Notes from the game: 2014 Round 16 Gold Coast

Disgraceful.

Team                    Q1      Q2      Q3      Q4      Final
Gold Coast Suns         2.2     5.3     8.7     11.14   80
Collingwood Magpies     4.3     6.8     6.13    10.15   75 

You can read a pretty good match report here. The Footy Bogan doesn't have the stomach for it. The only thing I would disagree with Luke Reynolds about, is that my attitude to the game would not have changed had Young marked and goaled "in the dying moments of the game". It would still have been a disgraceful performance by Collingwood, and my mood would have been just as black.

Make sure you read the comments.

Lights

[I can't readily think of a generic word for lowlights and highlights.]

About half way through Q2, with the score 39-20 our way, the Bogan remarked to the room (MR and Matt) that we'd had the play in our half for quite a few minutes (about 7) without any impact on the scoreboard; that the situation was getting precarious because if the ball went down the other end for a goal against the run of play, it would be demoralising, causing a significant impact. The ball soon ventured into the Gold Coast forward line, but we dodged a bullet as Sam Day only managed a behind. 3 minutes later Charlie Dixon kicked a goal. Our disgraceful response was 10 behinds in a row, over the period to 3-quarter time. We kicked a disgraceful zero goals 5 behinds in the third quarter.

Travis Cloke did not score after half time.

26 minutes into the second quarter, Seedsman ran through the centre bouncing 5 times and landed the ball with Cloke, a short distance from goal. He missed. 2 minutes later, Sam Day goaled. Disgraceful.

We lost the second quarter by two points and the third by 17.

Our disgraceful return from the last quarter was a gain of a single point (4.2-3.7) - against a team who had lost Ablett in the third quarter, had already subbed out Dixon with a leg; and lost Trent McKenzie and Sean Lemmens leaving them with zero subs!

Good news

Honestly, I can't think of any, except this: since the Suns lost Ablett with more than a quarter to go, and still beat us, perhaps we can finally put the Ablett myth to bed.

The arguments about Ablett centred on his possessions and impact. He'd averaged 46 disposals against us in the last three games. In this game he had 19, kicked zero goals and played 56% of game time. Either we tagged him out of the game, or he had a bad day, or we injured him out of the game. Whatever it was, he wasn't what he'd been in the last three games. And we still lost. It would take a moron of climate-change-denier proportions to cling to the Ablett myth.

I reckon the Suns could have played the whole game without Ablett and still won on the showing of the Collingwood players. My only reservation is that there might still have been an Ablett-in-your-head effect. You know the sort of thing. The players go in thinking, "Oh no! Ablett's playing. We don't stand a chance." - and then play accordingly.

In other words, a focus on Ablett means that each player takes his eye off the ball.

I said it before the game in my previous post which ended with this:

But, don't let that be the focus of today's game. If you allow that to
distract you, you will almost certainly repeat the lunacy of last
year.

And we did.

Any other good news belongs to the Suns.

Changes

From last week's team, we lost Ball and Elliott to injury and dropped Jesse White. In came Grundy (7 disposals, 1 mark, 3 tackles, 10 hitouts, no goals, no behinds (presumably he replaced White and Elliott)), Langdon and Marley Williams (both defenders). Where did we expect to get our goals from?

I've heard our defence in this game criticised, but the Suns only kicked 11 goals. We probably did let them kick a few too many, but I don't think the problem was defence. Defence might have won it for us on another day, but on this day, even Toovey made errors.

We lost the clearances (30-39). Thank heavens for Beams, a massive 10 clearances (Ablett 3, Swallow 8). We lost marks (85-99), disposals (332-378), won the hitouts (44-23, Witts 33), won I50s (52, 43), won the frees (19-13), had the same number of scoring shots.

The normally accurate Beams kicked 0.2; the recently accurate Cloke 2.3; Swan mirrored Beams; Young managed 2.3 plus a critical dropped mark (he hung on to 8 others, as many as Cloke).

Hope

What hope?

   As of Monday 7 July 2014

   Name                Injury     Status
   Luke Ball           Calf/back  Test
   Marty Clarke        Concussion Test
   Sam Dwyer           Groin      Test
   Jamie Elliott       Hamstring  Test
   Alex Fasolo         Foot       Test
   Kyle Martin         Calf       Test
   Adam Oxley          Ankle      1 week
   Ben Sinclair        Hamstring  1 week
   Matthew Scharenberg Feet       1 week
   Nathan Freeman      Hamstring  2-3 weeks
   Quinten Lynch       Broken leg 2-3 weeks
   Ben Hudson          Shoulder   7 weeks
   Nathan Brown        Shoulder   Season

"Reid sustained a corked calf ... and is a chance to play again this weekend."

The wrap

Don't expect any good news until the ratio of seasoned players to newbies improves. [Note to self: calculate what the ratio should be.]

We are now suffering from a triple whammy: the newbies are too numerous; too many seniors are below par (Swan, Lumumba, Blair, even Goldsack had only 7 possessions and I think minimal impact in this game, Toovey (4 clangers)); and our forward line is sputtering. These combine to lower the confidence of each player both in himself and in the team.

Sources

http://afltables.com/afl/stats/games/2014/042020140705.html
http://www.theroar.com.au/2014/07/07/the-wash-up-of-gary-abletts-injury/
http://www.collingwoodfc.com.au/news/2014-07-07/injury-update-reid-in-the-clear