My observations / vent before bedtime.....

[saint66au]

1. OK..who else can we try in the forward line?? At the moment we have Roo, Milne......and daylight. In four games of footy Archer, Gamble, Gilbert, Blake, Kosi, Stanley..all been tried..all been found wanting. The way our defence is playing right now 13 goals wont give us a sniff even against a reasonable side (Essendon) Im up for suggestions.

2. Sam Gilbert and Jason Gram....are very VERY close to Sandringham jumpers right now. Dumb decisions, awful footskills. Yes Grammy kicked a couple of goals, as he should have, being given the ball on a string to do so. Asking him to hit anything less than 7m wide though is a much tougher ask..and..well..we all saw the "tackle" they highlighted just before halftime. Gilbert had sadly his worst game for the Club in a long time. Has lost all confidence to back himself, his kicking has just lost the plot and hes possibly the most one sided defender in the AFL

3. Contested marks inside 50..see Point 1 but gee we should take one sometime dont you think?

4. Jack Steven will be a player. Smith might be, Stanley needs 3 years in a gym...meanwhile a bunch of Brisbane 2nd and 3rd year players carved us to pieces. Luckily their carving got a little sloppy in the last quarter and we were able to take our chances a little better; Was the prime reason we got the four points..leads me to my last point

5. Brash youth will towel us up every time at our current state of form..every week we are described as slow and lacking "zip". Thats not a call to "play the kids" cos sadly I dont think right at this point we have many "brash youth" to play and I dont think our game plan would let them take the game on the way most other sides seem to think aint a bad thing

So there..,thats my vent..yep..we won..and its a bloody good thing..cos after the chameleons that are Adelaide next week at AAMI we play Carlton, Hawthorn and Collingwood. 13 goals from Roo, Milne and a couple of little cameos wont get us within cooee of those teams

[fugazi]

Agree with nearly all points. I reckon we do have some brash youth though, Lynch, Cripps, Walsh, Winmar and Ledger still to come into that side, and Archer only had 1 game....if we know we won't make it with the players we have, we should bite the bullet and play the kids, get some zip back........Jones is awful now, as is Kosi, Bakes, god love him, only kicks backwards, Dempster??

We can't keep playing the arm wrestle until 3Q time and sneak home, game plan anymore...too slow, tired, mentally sapped and unfit.

[Thinline]

I'm not one for making excuses but bloody damp.

We are not playing well. The conditions were tough, tho.

I'm only an hour down the road and it's humid as out back.

[Sainternist]

1. OK..who else can we try in the forward line?? At the moment we have Roo, Milne......and daylight

Gram needs to be in the forward line. It will save his career. He need someone else to fill his shoes at half-back.

[sasaint]

Frankly Archer is better than either Kosi or Stanley ATM. We are dying for another tall that can put on some defensive pressure, and Gamble sure doesn't look like the answer. I hope someone from Sandy can come thru soon. Other than that it looks like there a couple of opportunities for our current players to drop back to Sandy to find some form.

[sendmehomehappy]

Either elevate and play the Irishman now...front or back...I don't care which...or ship him back home and stop teasing us.

He cannot do worse than a Kosi....and a one legged Kosi at that.

We won with 21 players tonight. (maybe 20, including Stanley)

( I will cut Kosi some slack as it was his first game back after ankle surgery and almost no preseason)

[3rd generation saint]

We lost the tackle count, we lost the contested ball, we got beaten out of the centre.
The only thing we won was the game, which probably says more about Brisbane than us, mind you if they had a fit Jonathan Brown, we may have got smashed last night.
Agree with all points, but at least Gram is getting the ball and kicked two very good goals.
Gilbert needs to get his head right and forget about all the hoo ha over the last 6 months.
Stanley needs confidence as he has none in his ability, of which he has plenty.
Armitage is becoming more consistent, Steven's needs to do the same, yes he kicked two goals but he needs to do more around the ground.
Kosi needs fitness, if Sandy had played last Saturday, they would have played him, I bet the club was really impressed with how the VFL and AFL fixtures panned out with that gem.
Dal Santo needs more, and his team mates have to do more to help him shake his tag.
Walsh should be elevated and given a go, what's the point in keeping him here as a rookie, if we don't find out now, then we are wasting his time and the club's time.
Our tackling ability has disappeared, too many players just seem to be able to get free from us too easily.
We have no forward pressure, which probably isn't surprising seeing when we go forward, our forwards are still in the centre of the ground and aren't in the forward line to apply any pressure.
But we won, but hell we need to improve 200% to have any say in this premiership.

