What This Match Proved?

[yipper]

So rodg, we should heed you're warning and ignore the likes of Buckley, every opposition coach who has lost to us this year...

do ya reckon that every opposition coach would have some other motive for saying that the side which just beat them is really good? how often do you hear a coach saying "we were beaten by a crap side"? well, except malthouse.

Yeah Malthouse always does that - however, they may just say they played well - or better than us on the day etc.. But to man, they have all been quite effusive in their praise of the Saints gameplan.

[kaos theory]

All this game showed, is exactly what we all knew....

We rely on our superstars too much. Every single week, our best players are the usual suspects. Hayes, Dal, Joey, Roo.

If these guys don't dominate, we're an ordinary team. Ross Lyon I fear, is falling for the 2 card trick that our supporters are also falling for. If these guys get injured, or even one or two of them get injured - we're rooted. Our eggs in all in one basket.

I read about our brilliant structures, our great depth, our great teamwork blah blah blah. What nonsense. In patches during games, when these guys go quite, what happens? Every time, what happens?

The opposition outplay us.

Where are the structures when Lenny Hayes isn't winning every clearance? Where is the depth when Dal isn't getting clear possessions? Where is the great team play when Joey isn't getting 20 long kicks?

I can't believe I'm reading about Carlton being a real test! You've got to be kidding.


We were very good early in the year. Our pressure and intensity was awesome. But over the past month, as this has dropped slightly and our opponents have turned it up - we're back in the pack.

Our coaching panel need to find something quick. Something other than our stars blitzing the opposition. Something other than our KPIs of tackling and contested footy. Because if Lenny Hayes gets hurt (god forbid) we will suddenly look like an average footy side when we drop in these areas.

Thank god Judd broke his nose.

We have alot of things to address over the next fortnight.


Huge pressure on the coaches. Getting a club to 12-0 and missing the GF would be a massive, massive failure. They have some work to do to make sure we get there. Because currently, I'd back Geelong by 40+ and I'd also take the Bulldogs over us.

Welcome back Roger!

True to form.....hasn't missed a beat. Agreed, we are in crisis!

[SainterK]

Fair enough, you have your opinion Violent Stool...

I am curious, who is playing the kind of football with an intensity that we should be emulating? You hint that Geelong are still capable of giving us a football lesson? Even Geelong are guilty of dropping in intensity, Richmond Melbourne and more recently West Coast.

I am not being sarcastic, I am just curious on how Geelong emerge as the front runners in your opinion, under a similar scrutiny?

[Devilhead]

Interesting comments by John Ralph today - Saints were a 6 goal better team on Friday night. Even when Blues pushed the Saints structure was better and solid. Blues got some lucky goals and took every opportunity to score. Saints murdered a couple of opportunities that would have put the game beyond Carlton's reach.

Hallelujah!!!!!!!!!

exactly my thoughts

They seemed to get a lot of lucky breaks

Lucky bounces, extreme pressure snapped goals scraping inside the post, missed marks by us, missed tackles by us, braindead shocking kicks across the ground by us and an interchange indiscretion by us kept them in the game

The 2nd quarter was the most frustrating quarter I have seen in a long time

They threw everything at us and played out of their skins

We were average at best and still won

[Raven]

Some people on this forum seem to get very, very defensive, aggressive and argumentative when they see who is posting, no matter what that person has written.

Is it too much to simply discuss a topic that you obviously don't agree with rather than jump down someone's throat because they expressed an opposite point of view? What are we, Richmond supporters, eating our own?

Personally I think the OP makes some very good points, and while I don't agree with all of it it'd be nice to discuss my views with the poster, but the thread seems a bit dead in the water after the last 2 and a bit pages and I no longer feel it's appropriate to do so.

And maybe it is RF, maybe it isn't, but really, does it matter? Who the hell gives a shiit?

[PJ]

And maybe it is RF, maybe it isn't, but really, does it matter?

Actually I'm sure it's my ex-wife trying to get up my nose.....your not getting a cent Alice and the kids hate your cooking.

[Teflon]

But you guys RF is totally correct.

We rely on our superstars to win.

Carlton rely on Judd, Stevens, Fevola, Murphy to win

Geelong rely on Ablett, Bartel, Scarlett, and Ling to win

Hawthorn rely on Buddy, Roughhead, Hodge, and Cyril to win.

etc, etc blah blah blah.

Thats why these players are called MATCHWINNERS

Oh wasn't it nice to see the story of the year, Zac Dawson, under extreme finals like pressure, kick the sealer of us.

spot on Joffa.

