Notes from the game: 2017 Round 11 Fremantle

The Pies make it three in a row.

Team            Q1      Q2      Q3      Q4      Final
Fremantle       2.1     5.5     10.6    12.13   85
Collingwood     3.5     7.9     11.13   15.15   105 

Sandilands was a late withdrawal. Initially Freo were slight favourites, but after this, the Pies were.

The travesty of this game was that Freo was ever in it. The game was always the Pies', but they kept handing it back.

On Tuesday, I heard Adam Treloar on the radio. He was pumping the team's tyres, saying that they had played really good footy. I think he's been drinking the Kool-Aid. Or he sets the bar real low. Sure, Collingwood have now won 3 games in a row; at times they play very good footy; more often, they play incredibly stupid footy. But, consistently this year, with the possible exception of the Geelong game, Collingwood has played inconsistent footy. The apotheosis was the Hawthorn game. The Pies were so bad in the first quarter, their own fans were booing them. I can't recall ever before seeing such bad footy throughout a whole quarter. But over the next three quarters, Collingwood righted the ship and ended up winning.

But this year, there has not been a game in which Collingwood played a high-standard game of footy across four quarters.

Positives

There were several good patches of play.

Keeping Michael Walters goal-less.

Although Nat Fyfe played a good game for Freo, he did not have it all is own way and he was reasonably restrained.

Negatives

Inaccuracy in front of goal. Despite a balance of sorts (15.15), at least 2 shots in Q1 missed everything. Collingwood started the match oof, miss, miss, miss, with the ball constantly in Collingwood's forward half. Then they got caught on the rebound and were lucky not to pay the full penalty. They continued with a couple of impotent forward thrusts and then another miss; 9 I50s for 0.4. Finally, with nearly half of the quarter gone, Wells found Hoskin-Elliott 20m out; mark; goal. Very little reward for effort.

Injuries to important players: Elliott has been our form forward kicking at least 3 goals in each of the last 5 games; Wells; Goldsack.

The wrap

It's a bit hard to get a true read as the bye rounds have started. Collingwood sits tenth on the ladder immediately behind Melbourne, their next opponent - in the traditional Queens Birthday match. After that match, Collingwood has a bye, the last bye round at this time, so we should be back to normal again.

If you look at the teams below us who have beaten us (Carlton, Essendon, St Kilda), it makes you weep. In theory, we could gave been 8-3 along with the ladder leaders.

Sources, Notes, Footnotes, References

http://www.footywire.com/afl/footy/ft_match_statistics?mid=9401