I'm not sure whether JB would consider me a "usual suspect" or not but, anyway, I was stoked about the win - posted to that effect on some thread or other on here - and am still smiling this morning. But, on reflection, I still have significant pessimism about where we are going ATM.
I saw some things during the game that gave me more hope than I have had for a while. It was particularly wonderful to see the continuing improvement in Luke Ball: he's starting to get back to the player that used to be spoken of in the same breath as Judd, Hodge and co. BJ also had far and away his best game since his injury. I hope Lenny is too badly injured.
I also saw lots of other good things: you only had to see the purposeful and confident way McEvoy ran onto the ground and immediately began attacking the ball to know that he is definitely going to be a player. (Others could see it too, which I presume was the whole point of Pavlich giving him a spray.) I also thought our defence looked purposeful and better organised than of late: Dempster is beginning to impress me more than I ever thought possible, and even Gwilt didn't look entirely out of place IMO.
That said, I'm sorry but I'm not going to get carried away by a game in which we were clearly the better team, where we converted all bar one or two of our gettable shots at goal, and yet we only scored a grand total of 65 points and spent large periods of the game with all our players at the defensive end of the field. It was Swans-style crap and, to be frank, we were lucky to get away with it. Riewoldt played his best game of the season last night, yet Pavlich looked a far more accomplished and complete player of a broadly similar type. And the reason for this is not that Riewoldt isn't as good as Pavlich (I would rate them more or less equally), but because he is not used properly by our coach.
During the second quarter, Harvey comprehensively outcoached Lyon. We looked gone for all money at half time. I can't entirely explain why Freo didn't run over the top of us in the second half: clearly they have their own problems, perhaps they weren't trying all that hard, and our players certainly made a stirling effort to keep it all together.
But I'm starting to come around to rodgerfox's point of view on our game plan. Last night looked like it was getting close to the best we can do in playing the Lyon style, and it enabled us to beat a bottom four team by 8 points in a low scoring game in which a couple of additional free kicks to them might have enabled them to steal it.
I'm sorry, it just isn't particularly inspiring stuff. Those who think otherwise are wearing rose coloured glasses.
Still, any win is a good win at this point in time. And it was great to see the boys genuinely excited after the game.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."
- Jonathan Swift