Maybe I wasn't watching that closely, maybe it's what you don't see on TV that really matters (ie the "gut-running", the close checking, the second efforts etc), but apart from the clearances and our kicking for goal, I don't think we actually played that bad.

We seems to be continually tackling in the clearances, sometimes three or four in a row, but then they'd squeeze it out to someone free. Sometimes we'd even get the turnover, but then lose it again with a bad handpass or get tackled.

The umps weren't that bad.


I'm just shocked. It's a bit like last year's season. What knocked us out of the 8 was that we didn't beat a single "mid-range" team away from home. We beat the bottom ones, lost to the top ones, but the mid range ones away, every game was an "acceptable" or "excusable" loss. Dogs in Darwin, Pies, Saints etc etc. Each one on it's own wasn't a disaster. Add them all together and it's the problem.

That's sort of what today's 2nd half felt like. Every Demons' goal in the second half felt that "oh well, they got a goal, it bounced right for them", or "it was a good lead/mark", or whatever... it didn't seem to be because of a bad turnover, or some major mistake as it used to always be. They just got the ball and didn't waste it.

We got the ball and didn't do enough with it.

As for the kicking... well it's probably the law of averages. Last week, all bar one of our 9 points were from 40 or so metres out near the boundary. Today we had about 7 shots from either fairly close in or straight in front and they missed. By the AFL site it was 7 rushed behinds to 6 as well, so the true kicking accuracy was 17.11 to 15.16... 17.14 would have been so much nicer.

After 13 1/3 years of this, I'm starting to become disillusioned for about the first time.