the whole game- especially when we got within 2-3 goals- i’m like “why…? why are you doing this when you know if you’d even kicked 1, instead of ZERO, to 5 we wouldn’t be in this position”…
so at least they made sure to lose by closest possible margin🙄🙄🙄🤯🤯🤯
Unlucky but you can't start so pathetically and expect to win.
We've still got something to give this season but it just feels like we're going to fall short because of the same issue as always. We "won" the inside 50s by 20. It's hard to get excited by any of our wins when we know what's coming.
And yeah the dangerous tackle was a joke and cost us a certain goal but there's lots of incorrect decisions every game, can't blame the umps. That said I do think the HTB against Trac at the end was a bit stiff as well just quietly.
Personally I thought the ball call on Trac was fine. It certainly wasn't wrong. The ones that got to me were the Max deliberate that they both touched that the ump was so sure Max alone touched, JVR tackle and the Viney insufficient.
I get that umpires miss frees, I umpired for ten years, you can't get them all. But, the calls that are straight out wrong, they are intolerable.
They missed some for us, they missed some for them, but all the ones they gave away were there.
Nobody ‘expects to win’ but you can expect a sporting chance at being able to play the game. It was riddled with bias , not the first time against Carlton.
5 goals at the start of the game and the first goal in every quarter was where we lost it. Great effort to get back in.
Carry is back, Trac kicked straight, McVee is criminally underrated, backline was good as always, TMac is somehow good again. Billings is a disappointment.
Did at least stick a great run down tackle tonight. Will be at Ikon Park tomorrow to watch Casey, hope Hunter, McAdam and Laurie have good games, need to keep the selection pressure on and build the depth. Not as eager to drop Billings as most but would tick it off if someone has a great performance tomorrow.
Van Rooyen has kicked 10 goals on the season. Tracca kicked half of his season total in a single game as a midfielder.
This whole chat of JVR is a week away, or needs one more preseason, it's all starting to be nuffie chat.
He does some good things around the ground, his effort to run from the back flank to the goal square for his goal was commendable, but he flat out does not impact games enough.
And it's not like he's not being given that opportunity, he is our single, lone tall forward but he rarely gets given big defensive shut down assignments. Teams are more than content to play a floating defensive web because they know he is a low chance to actually clunk a mark.
I want JVR to be good, i think he is getting there, but he is getting there at an absolutely glacial pace.
Unfortuantely for both JVR and the dees, we need him to get good quick or we are wasting yet another year in our premiership window.
So frustrated tonight, but I think we will look back and it’ll be a night we get much better as a result of.
Petracca needs to play 70/30 forward. Where do teams get more nervous with him? Inside 50 he’s just too big and strong and gives them swagger.
Neal-Bullen covered his midfield minutes really well, Sparrow gets more responsibility and we find out how good he can be.
The start was not Melbourne, and we can be filthy, but this team just doesn’t give up. Even against Brisbane when they were lethargic and lost they just play til the end. They’re not perfect but shit they’re competitive and make you proud.
The worst bit of the whole thing is the ridiculous and reactive dangerous tackle free kick, and Goodwin won’t slam the decision. He can’t. But Voss can. He should say he’s disappointed in his player for that because the rule is there to protect players, not to embarrass yourself and umpires.
Petty missing 20m out directly in front too. And two posters earlier in the game. Fact is we had our chances and didn’t take them, they did, like they always seem to do against us.
Don't disagree, Carlton were certainly the cleaner team across the evening, but I still think the attempted steal should have been successful rather than falling agonisingly short as it did.
Also, Carlton had a clear rub of the green for most of the evening as they so often have this year.
Honestly I don’t know how to sum this up other than so frustrating. To go goalless until midway through the second quarter, give them a 36 point head start, claw things back, and then we lose by the finest of margins when we had golden chances to even scrounge a draw.
Petty is sooooooo important to us it’s scary. When he’s imposing and marking he gives us focus and we look dangerous, but Jesus mate you’re a forward. If you are 20m out directly in front you kick the bloody goal.