Dodgy you dress up in ladies underwear when you call yourself "Mr stool"....??...must be excited..

[Shaggy]

But you guys RF is totally correct.

We rely on our superstars to win.

Carlton rely on Judd, Stevens, Fevola, Murphy to win

Geelong rely on Ablett, Bartel, Scarlett, and Ling to win

Hawthorn rely on Buddy, Roughhead, Hodge, and Cyril to win.

etc, etc blah blah blah.

Thats why these players are called MATCHWINNERS

Oh wasn't it nice to see the story of the year, Zac Dawson, under extreme finals like pressure, kick the sealer of us.

spot on Joffa.

Dodgy you dress up in ladies underwear when you call yourself "Mr stool"....??...must be excited..

RF's point is correct as is Joffa's.

IMO the current Saints are the best team I have seen play for us. But Geelong is the best team I have ever seen. Johnston thinks the Dogs are the best team they have fielded in 20 years.

There is serious competition.

I think all the rest have no chance.

But we cannot afford injuries at the top level. Its obvious.

[PJ]

RF's point is correct

It's a pity he has to bury it in all the anti Ross Lyon crap.

[Milton66]

But you guys RF is totally correct.

We rely on our superstars to win.

Carlton rely on Judd, Stevens, Fevola, Murphy to win

Geelong rely on Ablett, Bartel, Scarlett, and Ling to win

Hawthorn rely on Buddy, Roughhead, Hodge, and Cyril to win.

etc, etc blah blah blah.

Thats why these players are called MATCHWINNERS

Oh wasn't it nice to see the story of the year, Zac Dawson, under extreme finals like pressure, kick the sealer of us.

spot on Joffa.

Dodgy you dress up in ladies underwear when you call yourself "Mr stool"....??...must be excited..

RF's point is correct as is Joffa's.

IMO the current Saints are the best team I have seen play for us. But Geelong is the best team I have ever seen. Johnston thinks the Dogs are the best team they have fielded in 20 years.

There is serious competition.

I think all the rest have no chance.

But we cannot afford injuries at the top level. Its obvious.

See... your love-buddy is still around.

Big Hug to you Shagmeister.

[Shaggy]

But you guys RF is totally correct.

We rely on our superstars to win.

Carlton rely on Judd, Stevens, Fevola, Murphy to win

Geelong rely on Ablett, Bartel, Scarlett, and Ling to win

Hawthorn rely on Buddy, Roughhead, Hodge, and Cyril to win.

etc, etc blah blah blah.

Thats why these players are called MATCHWINNERS

Oh wasn't it nice to see the story of the year, Zac Dawson, under extreme finals like pressure, kick the sealer of us.

spot on Joffa.

Dodgy you dress up in ladies underwear when you call yourself "Mr stool"....??...must be excited..

RF's point is correct as is Joffa's.

IMO the current Saints are the best team I have seen play for us. But Geelong is the best team I have ever seen. Johnston thinks the Dogs are the best team they have fielded in 20 years.

There is serious competition.

I think all the rest have no chance.

But we cannot afford injuries at the top level. Its obvious.

See... your love-buddy is still around.

Big Hug to you Shagmeister.

I write stuff from the heart. You give it a big hug. Good on you. But it would be nice to have some intellectual response

[felixleo]

To the op, your quite correct, having stars in the side is obviously detrimental to the rest of the list and we should trade them for b graders at the first opportunity.

[Shaggy]

To the op, your quite correct, having stars in the side is obviously detrimental to the rest of the list and we should trade them for b graders at the first opportunity.

tant

Thats not the point.

If the stars are missing at year end do you accept its fair we miss the GF. IMO of course.

For some reason some others think its unacceptable.

Luck is important to win a flag in a year. I have full confidence we will a flag under RL but not neccessarily this year because we are still learning. Geelong has done 4 * 10 consective wins. We have just achieved 1.

[felixleo]

To Shaggy,
Fair point and i would accept the side missing the G.F. if the side was decimated by injuries. We still have a long way to go till September and anything can happen. So we all should be little saints angels so the bad karma train doesn't run us over.

[Devilhead]

If the stars are missing at year end do you accept its fair we miss the GF. IMO of course.

If stars are missing from any team they will miss the Grand Final including Geelong

Other teams rely on their stars as much as we do

This is a really dumb stating the obvious thread

[saint patrick]

Does any side in the AFL win without their best players?

Look at Hawthorn. The Bulldogs early in the year.


Biggest load of tosh I've ever heard.



