Forum topic

What, are you saying you can tell the difference between red and blue vertical stripes and black with a yellow W? Astonishing! 

Anyway, yeah, it being a tough game is not surprising at all - Grant another key player who would have made a difference if not injured. Hope you're right that it's good timing for the bye - I have a theory that having a bye after a big loss is bad timing since it gives the players more time to think about the loss, but I don’t know whether the stats bear that out. But if the bye means we're able to get Rosman and Tovey back that would be great. The commentators said Lloyd is out for 5 weeks, which is unfortunate.

Definitely, we can’t get away with not playing all four quarters against the top sides. The Williamstown game was probably our strongest effort across four quarters this season despite the inaccurate goalkicking.

It was a pretty good first quarter. Then in the second quarter it was over 13 minutes before any of Hobbs, Hird, or Rankin got a touch despite starting in the midfield for all that time. In the second quarter Hobbs had 2 touches, Hird had 3, and Rankin had 1. (Numbers based on checking the VFL app at quarter time and halftime so could be slightly off but they look right based on what I recalled seeing.) Directly at stoppages, Hird was decent defensively, but Brew did then get away from him several times to be the receive player. No one’s previously been able to hold Hobbs nearly as well as Werribee did in the second quarter.

After 14 hitouts in the first quarter (to Kuol Mun’s 18), Penry had 2 hitouts in the second and 4 across the third and fourth quarters. No surprise that Kuol Mun would dominate there.

Another key stat is that we were -1 in tackles at the half. Werribee simply outworked us in the second quarter. Werribee’s dominance in the hitouts was important, and we seemed to be lacking some speed in the midfield that we might have had if Tovey had been fit, but we also seemed unprepared for the intensity with which they came at us after quarter time. Werribee's pressure was definitely good. We also gave away way too many free kicks. Discipline has been a bit of a problem in some previous games, and that second quarter was pretty well disastrous all round. Not sure any of our players can be said to have played well in the second quarter - maybe Baldwin and Gahan.

Werribee’s dominance in the hitouts and clearances largely continued in the third, but we matched them for scoring in spite of that. Then in the fourth we had some very poor kicks going inside 50 and players perhaps rushing too much in an attempt to make something happen. Still better than the second quarter. There were moments in the second half when it looked like we could maybe come back, but Werribee were just too good. We still gave away too many free kicks in the second half as well. Not saying the umpiring was perfect and the livestream didn’t show the off the ball stuff, but it sounds there was some really poor discipline on our part at times.

Our midfield, as it stands, doesn't seem able to match it with the top sides. It looks like right now Hobbs is our only first-rate midfielder. The others are good when in form but have all been inconsistent. Green worked his way into the game and Hird and Rankin were good in the first quarter and had some decent moments late. Overall Hird was in better form than he’s been in lately. But the midfield is where we lost this game. I do retract my idea of moving Hird back to halfback; he's still not in top form - though he did tackle well and also made three of those kicks off the ground that he’s so good at - but we don’t have any better options to bring into the midfield instead. Would like to see Rankin stay in the midfield as well. A midfield rotation of Hobbs/Green/Hird/Tovey/Rankin looks like our best option right now.  

Not sure to what extent we need recruitment vs development in the midfield. This is Tovey’s first full season at VFL level, and Rankin of course has mostly played halfback/wing, so both of them can reasonably be expected to improve further as mids. I’ve mentioned that I think Hird’s best is a step above what one would expect given that his acceleration isn’t great - the level he played at last season and for the first 10 games or so of this season comes from work rate plus reading the game well more than athleticism. Not sure what that means for his ceiling. He’s generally good defensively. Unsure of Green’s ceiling also but all our mids are relatively young with Hird the oldest at 25 - all of them could develop further. Polkinghorne still a good chance to develop further and be a consistent midfield option in the future. George and, as Mega recently mentioned, Clarke are additional options for the midfield who should improve there with more experience.