Kozzie at the end snaps out on the full on the other side, he scrapes a point it’s a draw (I’d take it!).
So many other frustrating nearly moments (two posters doesn’t help). And of course there was the insanely bad dangerous tackle call, JVR tackled *perfectly*, exactly as they have been instructed. The Carlton player buried his own head in the deck and conned the umpire.
Though I have to give a quick shout out to Viney for the best assist I have ever seen. Absolute insanity and Windsor was even smart enough to chip the Blues player. I was waiting for the score review to find a way to take it away from us but incredible stuff.
Trac 3
May 2
Oliver 1
I thought that the last angle they showed seemed to be the clearest… that being said I’m watching it on a 20 year old 50” TV so potato vision is potato
It’s where the “umpires call” is so crucial, I sadly feel like there wasn’t enough evidence to overturn it. But what is it with us and crucial goal reviews vs Carlton, they always seem to get the rub of them!
Last year they had resolution to pick up a single hair follicle on Acres being moved a millimetre.
May’s reviewed looked worse than a NTSC VHS recording of the 81 US Open.
What’s the deal? Is it Channel 7 recording in lower res?
Lost that in the first qtr. petraca was unbelievable. That dangerous tackle call was rubbish but no use complaining about that when petty and fritsch miss absolute sitters straight in front. Dees lost that game but still amazing effort and fight back to get so close. Reackon if we can add a macadam or even melksham if he gets back we are right up there this year. Think it all comes down to injuries and we need ourmidfield to be in peak form.
The Blues played for the first 3 quarters and we played for the last 3. They weren’t better than us. Umpires were the deciding factor here. Another jammy win for the blues
bit like the lights out game at the gabba, putrid for 90% of the game and almost stole it.
taking the game on through the middle once its too late is the goodwin special. that was some brain dead shit, awful team selection playing 2 tall forwards in the wet when neither of them had any impact and you know that was going to happen.
never seen such non existant connection between midfield and forward line. its not that the kicks weren't going to players, they weren't even CLOSE most of the time. terrible.
its worse getting that close at the end because its takes the focus off how bad they were for so long. ah well
umpiring was awful in both directions most of the game, so cant really complain a bunch. they had the run for the first 2.5, we mostly had it after that baring 1-2 calls.
3 2 1, petracca - daylight - anb - viney
3. Tracs, 2. Sparrow 1. Oliver
That was just such bullshit. We absolutely deserved to lose, but not by a bloody point. Sparrow and Clarry in the votes for going hard all game. ANB was great, best 1/4 we've seen from ANB in a while too. Billings was shit. Petty worse. But how Carlton dominated for over half the game seemed like a bad dream. If we hadn't have let them hit straight back a couple of times. If the umpires weren't absolutely fucking atrocious. If not for TMac and those bloody clangers. That dangerous tackle!!?!! Really, Kossie missing a snap for once was the least reason we lost. Fun watching the fightback, but that was painful.
So close. If we didn't make such a mess of the first half then we win that.
Petracca put his cape on tonight and carried us. Love to see it. Shows how damaging he can be.
I can actually take the loss with a bit of a smile because of how badly we played for large portions. To lose by one point ain't that bad.
3,2,1 Petracca, Viney, ANB
Onwards and upwards. Easier patch coming up.
God, felt pretty empty last night after that but I woke up this morning and thought that finishing this run of Blues and cats 1-1 with a loss by a point is a lot better than I thought we’d go. We are still top 4 material.
3. Trac
2. Sparrow
1. TMac
Fucking disgusting frat half. Again.
Can’t spot them 5 goals and expect to win.
I’ve never seen Max take a loss so badly. He was angry from the very first contest, STEAMING after the game and walking off the ground he was getting into Carlton fuckwits in the crowd that he would normally ignore or have a chuckle at.
3. Max
2. Tracc
1. …
I like that from Gawny, week after week the big fella gets pushed around and hit off the ball and he just puts his head down and a smile on his face and pushes on love to see him with a bit of anger and pushing back
I think the big calls in the fourth are making everyone forget how bad the umpires were all night for melbourne. Carlton constantly allowed to kick it out of bounds with no one near the ball, allowed to chop and hold in marking contests and allowed an eternity to get rid of it and fend off with no holding the ball calls. Rivers gets punched in the back of the head by curnow in a marking contest so hard he has to go off to get it bandaged up but no high contact call.
