Bankers & Anchors: Rnd 1, 2023 vs Melbourne Demons

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

This is the Round 1, 2023 edition of the weekly Bankers and Anchors thread. Once the game against Melbourne 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]

Lets hear your thoughts.

[JanLorMill]

Bankers Libba Bruce and currently pick1/2 in draft
Anchors same ruck/centre clearance issue, out of ideas in the box? , Keath looks shot. Extra one of the 4 headed monster

[Grantysghost]

Bankers Libba, the most criminally under rated player in AFL history. Did what he always does, played excellent team orientated footy and led from the front.

Treloar, maybe his best game for us. Increased midfield minutes in Dunkley's absence looks like a winner for him.
English. Battled two of the best rucks in the game and held his own. 22 hit outs to Gawns 21, Grundy 12.Top effort.

Anchors .

Bont, he constantly misses goals in big moments and sprays kicks to forwards. He's the best player ever but should be called to account at times.

Duryea. Just not very good.

Keath. See Duryea.

[AshMac]

Bankers :

Libba, outstanding but that much expectation shouldn’t be on a bloke at that stage of his career.
English - outstanding bursts throughout the game, great tap work first half

Anchors

Demons pressure - Real or perceived they boxed us up all game
Goal kicking - same old s***
The sprays into 50 - constant rushed kicks
Bailey Smith looked terrified of the ball
Liam Jones injury - hope he is ok

[westbulldog]

Bankers
Liberatore
English, pretty good job against 2 of the best.


Anchors
Hannan ,consign him to the VFL and get it over with.
JJ
Lobb
(and there are others)

[JanLorMill]

Bankers
English, pretty good job against 2 of the best.

I disagree strongly.
If that was a good job what is a bad job then? Gawn/Grundy kicked 3 between them and love to know how many they stopped too. Gawn would be in line for 3 votes.
I don’t know if 2 top line rucks can work all season but it worked tonight.

[anfo27]

Bankers

Ed Richards
Libba
English

Anchor

Bevos anti-defence football ideas
Alex Keith- boy oh boy
Hannan- How does he get a gig in front of West?
Apologies to 3/4s of the side as they all deserve to be in the anchors category.

[westbulldog]

I disagree strongly.
If that was a good job what is a bad job then? Gawn/Grundy kicked 3 between them and love to know how many they stopped too. Gawn would be in line for 3 votes.
I don’t know if 2 top line rucks can work all season but it worked tonight.

English rated better than both individually, problem is he didn't have any support i.e Lobb 2 kicks 4 handballs 2 marks 0 tackles 3 hit outs when he (Lobb) spent 95% of the time on the ground

[JanLorMill]

English rated better than both individually, problem is he didn't have any support i.e Lobb 2 kicks 4 handballs 2 marks 0 tackles 3 hit outs when he (Lobb) spent 95% of the time on the ground
Well the ratings are crap is then. Assume these are the same ratings that had Macrae and Daniel as our 3rd and 4th best
Gawn was close to best on ground. English wasn’t named in our best 5.
Lobb is a forward, English is our main ruck. Would say he did approximately 80% of ruck contests. Gawn less

[westbulldog]

Well the ratings are crap is then. Assume these are the same ratings that had Macrae and Daniel as our 3rd and 4th best
Gawn was close to best on ground. English wasn’t named in our best 5.
Lobb is a forward, English is our main ruck. Would say he did approximately 80% of ruck contests. Gawn less
Every woofer voting had English in our top four. Put your votes up.

[comrade]

English was terrific for the most part. His positioning and body control at boundary throw ins was the best it’s been.

Got torched a bit towards end of quarters especially before half time, have no idea why Lobb didn’t chop him out in the middle.

[JanLorMill]

Every woofer voting had English in our top four. Put your votes up.
I’ll agree to disagree here. Struggled to find one 4 quarter player. Again his direct opponent close to best on ground in a thrashing. If people are happy with that then so be it.

[JanLorMill]

Just for the record
English 62 ruck contests 27 centre bounce
Gawn 38 & 13 Grundy 29 & 16

[AshMac]

I thought English had an excellent game for the most part - faded in and out at times but overall easily one of our best.

To do that alone against two of the best ruckman over the last 5 years is even better.

As for the stats:

English won 43.5% of HO’s
Gawn 34%, and
Grundy 55%

Overall that is a solid game for hit outs alone.

English also had an impact around the ground - particularly in the second quarter. Gawn was more influential overall - he is a more mature and better player at the moment - but English was still outstanding and I’m really pleased with his performance

[MrMahatma]

Bankers:
Tim was good. I wouldn’t say great but he was good.
Libba keeps on going.
Ed was lively

Anchors:
Hunter looks back
We gave up in the end, and % matters in a tight comp. A 30 point loss would’ve been a shame. 50 is moving to disaster territory.
Tall fwd line. Darcy and Lobb were liabilities.

