Team Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Final Port Adelaide 5.3 6.6 8.11 9.12 66 Collingwood 1.1 5.5 7.6 9.9 63
What went wrong? Let me count the ways.
Preparation
The Footy Bogan has previously lamented the failure to prepare on the part of the coaching staff.
Surely the first task each week is to get a weather forecast. This is Australia, a land of droughts and flooding rains. Further, our huge continent is subject to vastly different climates especially when the team travels interstate - in this case arriving intestate ie without a will to fight.
Collingwood didn't actually turn up at the Adelaide oval until the second quarter. Having given a Stawell Gift handicap start to Port Adelaide, Collingwood finally set about running them down. The handicapper got it about right: the result was almost a draw. From then, we kicked 56-33. Despite the Pies dominating once they got started, the handicap proved too great in the end.
This is not about bagging Elliott, who is a class act in my book. But it does support the proposition that Collingwood players were not switched on at first. At 12:50, Elliott missed a mark metres in the clear, a mark you would back him to take 10 out of 10 at short odds. At that stage it was our only I50 of the match. The ball went down the other end, and, although not strictly a direct result of the dropped mark, Port Adelaide kicked its third unanswered goal.
At selection, the club announced that the team would be unchanged from the Hawthorn game. My reservations from last week still stand. Given that rain was predicted, were the coaches aware of the dangers of going in top heavy? I have to believe not. However wonderful Moore is going to be, could we afford all three of Cloke, White and Moore in the forward line? My answer would have been no. In the event, Moore was often seen in defence, but was that the game plan going in, or was Buckley's hand forced by the inappropriate selections?
However it got worse - and this is before the first bounce. Marley was unable to take his place in the selected side ("due to family reasons"). Well if our defence was in trouble last week (due to the loss of Goldsack), alarm bells should have been ringing everywhere. Here's what Collingwood had to choose from:
Emg: Brodie Grundy, Ben Kennedy, Matthew Scharenberg
You'd normally expect the choice to be like-for-like, so what's wrong with this picture? Collingwood chose Grundy. As a replacement for Williams! In a team that already looked top heavy!
In the third quarter we had the unhelpful match-up of Frost against Grey or Wingard. Surely Kennedy would have been better.
I guess they could have started Grundy as the sub, but that would have simply reduced it to a half cock-up. Why did they not choose Kennedy? Clearly, Williams has well and truly overtaken Kennedy, but Kennedy is a much better fit than Grundy.
Port went into the match with 5 changes - only one forced - from their previous match. Were our players warned to expect a stronger outfit? Or did they assume that Port would play to its ladder position?
How's that working for you?
In the event, De Goey was named the sub. He came on for the injured Broomhead in the third quarter. Nevertheless, he managed - in less than half a game - 16 disposals (more than any tall bar Langdon), a goal, 5 tackles, 5 I50 and several score involvements. Need I say more?
Who kicked the goals? Westhoff, Schulz, 1 each. Monfries (midget) 1, Gray (midget) 2, Wingard(midget) 3, Impey (midget) 1. See any pattern?
What about Collingwood? Pretty much the same: Cloke 0, White, Witts, 1 each. Adams (midget), De Goey (midget), Fasolo (midget), Oxley, Pendlebury, Crisp (tallish) 1 each. (White was not really needed for his goal. Adams had kicked from inside the centre square to a vacant goal square, the Port players had fallen over, it would have dribbled through. White got a feather on it from 2m.)
Collingwood finally got an opportunity after a clanger from Port. At 7:15, White missed a regulation goal from our second F50 entry. Score: 26-1. What is it with Collingwood forwards?
It took Pendlebury on his non-preferred after a chain of really botched handballs to kick our first goal with 6:38 left.
Collingwood were lucky to go into the first break only 7-33. Port Adelaide kicked half its total score in the first quarter.
And then
In Q2, Collingwood kicked 4.4 to a single behind to draw level with 7:17 left to play. Along the way, Blair missed a regulation set shot. Once again, the Pies kicked themselves out of a game. Even so, they found Port more difficult than either Hawthorn or Fremantle. Maybe it's the accumulation.
A few minutes later, Fasolo missed a regulation shot on the run. In my 2015 Mid-season Review - Players I rated him 7/10. In the last couple of games, he would have slipped down from there. Against Port he didn't get much of the ball and he didn't do much with it - though he did have 7 tackles. Nevertheless, his score was enough to put the Pies in front for the first time; it was also their last hurrah for the half. Port kicked a further 1.2 to go into the long break 7 points up.
In Q3, Oxley missed an opportunity to capitalise on one of Collingwood's few coherent forward thrusts. Perhaps there were better options.
To add to their late start, Collingwood went missing for a large part of the third quarter letting Port pepper the goals for 2.4. Finally, with 8:09 left to play, Swan kicked off the ground to De Goey in the clear at CHF; kick, mark to Fasolo, goal. In cameos, it looked so easy.
Interestingly, watching the replay, despite knowing the result, some of Collingwood's play was more frustrating to watch than when watching live. The dominant sense was of a lack of cohesion except for infrequent passages. Opportunities started when old hands injected some creativity or flashes of brilliance.
Yet again I was struck by the notion that our ruckmen often try be too cute. Conditions like these call for as big a hit in our direction as possible, rather than a dinky tap straight down, trying to pick out a single player in a crowd.