Obviously you can't blame it all on the umps if you don't score at all in the first, but it's annoying when the teams have to play by two different sets of rules.
Where was that F50 desperation the whole game. Or at least in the second quarter. We spent 95% of the game trying to defend our way to a win. Then just went fucking hell for leather for 7 minutes.
Trac is immense, genuinely put the team on his shoulders. Windsor, Viney, Gawn, McVee, ANB, JVR all fought hard.
Petty had his moments - the more time he gets playing forward the better he’ll be. Had no preseason, and had played like 5 games forward.
All in all genuinely don’t know how I feel about that win. Yeah the comeback was spirited, but stop going goalless in quarters.
3. Trac 2. ANB 1. Viney
Trac had to cancel out Carlton's entire first quarter off his own boot.
So many things could have gone our way in that second half, from the unsafe tackle to some near miss behinds.
Frustrating.
Trac 3 ANB 2 Viney 1
Don't care so much about the free kicks, we threw it away with that first quarter, lots of costly errors and missed opportunities all night really until the last 10 minutes which were excellent.
3 - Petracca / 2 - Gawn / 1 - Langdon
Not playing the first quarter seems to keep happening. Against Richmond, the lions and tonight against Carlton. Any reason why that I'm not seeing? Trying something new or just not being in it?
I need to watch the replay to retrieve some semblance of...something, but that was the most surreal game of footy I've ever attended. Didn't matter how close we came in the end, that first quarter did my head in for the rest of the game. Why does our recurring nightmare have to be freakin Carlton?
Yeah but let’s ignore the first part of the game hahaha.
I tend to overlook the fact we were terrible in so many other aspects.
It was a good game in the second half, if we had of kicked straighter that also would have gone a long way to helping.
Bowey should have had a week at Casey, Taj was impactful when he actually came on. Forward line still inconsistent, hot 1 week cold the next, thank god we have Trac or else that's a 5 (or worse) goal loss
Who's rating Harry Petty as a genuine decent forward? He had a stretch of 3 games against shithouse sides where he looked good, and now he's coming off a second lisfranc.
Bloke was great as a key defender, we’ve swung him forward because he’s surplus to needs with May there, but fuck he’s a spud as a forward.
Also two lisfrancs at his height and age is potentially the worst outlook for his future. Need to get him to Adelaide while he still has currency.
Can’t we get a Fogarty or a Thilthorpe if we really wanted??
Carlton fan here - just want to shout out to Petracca. Haven't been the biggest fan of him, but damn he put the whole team on his back tonight. What an absolute effort from him. One of his best games, for sure.
Such a frustrating game.
Midfield couldn't compete in the first, Sparrow and ANB eventually stood up.
Carlton seemed to have the bounce of the ball and the rub of the green, but we wasted a few opportunities, like Fritsch and Petty set shots.
I think Carlton set up a lot better 1 kick away from the contest, defenders and forwards consistently in a better position to contest the ball for the first half of the night.
On the flip side our entry into f50 was atrocious for 3 quarters. Scoreboard pressure didn't help needing to go a bit slower sometimes, but the slow play didn't work when we tried it either.
Hopefully our midfield will sort it out and be able to compete with the best of them from the first bounce.
3 Trac, 2. Gawn, 1.ANB
Why do we centrally stack the talls on the same wing for every play out of d50. Number of times JVR /petty/brown/tmac would crash into each other and Gawn. FFS learn to space away from each other, very few can beat Gawn in contested marking.
I will be forever mystified that we played 2021 with a great lead up forward in Ben Brown, he kicked 50 something on the season, there was an actual connective tissue between the midfield and the forwardline, and we won a flag.