Your second point seems to be that the level of pressure and structure with the ball that we had in the first two months has dropped away.


Have you perhaps thought that no team in the history of this sport has ever been able to sustain that sort of footy for 25 weeks?

That the great sides have bad patches of form - but they are great sides because they keep winning?

We have kept winning. We have had every team throw everything at us, including the kitchen sink. And we have arguably been slightly down on form ourselves.

And we have kept winning.


Get some perspective FFS.

How many teams in AFL/VFL history have been 12-0? About 5.


You're picking flaws like we are sitting 16th with one win to our name.


Would you not rather the Saints to be hitting form 4 weeks out from the finals, and having their quiet patch now?

Do you seriously believe you can sustain and replicate the exact same level of pressure and intensity and performance every week?

And if you acknowledge that it's impossible, then do you not also acknowledge that the Saints have done remarkably well to be 12 and 0 with all the challenges thrown at us?

I flew back to Oz earlier in the year and was taken to the Carlton- Hwaks game at the G.

Franklin had a shocker, Hodge even worse. They didn't have Croad in the team at all.

But they won.

Like we have for the past 3 weeks without everyone firing Einstein

We are doing what good sides like Geelong have done for the past few years...

Even when they are not at their best they seem to find a way to win...

Its just that some are too anal to appreciate it

[Shaggy]

If the stars are missing at year end do you accept its fair we miss the GF. IMO of course.

If stars are missing from any team they will miss the Grand Final including Geelong

Other teams rely on their stars as much as we do

This is a really dumb stating the obvious thread

Its never stupid to state the obvious particurly when the masses do not want to hear it because the expectations are up.

But Geelong is the best team I have ever seen so I expect us to lose this year.

Next year I think is ours when Geelong back off.

I am happy with that. R u?

[Ghost Like]

I'm just interesting in discussing it with people who watch the footy. Because where I am, no one does!

Sounds to me like you're in a room on your own.

[ace]

Have you forgotten the password to log in as RF?

It was what many are calling the game of the year, we are 12-0 and in need of the break.... p1ss off.

Do you think the AFL will give us a week off before the Finals start too?

We better hope so.

No, but after we win the qualifying final in the first week of the finals they will give us the second week of the finals off.
Then refreshed we will win the next two matches.

[kaos theory]

Good ol roger knows how to keep a thread going...

To follow joffaboys point:

How many flags would have North won in the 90s without Wayne Carey?

- Maybe they should hand them back, because they relied on a star.

Would the Eagle won a flag without their trio of stars judd, cousins, kerr?

- yep, accroding to rog, they shouldn't win a flag

Obviously we are in serious trouble, according to roger.....

But the REAL question is, what does rog suggest for a solution? Or more to the point, is there someone who maybe had an association with this club in the recent past that could recognize our weaknesses and coach us better?

[bergholt]

hate to get in the way of your fun, but let's look at the substance of the argument.

define "star" as "matchwinner"; someone who can have a big game and pull the rest of the team along with them. the question really is who has more/better matchwinners, then.

potential saints matchwinners (12 or 13):

dal santo, s fisher, gardiner, gilbert, goddard, gram, hayes, koschitzke, maguire (?), milne, montagna, riewoldt, schneider

maguire i reckon can be a matchwinner but is he going to play again ever?

potential cats matchwinners (15):

ablett, bartel, chapman, corey, enright, hawkins, s johnson, kelly, ling, mackie, mooney, ottens, scarlett, selwood, stokes

i'll accept that you can debate hawkins, but against brissie he had 20 touches, 7 marks, 9 tackles, 3 goals; this is a game we'd be very happy with from kosi.

so it looks like the cats have the edge, which is what i'd expect. they have more players who can pop up when others are having a bad day and really pull the team over the line. we still have quite a few, though. each of the teams will focus on keeping down the matchwinners - simple.

[MC Gusto]

Oh dear - Rodger the "expert" is back on here telling us all that Buckley, Matthews, Pagan, Sheedy etc know nothing at all. But Rodg does!! Did you check the Stats again did you Rodg?? You really know absolutely nothing about footy at all do you. You just like stirring the pot don't you. That what gets you going - cos it sure isn't you're footy nous.

Rodger?

WTF are you talking about?

You were outed by a mod as having the same IP address as Rodge... unless he's your boyfriend, the jigg is up champ.

Spare me.

Mods may be good at moderating, but they aren't competent in IT.

Ask this mod how dynamic internet protocol addressing actually works.