Baldwin was our best player. Hobbs and Gahan were fairly good overall. Hobbs did lead all comers for tackles and all Port players for clearances, and he was having a lot of work put into him by Werribee; the rest of the midfield needed to step up more than they did, which seems to be a bit of a theme over the past few weeks even though we won three in a row before this loss. Green perhaps should have been one of the three starting in the midfield since he has been in form, although no one move would have been likely to change things. 

Evaluating the defence is harder watching the stream than in person. Was Van Es on Wright for most of the game? If so Van Es was good. Graham had some goals kicked on him, but I thought for the amount of pressure the defence was under he played a good game. He did lead all comers for intercept possessions. McCartney’s listed him in the best players, so I’ll take that as evidence that Graham was in fact good. 

Tonelli did look to be working hard to try to have an impact.

A bit of a reminder this week about the gap between us and the top sides. Hopefully the playing group learns from this and takes those lessons into finals. 

Wonder if some of the decline in goalkicking accuracy is due to fatigue as the season goes on. I’ve read it takes 3 preseasons for fitness gains to become sustainable over a full season.

Tasmania and Williamstown also have the bye next week, but if Coburg and Essendon both win, that would see us drop to 9th. I agree that we'll finish the season in better form than we showed this week, but I have no idea what to expect from our game against Frankston after the bye. Frankston have been inconsistent but can never be written off at home, and of course they just had an impressive and rather unexpected win over the Giants.

Yeah, I expect you're right about the Frankston game, NorthPort. I'd like to be more optimistic about our chances, but Frankston will be as desperate as we are for ladder position and have had our number in recent matchups.

Good points about George and Stubbings. I think Stubbings did get some midfield time last season, and he's shown definite improvement on the wing this season, so he may well be able to develop further as a midfielder also. Seems worth a shot, especially since Rankin is very good on the wing also and could conceivably play there if we try Stubbings in the midfield. Interesting suggestion about Green and may be worth a try, but I think his best games this season have come when he's played more in the midfield and less up forward. That's true that opposition players have worked out by now that Hird is one to put a lot of work into. With the opposition putting more work into him I think he's having a harder time balancing stopping his opponent from getting the ball with winning it himself and/or getting into space to receive it. When he sticks close to his opponent to be ready to do the defensive work he's under immediate pressure if he does get the ball - sometimes he can do a kick off the ground in that situation but not always. But he is no doubt working hard to keep improving as a  midfielder, so hopefully he's able to.

Lazzaro was good. Second of all Werribee players for clearances (Kuol Mun led all comers with 12), equal to Hobbs with 9. He was able to get out on some of his classic long runs. Guess there's not much point being annoyed at semi-professional players for making the moves they think are best for their careers, but it is rather annoying all the same seeing Kuol Mun and Lazzaro going so well against us.

Hopefully we can get the forward 50 entries straightened out. Right now our fate is still in our own hands but as you mentioned the percentage sure doesn't help.

50.50.chamce now. Confident of the game v Richmond but will need to beat Collingwood whose found form. Going by last 2 performances we are undeserving of a finals spot. Some of our play was sub vfl level and our delivery.poor. No doubt Frankstons pressure played a part in this but I.think it's fair to say we are nowhere near where we need to be if we want to do some finals damamge. The basis of a good side is definitely there but could use the assistance of some quality to get to the next level.

Never thought i would say this as I started following the club through a very good period but I'll.say 2nd week.finals would be the best we can wish for and making finals with this squad will be a good achievement. 

Agreed with all you both have said. I did read that Geelong went into their VFL game against Collingwood without their usual key forwards and in fact had a fairly short forward line, so not entirely sure how much to read into that result by itself, but Collingwood are on a 3-game winning streak right now. So that is indeed concerning. Last year I thought we'd make finals after we beat North Melbourne; not sure when I first predicted it this season, but next season perhaps I should swear off predictions entirely. Or perhaps I should try predicting that we won't make finals instead!