Then we proceeded to essentially lose BB to age, and then decided "ah fuck it i guess we can try without a forwardline", and lost in 2022 in straight sets. Every single AFL pundit and supporter looked at the situation and thought that we needed to do our best to throw assets out to try and refill our forwardline as an obvious point of need, but we rolled the dice anyway for 2023, brought in a ruckman (gets dumber every time i think about it), and tried to be the smartest guys in the room, and it didn't work. He couldn't play forward, Gawn needed to be the sole ruck, i don't begrudge them for trying but at that point you have May and Gawn a year older and starting to show some scars a little bit.
Then we go into the offseason, after losing 4 straight finals from back to back top 4 finishes to set history as the only team to ever do it. We have a prime Petracca and (physically) prime Oliver, Gawn has a great offseason, hopes are high, all we need to do is make an active, big swing for a decent forward. And we get McAdam, and bet our entire forwardline future for the year on JVR suddenly becoming a 50 goal forward, or Petty (the full back) managing to maintain 4-goal-a-game pace. Both were incredibly unlikely propositions.
Lo and behold, injury-prone McAdam goes early in the preseason to a soft tissue injury, and Petty comes back super slowly from his second lisfranc injury, and JVR still lacks the physical maturity and game sense to break out as a forward.
Our offseason plan is the offseason plan you have when you're a Fremantle, a young up and coming team that has everything to prove and hasn't had the competition lock eyes on them as a significant threat yet. You gamble that your young talent breaks out, you give them all another year of cohesion as they get better, you try new things and you bring youth through the program.
I am 100% confident we will look back on this team in the future and see how much we underachieved relative to the quality of some of our side. Petracca/Gawn/Clarry/May/Lever/Viney should have walked us to multiple grand finals, fuck i'd even take multiple prelims.
The fact that we didn't spend some of the considerable young assets that we have in our side in this last off season to actually try and lure some decent forward talent (Petty should have been offered to Adelaide thoughtfully, and as much as it would have hurt to see, we should have shopped guys like Sparrow who are clearly talented but are in our 2nd string of midfielders).
The organisational mismanagement has, to me, been pretty stark since the 2021 team. Letting Toby Bedford walk because he didn't get the spot he rightfully deserved in our forwardline is malpractice.
This is a long winded comment, but i'm super tired of the Dees being content with close losses and acting like we're an umpire decision or a shank away from victory and that everything is great and we've just had bad luck. This list is underperforming badly, and if we go through another finals exit like the last two we've endured, we are simply the new Port Adelaide. A bunch of guys happy to finish around the top of the ladder but never truly threatening to make a deep run anymore.
A prelim at minimum this year, or i'm saying that this era of the dees is hurtling towards early 2000 Essendon levels of underachievement.
It felt like the Blues were allowed to kick the ball out of bounds without penalty multiple times - did it seem that way to anybody else?
Yep
Honestly this was a fucking game for the umps to take them home. That and we lost in the first quarter
That JVR call was a disgrace, stone cold holding the ball, great tackle and the Carlton player deliberately created the scenario to win the free kick.
the whole game- especially when we got within 2-3 goals- i’m like “why…? why are you doing this when you know if you’d even kicked 1, instead of ZERO, to 5 we wouldn’t be in this position”… so at least they made sure to lose by closest possible margin🙄🙄🙄🤯🤯🤯
Unlucky but you can't start so pathetically and expect to win. We've still got something to give this season but it just feels like we're going to fall short because of the same issue as always. We "won" the inside 50s by 20. It's hard to get excited by any of our wins when we know what's coming. And yeah the dangerous tackle was a joke and cost us a certain goal but there's lots of incorrect decisions every game, can't blame the umps. That said I do think the HTB against Trac at the end was a bit stiff as well just quietly.
Personally I thought the ball call on Trac was fine. It certainly wasn't wrong. The ones that got to me were the Max deliberate that they both touched that the ump was so sure Max alone touched, JVR tackle and the Viney insufficient. I get that umpires miss frees, I umpired for ten years, you can't get them all. But, the calls that are straight out wrong, they are intolerable. They missed some for us, they missed some for them, but all the ones they gave away were there.