[matrix]

my observation was a poster from this forum, giving the camera a good look at his mug, upside down behind the goal umpire, after steven kicked that set shot.

nice work

[Eastern]

I reckon we have a beauty in Sippos coming through. What I saw of him at Sandy last week was very impressive although I agree that he isn't ready for AFL just yet !!

[BAM! (shhhh)]

My biggest worry right now is the sievelike structure up the middle on opposition kick ins.

My second biggest worry is the sieve like resistance to opposition runs up the middle after losing a contest.

The amount of pressure we're putting Sam Fisher and Zac Dawson under is ridiculous.

[saintsRrising]

I have been away and so have not actually seen the last two games.

However form and confidence can be fickle and contagious.

When a few players are off the boil, it can spread like wildfire and this seems to be the case at present.

This then opens up holes everywhere as football is sucha team game today that a few missing links makes a hhuge difference, and this in turn oppens up more holes.


While a lot of scorn is heaped on "role" players, what those posters seem to be missing is that all players are role players today. The days of individual footy is long gone. Todays football magnifies anythe weaknesses of players being off form or co0ncentration.


Now the above is not our only woes this season, but it is a big part of it.


There is also however no denying that other teams after two seasons are now better able to combat our gamepna, and that to date none of our younger players have really come in and stampred themselves. however it is good to see a few more getting games, but also then remember that players with less than 50 games will not be as good till they gain more experience. A bit of Catch 22 there.

[wasaintsfan]

my opinion is if were talking about our forward line the only one to show any worth this year is milne....

but i think positively

on thursday i was at the game and when we started we looked good kicked a few goals... then we did our slow it down stuff and they got right back in it...

which killed our confidence.... we like every other week then went backwards

but to the boys credit they put it together in the last.. and any one who says we just played kids well reality is... its the big time... the hardest aussie rules comp in the world... we played what they put out on a hoodoo ground and won

so to me this means

1. some of our bigger names started to lift
2. people like ray, steven, schieder found a fair bit of form
3. we got over that mental mountain of trying to get a win on the board and getting the feeling together at the club..

it might not have looked great... but the result could well change our entire direction for the year....


and to those brisbane supporters in my area.... made collingwood supporters look classy

although in their defence once one lot started
their crap "bagging roo/dal/milne/joey on a personal level(i think we all know what im talkng about) , whinging bad decisions, cheering like crazy when things went against us" well i kinda let them have it to the point they left the ground at 3/4 time(or atleast moved well away

[saint-stu]

1. OK..who else can we try in the forward line?? At the moment we have Roo, Milne......and daylight.

Really??

Schneiderman..
19 kicks, 6 handballs, 5 marks, 5 tackles, 3 goals

I really liked his work!

[bobmurray]

Now is the time to prepare for another tilt at the fag

Gee...imagine the headlines if we succeed

[Thinline]

Now is the time to prepare for another tilt at the fag

Gee...imagine the headlines if we succeed

We'd best keep an eye peeled for hidden cameras...

[Dr Spaceman]

Now is the time to prepare for another tilt at the fag

Gee...imagine the headlines if we succeed

We'd best keep an eye peeled for hidden cameras...

We'll be a chance if we keep poncing about on the field.

[Furphy]

We lost the tackle count, we lost the contested ball, we got beaten out of the centre.
The only thing we won was the game, which probably says more about Brisbane than us, mind you if they had a fit Jonathan Brown, we may have got smashed last night.
Agree with all points, but at least Gram is getting the ball and kicked two very good goals.
Gilbert needs to get his head right and forget about all the hoo ha over the last 6 months.
Stanley needs confidence as he has none in his ability, of which he has plenty.
Armitage is becoming more consistent, Steven's needs to do the same, yes he kicked two goals but he needs to do more around the ground.
Kosi needs fitness, if Sandy had played last Saturday, they would have played him, I bet the club was really impressed with how the VFL and AFL fixtures panned out with that gem.
Dal Santo needs more, and his team mates have to do more to help him shake his tag.
Walsh should be elevated and given a go, what's the point in keeping him here as a rookie, if we don't find out now, then we are wasting his time and the club's time.
Our tackling ability has disappeared, too many players just seem to be able to get free from us too easily.
We have no forward pressure, which probably isn't surprising seeing when we go forward, our forwards are still in the centre of the ground and aren't in the forward line to apply any pressure.
But we won, but hell we need to improve 200% to have any say in this premiership.

Soundslikethe old critique of the British Army,they lose every battle except the last one!