3 things learned - R17 vs Port Adelaide

[Dry Rot]

Some new players, or the current ones get heart and brain transplants

Regularly, we put in really heartless poor performances that are much worse than much less talented teams that seem to have a crack.

[Mantis]

1/ Our mids as an entity pick and choose when they want to defend. Until they do it unconditionally we will continue to be an average team.

2/ Our forward line was disappointing. The smalls didn?t defend and the talls couldn?t compete in the air. The mix isn?t working.

3/ Embarrassing performance by our coaches for going down the path of starting English forward. English is the reigning AA ruck and was coming up against his longtime understudy for the 1st time. It sent a meek message and our meek response followed. In the words of RDB - weak as piss!

[CarnTheScray]

1/ Our mids as an entity pick and choose when they want to defend. Until they do it unconditionally we will continue to be an average team.

2/ Our forward line was disappointing. The smalls didn?t defend and the talls couldn?t compete in the air. The mix isn?t working.

3/ Embarrassing performance by our coaches for going down the path of starting English forward. English is the reigning AA ruck and was coming up against his longtime understudy for the 1st time. It sent a meek message and our meek response followed. In the words of RDB - weak as piss!

They were probably scared shitless that English would lose the centre bounce early and set the tone, which happened a few minutes later anyway.

[mighty_west]

1. Jamarra just seems too nice with his opponents, and his intensity needs to lift, the body language seems to be lacking at times, think it's time for a spell in the magoo's to work his way through his on field issues for a little reality check.

2. Reckon big Sweet would have penciled this game in at the start of the season hoping that Soldo was injured for this game and possibly the opposite for Timmy knowing Sweet would have his measure at the centre square, as was the case and Timmy seemed spooked early, but that was only one match up for the game and Tim did look more valuable than Sweet around the ground after that first quarter or so, also starting Darcy in the centre was a real head scratcher, think the MC can be too cute at times, just get back to basics, play the players in their set positions and stop any confusion, Lobb didn't need to back to the forward line when Naughton went down then back to defense again, we still had Jamarra, Darcy and English to rotate which should be more than enough up forward with our smalls and Bont zoning in at times.

3. Our midfield mix, whilst i like a settled structure i also like the way we have heavily rotated our centre square set up with rotating in the likes of West, Gags, Sanders, unfortunately Garcia wasn't also rotated in there as for some reason he's not being selected, I'm actually having Richards full time in the midfield with Bont perhaps 50/50 split in the forward line, Libba probably also spends the majority of time in the mid whilst those others are rotated in and out.

[The Adelaide Connection]

1. A week is a long time in football

2. There is not too much "glass half-full" left around the joint. The season is still alive. Given the context of the dark past we have endured, you would think we would be the last set of supporters to get out of our seats and leave at 3/4 time of the season to beat the traffic.

3. Like in form teams Freo and Sydney before them, Carlton are very gettable. When things aren't going their way you can see 20 years of mediocrity and mental trauma eek to the surface.
We just need some luck (unlike the Sydney game). Getting LJ back into the team is step 1.

[Boots]

1. We should trade JUH. His accuracy is woeful, as is his workrate. On top of that, we're better with fewer talls in the forward line (no more than two of the 'big four') and he is obviously the weakest behind Darcy and Naughton. With English and Bont rotating through the forward line, I think we can cover him. Last time I felt this strongly about a tall forward MJP schooled me so ready to be convinced otherwise, but from where I sit he feels like the fix.

That's it. The rest is broken record stuff: mids not defending, relying on an understaffed backline (who actually did really well under the circumstances), terrible mid-fwd connection, terrible fwd conversion.

One bonus thing I guess - we're gonna miss Bailey Smith.