I liked Hypens simple summary, "the players are broken". I agree with that. I dont think they havent bought in, they have, I dont think they arent putting in 110% effort, they are.
Its just that they are broken. The game plan and system is broken and they dont know what to do and now they are broken. When that happens even good players second guess themselves, stop playing on, stop attacking, stop enjoying it and go into their shells. Their first instinct they question and then ultimately their disposal efficiency falls. Once that happens its a viscious circle.
When they play an inferior team like Carlton, they play on instinct and can manage to look OK. But under pressure, severe pressure there is no rock to lean on. No solid, back to basics that we all turn to when life gets tough. When Geelong kicked 4 in a row, every Docker player should have known how to go back to basics. But they didnt. Instead of manning up and forcing one on one individual contests all round the ground they became an increasingly incoherent rabble.
If you want to know how to play football (Roly) watch the recent Cats vs Hawks match. Watch how the Hawks played that second quarter. Good old fashioned back to basics football. Watch then the Cats come back in the last, again fantastic basic attacking football.
Malthouse used to talk about the 100 1 percenters. Flapping your arms on the mark, going back quickly in a straight line when you took a mark, looking forward at all times, automatically cutting into the corridor once forward of half back as your first option, only switching if you can take ground, staying goal side of your opponent in defence, one up one down, one up one behind if its wet, dont all get sucked to the ball, kick in preference to handball, dont bomb it long, forwards lead into different areas at different times with a crumber in tow.......the list goes on. We do none of this.
We go into the match with a teenaged 202cm kid leading our ruck with no other ruck support. We then have the ridiculous vision of said kid floundering aroung the ground exhausted, helped out on occasion by our centre half forward who is now out of position and then replaced towards the end with our 34 yr old veteran who is heroically playing on his last legs. Seriously?
Our albeit underdone captain and one of the best 5 players in the game, for some reason cant be coached to run clear, look forward and deliver up field to advantage. For 3 years he just bangs it on to his boot. When it used to land on Pavs chest we all clapped and said how great it was but it was papering over the cracks. Fyfe could improve this aspect almost over night so why hasnt he? Its obvious to all of us but not to the coaches??
No matter who was the coach we probably would have lost this game because we dont have the cattle, our cattle cant kick and our youngsters are cooked.
Make no mistake though, our system is broken and unfortunately, at least today, so were our players.
