Roos/Lyon owe football an apology.

[Dan Warna]

if we'd kicked 15.6 instead of 6.15 folks...

a fair few sitters were missed.

[Mr Magic]

Well I reckon it was a vast improvement on last year.
HOw many times last season were we in a similar position at 3/4 time and got run over? How many games did we lose from that position?

Sure it was ugly, but remember that Shytney have mastered that particular game style and only really use it when they feel their opponents are a superior attacking team.

[The Peanut]

Sydney are a pretty good outfit so I guess RL wanted to play their style when they closed us down.

All I can say about the 3 nab games and R1 is that us old blokes will be dead by the Grand Final if all of the games throughout the season are as tight at these - but as I said to a guy sitting next to me at the start of the match "I will be happy with a one pont win"

[Saints Premiers 2008]

the guy wanted the opposition danger player shut down...he got that...

good teams win scrappy games...big positive...our tackling and clearance work (from my drunken haze) was much improved...it was a major buzz to see the amount of clearances we won in the first quarter...

again i was drunk so a few things...gehrig didnt play???jarryn played on who??im assuming l.fish played...who didnt???

[james rose]

fish destroyed blakes usual man

[Saints Premiers 2008]

ah good...so more of a midfield tagger that we saw in the closing rounds last year????

this i like...liking the fishs' role...

[saintpaul74]

if we'd kicked 15.6 instead of 6.15 folks...

a fair few sitters were missed.

how a team can go from 4.3 at qtr time and finish with 6.15 amazes me.

3 qtrs to kick 2.12 is appalling

[The_Dud]

worst game of football i have ever seen live

and this includes the Essendon and Kangroos games last year

[Saints Premiers 2008]

worst game of football i have ever seen live

and this includes the Essendon and Kangroos games last year

big call...the dons game was painful

[st.byron]

Ok 4pts is 4pts.....Win is a win etc etc

But that was one of the worst games of football I have ever seen.
Just imagine if we lost


later in the year the 4pts will be valuable...

agree Chook. One of the worst games of footy I've been to. Bloody awful as a spectacle.

[Spinner]

Ok 4pts is 4pts.....Win is a win etc etc

But that was one of the worst games of football I have ever seen.
Just imagine if we lost


later in the year the 4pts will be valuable...

Agreed. Worst game ever....And yes I was at the Sydney Draw & Hawthorn Game....

Last night was deplorable.

[CURLY]

The thing is Roos has won a flag and got damn close to another with this style of play. All the experts out there saying we should keep to our own game plan obviously dont remember Geelong flooding against us and StKilda did nothing about it. We got beat and looked terrible in doing so. The Swans game plan is more than a flood its a complete game of one on one and they are the best at it. Yes the game was played to there style but remember we adapted and beat them at it a big positive I think.

[milney044]

I'm more worried about our goal kicking accuracy than the game plan. If we can manage 20 scoring shots with a defensive style game plan then personally i don't think that's much of a concern. What is a concern is the fact that of these 20 shots, only 6 majors were scored. This is an area i was hoping we'd really improve on. Lucky its early days and we can hope things will change from last year.

Come on boys, more goals than behinds occasionally would be nice.
Can't complain too much though, still came away with the 4 points, a game we most probably would have lost last year.

[Hawkesbury Saint]

Agreed, the type of footy we played will not win a GF.

But hopefully the 4 points will continue to build so that we have a crack at getting to a GF!

There will be lessons along the way and improvements to make. No gameplan survives 12 months. It will have to adapt to face the challenges that each side can bring to it.

Ross will have to stop and reasses as the season progresses. Why shouldn't the first reassessment start after Round 1?

We won! The 4 points are worth heaps. So much better than a heart-breaking loss. Maybe the boys will realise how lucky we were to hold on and come out with a more concentrated plan to break whatever negative tactics Carlton can dream up.

[Eastern]

Agreed, the type of footy we played will not win a GF.