Considering I aren't in Australia, login in an Internet Cafe when I can and VPN to through a firewall into a private network, I find it very difficult to believe the mods can tell you anything about my NIC.

And as anyone with a skerrick of IT understanding would know, your NIC is what gets assigned an IP address. It's not 'my IP. It's the address that the DHCP server this site uses has assigned to my NIC so it can transfer internet protocol data to it.

The problem is, as I explained above, it's not my NIC that the DHCP server sees. I'd assume that very, very few people actually log in directly from their own PC to the internet. Therefore, the MAC address the DHCP server sees isn't the NIC on their PC at all.

Therefore, having the same 'IP' as you put it, means absolutely nothing at all.

absolute crap same ip is same pc. If you make your ip static it still doesn't disguise the fact that you are coming from the same pc and internet connection. Fact

[Violent Stool]

Good ol roger knows how to keep a thread going...

To follow joffaboys point:

How many flags would have North won in the 90s without Wayne Carey?

- Maybe they should hand them back, because they relied on a star.

Would the Eagle won a flag without their trio of stars judd, cousins, kerr?

- yep, accroding to rog, they shouldn't win a flag

Obviously we are in serious trouble, according to roger.....

But the REAL question is, what does rog suggest for a solution? Or more to the point, is there someone who maybe had an association with this club in the recent past that could recognize our weaknesses and coach us better?

Again, I'm going to assume you're referring to me when you say 'rog'. I seriously don't know why, and find it a little funny now. You guys seem a little obsessed with the Roger Fox guy.

Anyway, I'm not saying teams don't deserve flags if they rely on one or two players. All I'm saying is that when it's as obvious as it is with us, it's a worry because you're very clearly putting your flag hopes on the knees and hammies of one or two human beings.

Geelong have been braining teams without Ling at times, they lost Ablett, they won without Mooney, they've been winning without their Captain too.

What worries me is that Lyon talks up KPIs and stats as a measure for our performance. He also refers to these KPIs as reasons for a win.
If he honestly thinks this, we're in strife.

The reason for our wins is freak superhuman efforts by Dal or Roo, or Joey or Lenny each week. In our best players, it's the same 4 every week.

Now having said that, to have 4 very good players is great. It's better than having 1. The problem is that even with 4 very good players playing very good footy all year, we're looking shabby against average teams.

When you have 4 players as good as ours, all playing very good footy, no one should get within 10 goals of you.

If Ablett, Bartel and Selwood had 30 touches each, and Mooney took 13 grab and kicked 5 goals - do you think Carlton would geting 9 points of them?

If Hodge, Mitchell and Rioli had 30 touches each, and Franklin kicked 5 - do you think Carlton would get within 9 points of them?

This is the problem we face. We're getting great footy from our great players, and we're not overly convincing. This tells me that everyone else isn't doing enough, and are just tagging along for the ride.

If Lyon can't see this, we're gone. I'm just hoping he's being coy in the media.

I'm surprised the fans don't see this. And the ones that do, I'm surprised they aren't concerned by it.


Anyway, it's very late here. I'm going home to bed.

[bergholt]

absolute crap same ip is same pc. If you make your ip static it still doesn't disguise the fact that you are coming from the same pc and internet connection. Fact

yeah, you're wrong.

[Mr Magic]

hate to get in the way of your fun, but let's look at the substance of the argument.

define "star" as "matchwinner"; someone who can have a big game and pull the rest of the team along with them. the question really is who has more/better matchwinners, then.

potential saints matchwinners (12 or 13):

dal santo, s fisher, gardiner, gilbert, goddard, gram, hayes, koschitzke, maguire (?), milne, montagna, riewoldt, schneider

maguire i reckon can be a matchwinner but is he going to play again ever?

potential cats matchwinners (15):

ablett, bartel, chapman, corey, enright, hawkins, s johnson, kelly, ling, mackie, mooney, ottens, scarlett, selwood, stokes

i'll accept that you can debate hawkins, but against brissie he had 20 touches, 7 marks, 9 tackles, 3 goals; this is a game we'd be very happy with from kosi.

so it looks like the cats have the edge, which is what i'd expect. they have more players who can pop up when others are having a bad day and really pull the team over the line. we still have quite a few, though. each of the teams will focus on keeping down the matchwinners - simple.

I find it really interesting that you claim Ling and Scarlett as matchwinners and yet don't include Hudghton and Jones who basicly do the same job for us?

I'm also surprized that you wouldn't consider Luke Ball's tackling and clearance work worthy enough to be included in this list?

And have Mackie, Stokes and Hawkins shown more this year than Ray?