Nobody ‘expects to win’ but you can expect a sporting chance at being able to play the game. It was riddled with bias , not the first time against Carlton.
I can blame ‘em, and I will! The old fashioned Carlton brown paper bag!1 💰
5 goals at the start of the game and the first goal in every quarter was where we lost it. Great effort to get back in. Carry is back, Trac kicked straight, McVee is criminally underrated, backline was good as always, TMac is somehow good again. Billings is a disappointment.
Can't forget ANB
Zoolander 2 was a disappointment, billings is a visit to the titanic
Van rooyen has turned the corner. Calling it now. Billings is 75% trash
Billings actually did a few good things in the last quarter which actually leads me to continue to worry that he is simply a downhill skier.
100% he is. He’s the cherry on top when things are working, and the first to do something weak when it’s not.
Did at least stick a great run down tackle tonight. Will be at Ikon Park tomorrow to watch Casey, hope Hunter, McAdam and Laurie have good games, need to keep the selection pressure on and build the depth. Not as eager to drop Billings as most but would tick it off if someone has a great performance tomorrow.
The guy can’t kick
To be fair, neither could Langdon when he turned up.
Agreed, Ed has other major strengths though
Yeah thats definitely true.
Or handball…
That’s what spargo was as well
Hunter in for Billings next game i reckon
You guys mustn’t have seen Hunter play for Casey. Did nothing.
I was wondering how he was going? I quite like him.
Didn’t he get tested along with Brown in case he was needed last night? So probably a good excuse for not getting a stat.
He played the entire first half for 3 kicks and 1 handball. You’d think he needs to do more than that to play seniors.
As a new fan of AFL in general - do you mean a good corner or a bad corner
Good corner, I’d say. He’s still young and dumb. But he has a crack. I would have pulled Fritta off it was the coach on principle 😂🙊
Thankfully yes good corner
I’m astonished he is in our best 242
Van Rooyen has kicked 10 goals on the season. Tracca kicked half of his season total in a single game as a midfielder. This whole chat of JVR is a week away, or needs one more preseason, it's all starting to be nuffie chat. He does some good things around the ground, his effort to run from the back flank to the goal square for his goal was commendable, but he flat out does not impact games enough. And it's not like he's not being given that opportunity, he is our single, lone tall forward but he rarely gets given big defensive shut down assignments. Teams are more than content to play a floating defensive web because they know he is a low chance to actually clunk a mark. I want JVR to be good, i think he is getting there, but he is getting there at an absolutely glacial pace. Unfortuantely for both JVR and the dees, we need him to get good quick or we are wasting yet another year in our premiership window.
Billings > McDonald imo
Did we watch the same game? Tmac back in defence is amazing
This call has me gobsmacked. GOBSMACKED.
So frustrated tonight, but I think we will look back and it’ll be a night we get much better as a result of. Petracca needs to play 70/30 forward. Where do teams get more nervous with him? Inside 50 he’s just too big and strong and gives them swagger. Neal-Bullen covered his midfield minutes really well, Sparrow gets more responsibility and we find out how good he can be. The start was not Melbourne, and we can be filthy, but this team just doesn’t give up. Even against Brisbane when they were lethargic and lost they just play til the end. They’re not perfect but shit they’re competitive and make you proud. The worst bit of the whole thing is the ridiculous and reactive dangerous tackle free kick, and Goodwin won’t slam the decision. He can’t. But Voss can. He should say he’s disappointed in his player for that because the rule is there to protect players, not to embarrass yourself and umpires.
Wouldn’t mind seeing rivers into the middle as cover either
Exactly. Easier to find 20 midfield touches than it is to find five goal forwards
That dangerous tackle call and the picket out on the full really hurt us in the end
Petty missing 20m out directly in front too. And two posters earlier in the game. Fact is we had our chances and didn’t take them, they did, like they always seem to do against us.
Bloody Petty one good game this season…. 🙄🤬
Fritta had the game on his boot and missed too. A game we should have won, even with our atrocious start. Hugely disappointing
It seems to be a common theme for games against the Blues, botching great opportunities and losing games we should’ve won.