Be careful with these statements !!

I remember a Greek bloke with a bit of influence at the AFL saying the same about Sydney a couple of years ago. They proved him WRONG !!

[Iceman234]

I wasn't at the Hawks/Saints game last year.

But I was there last night and while I'm rapt with the four points I dislike sitting through that sh1tty scrappy play.

WB/Crows today ended up in such a similar result but with 70 points more for each team - and it was exhilirating to watch.

I know - belt me for rubbishing it - but much better value for money as a consumer seeing what I saw today.


Hopefully we come out and play a free-flowing game and smash the Blues next week and this week will be just a distant memory.

[Moccha]

I really don't give a s*** as long as it delivers the ultimate success. Only good teams can play that style as it's physically demanding and accountable footy. At least we know that defensively they're aren't too many better at that than the Saints.

[barks4eva]

We proved we can beat Sydney at their game, now let's beat Geelong at their's.

[The_Dud]

We proved we can beat Sydney at their game, now let's beat Geelong at their's.

I'd rather beat Sydney at OUR game, and beat Geelong at OUR game......

[Iceman234]

We proved we can beat Sydney at their game, now let's beat Geelong at their's.

I'd rather beat Sydney at OUR game, and beat Geelong at OUR game......

Ditto

I love the four points but let's play our OWN game.

Let's set up our OWN style.

Brilliant set of midfielders receiving from quality back, delivering to big strong marking forwards.

But no - let's play Sydney style against Sydney, Geelong style against Geelong. Let's play Melbourne style against Melbourne, and Carlton style against Carlton.

Let's flog these teams playing Saints style and let them try to keep up.

Or aren't we brave enough to do that?

FFS let them come to us.

[The_Dud]

right on brother!

[Saints_45]

If a team decides to flood back and also cram up the midfield then what options does that leave us? If we kick it long and don't win that contest all of a sudden numbers are with them and they run it back with interest. If we push the spare players up the ground we end up cramming it up more and leaving us even more open to a quick counter attack. We can play our style as long as teams dont over flood.

These days you have to pick and choose your moments to attack and make sure you are clean when you do that.

Positive is that really only Sydney and then ourselves have tried a flood so far in Rd 1 with most teams playing a running free style type of game. For many big key forwards (Brown, Richo, Rocca, Buddy) to kick 5 or more goals hopefully shows some teams will try to play like this. I think this is the way Ross is going and should suit us with the forward structure we can employ.

Lets see what next week brings for both us V Carl and also whoever Sydney play as I would be pretty sure the first 15 mins is more what we are about this year.

[snoopygirl]

I don't think we can expect to win games on our terms until we are the hunted not the hunters. Until then we need to beat the likes of Sydney, Geelong etc by playing their game. You know, the old anything you can do, we can do better. Show other sides that it doesn't matter what game style you wish to employ we're able to counter it.

Next year is when we can force teams to play catch up.

[bigcarl]

I love the four points but let's play our OWN game.

Let's set up our OWN style.

Brilliant set of midfielders receiving from quality backs, delivering to big, strong marking forwards.

But no - let's play Sydney style against Sydney, Geelong style against Geelong. Let's play Melbourne style against Melbourne, and Carlton's style against Carlton.

Let's flog these teams playing Saints style and let them try to keep up.

Or aren't we brave enough to do that?

FFS let them come to us.

hear hear. well said.

set the agenda rather than respond to it.

[GeorgeYoung27]

We set the agenda in the 1st quarter and they responded to it.

There was something wierd happening with kicking under the roof on Sat night. It was the same for both sides. We kicked 2.12 after quarter time and kicked 0.8 at the Coventry end.

If there was not a man-on-man kick in at both ends 28 times over the night, the game would have appeared much better. We made the better attacks on goal and blame should be placed on Kosi, Gardiner, Harvey, Milne etc for the easy misses.

We reacted better than we did against the Bulldogs late last year in a similar game.