Well, in the cold light of day, I'm looking at last night's game and to be honest, I'm not surprised that we lost. I'm not surprised at the size of the margin as Sydney are a committed football team and we are not. I'm not even surprised at the way the we lost that game because we lose most of our games that way.
I am surprised that some people still don't get it, still don't see where we are going wrong and still hold to blaming inexperienced players for our losses. Its a sad fact that if you don't learn from your mistakes, you'll just repeat them and we do.
As other have pointed out, many times before I might add, we won the hitouts (dramatically), the clearances, broke even on the frees and lost on turnovers. Apart from the frees, the rest is the same each week. In the first quarter I can remember remarking that we had 8 forward 50 entries for 3 points and Sydney had 4 forward 50 entries for 2 goals 1 and there is the telling factor.
We enter the forward 50 like drunken millionaires. No science, no plan, no idea. Just kick it in high. Too bad we have no power forwards, no big marking talls, no parity in numbers, just kick it in high and see what happens. Well, what happens is intercept marks inside our forward 50. Its not a secret. I said it would happen before the slime game and the McGovern and Hurn took more marks inside our forward 50 in one game than we have managed in four or five. Sydney did it again last night.
Fine. New players make mistakes but they are supposed to learn from them. Our team makes the same mistakes each week and that is proof that we don't learn from them. Our coaches are not inexperienced kids but they don't learn from repeated mistakes. Its no good sitting back and saying we are missing Taberner, especially as most on here reckoned he was a crab and that the coaches were right to leave him at Peel. They were wrong then as well.
We know we are missing a tall marking presence so we need to adjust the way we do things but we don't.
Thats is 100% on the coaches, not the kids. The continued failure to adjust says the coaches (all of them) are not doing their jobs. Its time they were held accountable and if the board is not capable of doing its job in running the club, they should be held accountable as well.
To borrow a well used phrased, 'It's Time'
