earlier post Roman some of the selection decisions are doing my head in. FFS get some consistency and uniformity around them!!!!
We looked extremely disorganized and disinterested early on the weekend, we have shown that we are better than that through the first part of the year. As I said we are at the T junction with our season in the coming weeks. The whole club from our coaches to all players need to reflect and refocus on the task ahead as the situation is not irreversible and we can play a huge part in the finals playing our best football, if we are hungry for a taste of finals footy that I keep hearing from this group. We need to improve in a few areas of our game plan and on field personnel though IMO.

I think having 5 or 6 first choice movers out has unbalanced things markedly , although , importantly , it's no excuse given that all of the top 5 have had the same thing at various stages of the season so far

Look at West Perth in the first 5 rounds for one example - now they are getting key guys back gradually and the performances are peaking nicely

Josh Branchi I understand was asked to work on his around the ground stuff and get to more contests , as we all know some ruckmen take years to develop properly

With luck we'll have our primes back rested for the nitty gritty as a couple more wins will stitch up a spot in September