[Sedat]

Just for the record
English 62 ruck contests 27 centre bounce
Gawn 38 & 13 Grundy 29 & 16
Didn't watch the game but what is the point of Lobb if these numbers are correct? Sounds like English faded badly as the game wore on, which is the precise reason we traded in a 30yo to support him. So why didn't we deploy Lobb in the ruck for more extended periods if English was tiring? It wasn't as though Lobb was catching fire up forward.

The bombing into F50 is a bit of a relic of the 2016-2020 era. We started the men of mayhem and Richmond perfected it. The game has changed significantly since then and it appears that we haven't moved with the game trend yet.

[SonofScray]

Didn't watch the game but what is the point of Lobb if these numbers are correct? Sounds like English faded badly as the game wore on, which is the precise reason we traded in a 30yo to support him. So why didn't we deploy Lobb in the ruck for more extended periods if English was tiring?

Because our coach, despite having ample opportunity to arm himself with the tools needed, is bereft of ideas.

[bornadog]

The bombing into F50

This was the disappointing part of the night, and I blame players here. The delivery into the forward line was woeful but equally, Naughton spent the entire night wrestling his opponent. Really Naughton should have got lots of frees for being scragged but at the same time, he rarely made a lead, so the ball was then just bombed in. Lobb the same just standing there like a statue. JUH was more lively and tried hard to get into space. Shouldn't be difficult at the MCG. Even the big dud brown did that.

[westbulldog]

Well the ratings are crap is then. Assume these are the same ratings that had Macrae and Daniel as our 3rd and 4th best
Gawn was close to best on ground. English wasn’t named in our best 5.
Lobb is a forward, English is our main ruck. Would say he did approximately 80% of ruck contests. Gawn less
Disagreement and robust debate is fine. Our AFL match report ratings, in order, were Treloar, English, Liberatore and Macrae so you obviously looked somewhere else - interested to know where was it that didn't have English in our top 5 ? Anyway your votes would be of interest whatever they might be.

[The Underdog]

Bankers:

Ed Richards - looked great at times, defended smartly and was good under pressure
Scott - had a couple of super efforts in the 2nd quarter at either end of the ground that both prevented and created a goal
Libba - just initiates so much positive for us

Anchors:
Lobb - I was a sceptic and well, not much has changed
Daniel - I'm pretty pro taking a risk for potential big reward, but a couple of those turnovers out of D50 were awful execution that killed us
Bont - missing the goal from the downfield free to Smith was a huge huge loss of momentum when the crowd were really up for it.
It all went downhill from there.

[bornadog]

Bankers

1. Tim English - really gave his all against two of the best, although I feel Grundy is cooked. 24 Disposals and 15 were contested.

2. Tom Libba - Gave away a couple of vital frees, but was pretty good overall

3. Josh Bruce - hasn't played the roll for a very long time, but I thought he wasn't too bad. Looked our best tall defender. Again also made a couple of errors, but overall great first up effort.

Anchors

1. The AFL rules - gifted two goals to Melbourne due to either 6.6.6, or stand. The Libba one when he stood on the goal square line was joke. The ball went from one end to the other. The 6.6.6 because someone didn't stand in the goal square - wow AFL are delusional

2. The poor delivery into the forward 50 - made it very difficult for the talls.

3. The Club - for choosing not to have a proper hitout preseason and just playing a interclub practise match and one game v North. Melbourne had two decent hitouts and were in form going into this game.

[ratsmac]

Banker's

1. Libba. I feel sorry for him that he played such a good game where he busted his gut working so hard and we got smashed by 50. Without him it would've been a lot worse

2. Treloar. He was great finding ways out of their tight zones. Tackling was great too.

3. Bruce. When Jones went down I knew we were in strife but I thought he did well in a position he hasn't played in since early in his career. He was caught out a few times but there wasn't much more he could've done with the ease they brought the ball forward.

Anchors

1. Bont. His ball use was the worst iv ever seen from him. That miss after Smith got cleaned up was when the game changed.

Daniel. Another whose ball use was the worst I've ever seen from him. Taking the high risk option is normally his go but 1 his touch was off and 2 Melbourne were setting up to cut off our kicks all night by standing 5 -10 metres off their opponents to get a the intercept and we played into their hands. Daniel is smarter and better than to fall for that .

3. Succumbing to their pressure (actual and perceived) all night and not doing the same back the other way. We cracked all night under pressure, dropped marks, rushed disposals and didn't work half as much as them to apply pressure back the other way. Our want to defend, pressure and close down space was polar opposite to them.

[JanLorMill]

I thought English had an excellent game for the most part - faded in and out at times but overall easily one of our best.

To do that alone against two of the best ruckman over the last 5 years is even better.

As for the stats:

English won 43.5% of HO’s
Gawn 34%, and
Grundy 55%

Overall that is a solid game for hit outs alone.

