Need to learn to take the heat out of the game

[Bluthy]

Last night was a great example of a big flaw with the young Saints at the moment. 8 goals straight in the 2nd qtr to Geelong! When it starts going against you like that they need to calm it down. Little passes taking marks and going back over the mark and taking as much time as possible. Go backwards if you have to. Take some of the steam out of the opposition and lets you regroup. We fell right into their trap by over using handball to try and get through the geelong press and every time it came undone. The faster the game went the more Geelong loved it. We've seen it with North and Port in first quarters. Those big blowout quarters are so demoralising and can make the game over after just one quarter.

I think its a big learning to come out of this year - practise the art of slowing the game down when momentum is against you. All the best teams do that.

[Junction Oval]

Maintaining possession is one thing, but Geelong were playing close man-on-man and were crunching our younger guys in the packs - difficult to maintain possession under such constant attack by physically bigger bodies.

We weren't helped by our poor disposal as usual - by both hand and foot!

[Bluthy]

True, Geelong did a phenomenal press all over the ground - fired up after their loss to Adelaide and the injured footballer. I thought Watters panicked a bit by flooding their fwd 50. With Rooey injured we had virtually no fwd structure to kick to - when I saw them bomb it to Milne who had 2 cats players on him I despaired. And that ground is pretty hard to play with the breeze and ground shape. Learning the composure under pressure to keep calm and keep possession will come from experience. Hopefully recruit some more skilful players. Maybe go down the Hawthorn route and get some left-footers who see to have piercing kicks.

[supersaints]

Agree we got crunched badly, so much pressure on the players meant our disposal worse than usual.
Personally I like the way the young players backed themselves and hit up through the center, the scoreboard made me have flashes of the old days, when we were regularly Beaten by 100 points. Not a good feeling
Butt besides the disappointment I saw some good signs in the first quarter.