Bankers & Anchors: Rnd 9, 2023 vs Carlton

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

This is the Round 8, 2023 edition of the weekly Bankers and Anchors thread. Once the game against Carlton 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.

[westbulldog]

Bankers
The backline, contrary to the doomsday predictions of Curnow and McKay destroying us they kicked 2 goals between them and one was from a gifted turnover.
Anthony Scott, an excellent 3 goal return should have been 4.
Bailey Smith, took over from Treloar, 9 clearances.

Anchors
Fickle Dogs so called "supporters" who jump on and off the bandwagon.
Keath and Duryea, again not entirely convincing.
Baker, a couple of clangers but forgiveable he has been good thus far.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Bankers

1. Ed Richards. He was amazing all game. He's emerging into an absolute top tier player in his position. Surely has to start getting some wider accolades soon.

2. Arty Jones. He's a difference maker. I really look forward to seeing what his full potential will be. It could be something quite amazing.

3. Our back six. In the first half it was our defenders that were our best players across the whole ground. Five of the biggest fantasy points scorers on the ground for both teams were our five players Richards, Williams, Dale, Johannisen and Williams. Our mids and forwards were just a sieve. It's amazing our defenders were able to keep them to a very low number of shots on goals in the first half. The back six resolute and dynamic and brave. They all made one or two mistakes (no different to each of the forwards missing a goal) but they overall restricted the involvement and influence of McKay and Curnow,especially with the number of entries they were generating.

Anchors

1. Our Mids and Forwards at the source in the first half. We should have been in total control of that game by half time. As good as our defense was, our mids got owned more often at the source and our forward defensive pressure just allowed them to generate a flood of inside 50's.

[bornadog]

Bankers

1. Arty's goal at the right moment

2. Arty's handball to Smith and Smith's beauitful goal

3. Bont's tackling (10), Libba's goal and tackling (9)

Anchors

1. Gardner and Keath continue to make stupid mistakes with their short kicking - straight to the opposition.

2. Baker's mistake in the third when we were surging forward

3. Commentators - barracking for Carlton and Media pushing for them to win this week

[Sedat]

Watched the highlights from Saturday night and a massive shout out to JUH, who did a very passable imitation of Naughts in the last 6 minutes of the game when the whips were cracking. He contested a number of separate marking contests forward of centre, all of which he was either outnumbered or not in best position, and he brought them all to ground which kept the ball in our forward half for the smalls to do the rest. He won't get any stats for these efforts but I absolutely love seeing that from young key forwards - I bet the match committee loved it as well.

[Ozza]

Bankers:

Backline was outstanding and worked in very well together. The high half backs, were 3 of our best 5 players, and the Jones and Gardy worked really well together on the bigs. Gardner covers an outrageous amount of territory to shut down outlets and to cover so that Jones can peel off to intercept or impact aerially. The defence is clicking really well.

Bailey Smith - big props to him for taking on a bigger role. Was a pretty mature performance from him - showed real application and then eventually overwhelmed the Carlton midfield with his run.

Arty Jones - has been doing a lot of team things all year, and is now starting to get some spoils too. Him and Weightman jst stuck at it and stuck at it the other night and eventually had an important hand in all of the last quarter goals.

Anchors:

We had some opportunities to put the game away. Naughton, Truck Williams, Scotty and Marra all missed some pretty gettable ones. I'll try forget Doc's attempt late.

Baker - been really good, but had a couple of down games.

Carlton supporters - what I was amongst on Saturday night was in the all time top 5. If you ever forget what Carlton supporters are really like - especially given they've been bad for a long time - go sit in amongst their members.

[merantau]

Carlton supporters - there's an alternative spelling - Karenton supporters.