Regarding our struggles against other standalones - I notice that our 4-5 losses (depending whether you count Tasmania this season) to other standalones have all come away. Frankston and Southport in particular seem to have a strong home ground advantage. Frankston, Werribee, and Southport also have especially strong midfield groups, as did Williamstown prior to Hall-Kahan and Fitzgerald being picked up in the MSD - we were perhaps a bit lucky to meet Willy after the MSD rather than before. [Edit: for that matter so does Coburg. I could be wrong, but my impression is that of the teams we've played, Werribee, Southport, and Box Hill have the strongest midfields, with Coburg also being good and Frankston's midfield being very strong on their day as well.]  And our midfield has been a weak point in the second half of the season, Hobbs aside.

Hobbs and Hird were both in good form this week, though, and we were actually +17 in clearances, thanks in particular to Hobbs (11 clearances), Hird (8), and Penry (also 8). Pretty sure that's an equal career best for Hird - he also had 8 against Willy and I think that was a career high. He looked to be finding a better balance between defensive and attacking play this week. The three of them played hard throughout the game as always, as did some others, but it looked like we lost some intensity in the second half. Green was a big out - it would have really helped to have him in the side with the good form he's been in. Turnovers and basic skill errors were key problems this week. It looked like our players had a harder time hanging onto marks than the Frankston players did. Players seem to be reverting to old habits of just bombing it long, and it looked like there may have been times when the forwards weren't able to get into space to create options. Some of our missed shots should have been easy goals, but others were low-percentage shots because Frankston were forcing us out wide. Baldwin was working hard, but Frankston were putting a lot of work into him and he wasn't getting a lot of help - we didn't seem to be able to spread the Frankston defence well. And there's no excuse for Frankston getting two of their goals thanks to being walked to the goal line with 50-metre penalties. We've shown some poor discipline in recent weeks and will need to get a handle on that.

Gahan, Rudd, and Sparkman all put in fairly solid performances. Connell-Tobin looked like he was gaining confidence as the game went on. Van Es was working hard despite some uncharacteristic mistakes.

Mulady and Hird laid 11 tackles each, jointly leading all comers for tackles. That's a career best in tackles for Mulady.

Stubbings being a late out is unfortunate. We seem to have a number of injuries hitting at the wrong time, although that's no excuse for the poor standard of football that with a few exceptions was on display.

Not to underestimate our midfielders' potential for development, but another strong midfield recruit does look like a good idea, and it does look like we'll want to pick up a couple of good key forwards. I'm happy with the Grant/Penry ruck combo, but surely we need another ruck at least for injury insurance. Penry's been having to shoulder a load he isn't quite ready for with Grant out, though he's consistently been working hard and we did win the hitouts this week. The defence hasn't been bad overall but we don't have a dominant intercept defender like, for example, Luke Parks at Willy; if we could somehow find one that sure wouldn't hurt. If Tom Highmore can get a clean run at it and get back to his top form that would be great.

The VFLW is looking more competitive with players being taken for the AFLW. Our game against Darebin was played chiefly in one half of the ground; we were lucky to get a goal early at what turned out to be the non-scoring end. It was a scrappy game, but our backline held up pretty well all things considered. We had no answers for Darebin's Caitlin Bunker in the midfield; Darebin ruck Shannon Egan was impressive as well. But we had a very even spread of contributors and were able to get the win despite not being able to restrict Bunker or Egan. We were +12 in tackles, which shows our good defensive pressure. Ashley-Cooper continues her excellent tackling (13 tackles) and clearance work (8 clearances). Jones, O'Keefe, Caruso, and Stutt were particularly good as well, and Caffry worked her way into the game despite a bit of a slow start. Good to see Maggie McKeller get a goal in her 50th, and the run from Borg to set the goal up was very good. After a scrappy first three quarters it was good to see our girls finish strong with 3.2 in the last.

Find it very difficult to get too excited about the VFL women's comp NorthPort.

I wonder if anyone agrees with me ??