Q4, 17:18, Grey has just scored a behind from a set shot after pushing Toovey in the back and marking. Langdon's kick in is marked by Port at 60 and sent back I50 again. A passage of bad play starting with Sidebottom's indecisive kick results in an uncontested mark to Wingard near the behind post, on his wrong side. The resultant goal could be counted as the final nail in the coffin, the coup de grace. Port did not trouble the scorers again. For the remainder of the quarter, the Pies could only make up 15 of the 18 points between the teams.
De Goey kicked a goal off the ground from 13m. Then Blair marked 30m out on about 45 degrees. His kick went out on the full. That affects the whole team negatively. From the return kick the ball lands with Adams, further out, worse angle and under pressure, yet he drills it. 9:46.
7:43, a soccer off the ground hits the post. The momentum is with Collingwood. 7:10, scrambly play, Moore kicks into a player, the ball ricochets to Pendlebury inside 50. Time stands still as usual, he assesses his options, goes one way, then another. Finally he handballs to Cloke under pressure. The moment is lost. 6:00, Crisp takes possession in the clear just outside 50 near the boundary. He sets it up for a mark 15m or 20m out. Port punch it through for a behind.
Some of the Collingwood players are making panic-driven decisions like kicking to Blair 1 on 2.
On the bench, the coaches are running out of interchanges.
3:24, throw-in on the wing, some deft footwork by Sidebottom, he retrieves his own ball and handballs to Crisp. A long kick into a sparsely populated F50 about 40 out, a 2 on 2, the ball runs on, Elliott and O'Shea contest, O'Shea punches it through.
The ball went inside Collingwood's F50 4 more times for no result.
With 6 seconds to play, Langdon picks up the ball at half back and bombs into F50 from the wing. The clock ticks down as the ball covers 50m or more, Elliott launches himself high, but the ball spills from his hands to Cloke as the siren sounds.
With so many opportunities, how did we lose this?
And also
Adams had a particularly good game - marred by an incident in the third quarter. Oh, well, with Adams looking at a lengthy holiday, Buckley will get to blood more players.
Perspective
That's three games in a row we've lost through inadequate conversion. Cloke has kicked bags against the weaker teams: 7 against the Dees, 5 against the Saints and Giants. When is the Collingwood brains trust going to sort out the problems in the forward line? At the moment, neither of our big forwards is cost-effective. Cloke is leading the goal kicking at Collingwood because he gets so many opportunities.
The wrap
I certainly don't agree with his reasons, but Stephen's prediction for the rest of the year is looking ominously prescient. Most likely, since Buckley seems happy with the course he is on, we will repeat last year, going 8-3 in the first half of the season and 3-8 in the second as we float gently down the ladder and finish the season clearly out of the eight. What ignominy for a team which has certainly shown in the past 3 games that it can match it with the big guys, but just can't kick straight.
The saddest part is that as the losses mount the players will lose confidence so we won't even have the consolation of watching them play well.
Sources, Notes, Footnotes, References
http://www.triplem.com.au/melbourne/sport/afl/news/2015/7/colliingwood-marley-williams-pulls-out-of-tonights-match-against-port-adelaide/
http://afltables.com/
http://www.footywire.com/afl/footy/ft_match_statistics?mid=6081
http://collingwoodbugle.blogspot.com.au/
Dear Mr TFB
ReplyDeleteI have not yet been brave enough to watch the replay (having missed the actual game due to an alternative religion).
I am not sure I will ever watch it – your summary is so believable and intense. I had listened to the post game summary on the radio on the night. I have never heard a team so rubbished as being totally inept. The winners were lauded for their outstanding game.
But...
but.... the commentators could give no votes to Taylor Adams despite 38 possessions (and one extra). Even if he has erred, he should get credit where it is due.
The Pies lost by the slimmest of margins. If ONE of the blots in our game turns into a goal, what then? Are we now champions instead of duds? Do we now get votes from the commentators? Would the coaches have now been called brilliant, to have won despite all being wrong? A push in the back not paid, you say. (I refer you back to what I wrote re the game the previous week, where the umpires took a new and different interpretation of the holding the ball rule into the game).
This concept has always been a fascination for me. Sure, winners are grinners.
Of interest was the loss by the reserves to the Bulldog reserves – from the little I saw on the video the main problem was we didn't have enough talls on the ground! How peculiar is that!
Floreat Pica
M
ReplyDeletethe main problem was we didn't have enough talls
Delicious irony!
Dear Mr TFB
ReplyDeleteAnother little bit to add to the picture.
I have now watched the game on TV.
Main points:
Despite the commentators on 774, it was a terrific game of football in extraordinarily bad conditions
the result could have gone either way, Pendlebery's slider to the goals hits the goal post; White not paid an obvious free immediately in front of goals, Blair blowing it. Witts not being paid a mark earlier on.
It was a selection error and Ben Ken should have played
774 commentators went on and on that the standard of the Pies was so bad. Not at the game I was watching. Anything the port FF kicked would have not occurred if the AFL had rubbed him out for a week as they later said he should have got..
Relecting on the Adams free: The immediate seconds prior to the reportable incident they are near one another and don't have any antagonism against each other. The ball goes to ground and a scrimmage begins – still nothing much. Then Westhof who is underneath pulls the hair at the nape of the neck of Adams. Adams immediately reacts then overreacts - two weeks is a fair result.
I would like to compare that to that corker Sam Michell and to Buddy Franklin – recidivists who escape with slight taps to the hands
The idiot commentator who couldn't give Adams a vote but lauded Ollie Wines needs his one eyed glasses checked. If you happen to lower your standards and ask me to vote, I would have given it to Crisp and Adams
I pray we can bounce back next week.
Floreat Pica
M