English also had an impact around the ground - particularly in the second quarter. Gawn was more influential overall - he is a more mature and better player at the moment - but English was still outstanding and I’m really pleased with his performance
Of the 22 English HO’s I can’t remember 1 (not saying it didn’t happen) that went direct to our advantage(clearance) whereas I bet there a heaps in the 33Hos Gawndy combination.
btw those stats don’t look right 22ho from 62 ruck contests isn’t 43.5
neither Gawn 21 from 38 Grundy 12 from 29

[kruder]

English was terrific for the most part. His positioning and body control at boundary throw ins was the best it’s been.

Got torched a bit towards end of quarters especially before half time, have no idea why Lobb didn’t chop him out in the middle.

It is little hard to tell from the nose bleed, but I thought his second quarter until the avalanche was the best I'd had ever seen him play.

From all reports, Lobb hasn't been doing much rucking in the preseason so it's not a surprise. Very curious though???

[bornadog]

Of the 22 English HO’s I can’t remember 1 (not saying it didn’t happen) that went direct to our advantage(clearance) whereas I bet there a heaps in the 33Hos Gawndy combination.
btw those stats don’t look right 22ho from 62 ruck contests isn’t 43.5
neither Gawn 21 from 38 Grundy 12 from 29

Tim English 6
Lobb 1
Gawn 7
Grundy 4

4 differences - not much in it

[soupman]

1. The AFL rules - gifted two goals to Melbourne due to either 6.6.6, or stand. The Libba one when he stood on the goal square line was joke. The ball went from one end to the other. The 6.6.6 because someone didn't stand in the goal square - wow AFL are delusional



If a freekick at the back and then middle of the centre square is an automatic goal against us I think that says more about our defensive setup than the umpiring. At least the Pickett one gave us no chance to stop the goal once the decision was made.



3. The Club - for choosing not to have a proper hitout preseason and just playing a interclub practise match and one game v North. Melbourne had two decent hitouts and were in form going into this game.

Baffling. Imagine finding out you are playing a side that is not only quality but has consistently killed us and while trying to get an innovative(*??*) forward setup humming against AFL opposition we opt to play Norf and....um....ourselves?

[soupman]

Tim English 6
Lobb 1
Gawn 7
Grundy 4

4 differences - not much in it

Yeah I think it's more down to how damaging Melbourne were able to be from their hitouts to advantage.

I don't recall our players being able to burst from the clearance with as much power as Petracca and Oliver did, which is not Tim's fault.

[bornadog]

Yeah I think it's more down to how damaging Melbourne were able to be from their hitouts to advantage.

I don't recall our players being able to burst from the clearance with as much power as Petracca and Oliver did, which is not Tim's fault.

Whilst that is true, the point of the post is Tim played a very good game last night and matched the AFL top rucks.

[kruder]

Brisbane played Sydney and Geelong in the lead up to rd1 and still got smashed. I'm not sure it had anything to do with it to be honest.

Our defensive system currently sucks, until we stop guarding space when the ball is in the vicinity we will continually get beaten by the top sides. That goal from Melksham in the last is an absolute blight on the coaching staff and players, we had 3 players back yet they all allowed him to get goal side and chose to guard space instead. It was an absolute disgrace and its been going on far too long now.

[The Underdog]

Brisbane played Sydney and Geelong in the lead up to rd1 and still got smashed. I'm not sure it had anything to do with it to be honest.

Our defensive system currently sucks, until we stop guarding space when the ball is in the vicinity we will continually get beaten by the top sides. That goal from Melksham in the last is an absolute blight on the coaching staff and players, we had 3 players back yet they all allowed him to get goal side and chose to guard space instead. It was an absolute disgrace and its been going on far too long now.

Sitting up high behind the goals I watched Keath as the deepest defender with Pickett standing 10m behind him and knew that if we lost the ball in the forward line we were screwed. And so it proved. I couldn’t really blame Keath, there was no way he was ever going to go with Pickett in space but it should have been remedied before it got to that point.
Melbourne’s capacity to end up with a free player in their F50 was also an indictment. It happened multiple times.

[kruder]

Sitting up high behind the goals I watched Keath as the deepest defender with Pickett standing 10m behind him and knew that if we lost the ball in the forward line we were screwed. And so it proved. I couldn’t really blame Keath, there was no way he was ever going to go with Pickett in space but it should have been remedied before it got to that point.
Melbourne’s capacity to end up with a free player in their F50 was also an indictment. It happened multiple times.

Mate I was yelling at keath at that moment it was so bloody obvious, agree 100%.

Kosi was loose from the first bounce till the last and going into the game if you took note of his preseason he was absolutely one player to watch closely.

[bornadog]

Mate I was yelling at keath at that moment it was so bloody obvious, agree 100%.

Kosi was loose from the first bounce till the last and going into the game if you took note of his preseason he was absolutely one player to watch closely.

Not Keath's fault, where the hell was Kosi's opponent.

[macca]

Not Keath's fault, where the hell was Kosi's opponent.

It doesn't matter, we don't tag . I do wonder if the blocking rule has affected our ability to stop players like Kosi ?

[kruder]

Not Keath's fault, where the hell was Kosi's opponent.

Still refused to stand anywhere near him, absolutely he was part to blame.