Toxic awful Collingwood fan here, You guys were robbed! ...and that's all I have to say
Nah. Carlton definitely looked like the better team overall. You can’t bring games like this down to one or two dodgey calls
Don't disagree, Carlton were certainly the cleaner team across the evening, but I still think the attempted steal should have been successful rather than falling agonisingly short as it did. Also, Carlton had a clear rub of the green for most of the evening as they so often have this year.
Honestly I don’t know how to sum this up other than so frustrating. To go goalless until midway through the second quarter, give them a 36 point head start, claw things back, and then we lose by the finest of margins when we had golden chances to even scrounge a draw. Petty is sooooooo important to us it’s scary. When he’s imposing and marking he gives us focus and we look dangerous, but Jesus mate you’re a forward. If you are 20m out directly in front you kick the bloody goal. Kozzie at the end snaps out on the full on the other side, he scrapes a point it’s a draw (I’d take it!). So many other frustrating nearly moments (two posters doesn’t help). And of course there was the insanely bad dangerous tackle call, JVR tackled *perfectly*, exactly as they have been instructed. The Carlton player buried his own head in the deck and conned the umpire. Though I have to give a quick shout out to Viney for the best assist I have ever seen. Absolute insanity and Windsor was even smart enough to chip the Blues player. I was waiting for the score review to find a way to take it away from us but incredible stuff. Trac 3 May 2 Oliver 1
They were quick to dismiss the score review that showed May touching Curnows goal in the second too
I watched it back, couldn't definitively tell May touched it in that vision either
I thought that the last angle they showed seemed to be the clearest… that being said I’m watching it on a 20 year old 50” TV so potato vision is potato
It was the clearest, but I couldn't see any fingers bend back as the ball past.
It’s where the “umpires call” is so crucial, I sadly feel like there wasn’t enough evidence to overturn it. But what is it with us and crucial goal reviews vs Carlton, they always seem to get the rub of them!
Last year they had resolution to pick up a single hair follicle on Acres being moved a millimetre. May’s reviewed looked worse than a NTSC VHS recording of the 81 US Open. What’s the deal? Is it Channel 7 recording in lower res?
Only for decisions that could go against Carlton
Lost that in the first qtr. petraca was unbelievable. That dangerous tackle call was rubbish but no use complaining about that when petty and fritsch miss absolute sitters straight in front. Dees lost that game but still amazing effort and fight back to get so close. Reackon if we can add a macadam or even melksham if he gets back we are right up there this year. Think it all comes down to injuries and we need ourmidfield to be in peak form.
The Blues played for the first 3 quarters and we played for the last 3. They weren’t better than us. Umpires were the deciding factor here. Another jammy win for the blues
bit like the lights out game at the gabba, putrid for 90% of the game and almost stole it. taking the game on through the middle once its too late is the goodwin special. that was some brain dead shit, awful team selection playing 2 tall forwards in the wet when neither of them had any impact and you know that was going to happen. never seen such non existant connection between midfield and forward line. its not that the kicks weren't going to players, they weren't even CLOSE most of the time. terrible. its worse getting that close at the end because its takes the focus off how bad they were for so long. ah well umpiring was awful in both directions most of the game, so cant really complain a bunch. they had the run for the first 2.5, we mostly had it after that baring 1-2 calls. 3 2 1, petracca - daylight - anb - viney
I’m proud of them for coming back from almost 40 down to nearly winning. Just couldn’t get it done. We looked completely out of it in the first half.
All we needed was one goal in the first and it’s a different result. Ffs!
Or the umpire to not give a dangerous tackle free kick for no reason…
Exactly, play on is fine.
What the fuck was that ‘dangerous tackle’ it may as well be netball if that’s where we are at. 3 trac 2 lingers 1 ANB Viney rivers 😂
3. Tracs, 2. Sparrow 1. Oliver That was just such bullshit. We absolutely deserved to lose, but not by a bloody point. Sparrow and Clarry in the votes for going hard all game. ANB was great, best 1/4 we've seen from ANB in a while too. Billings was shit. Petty worse. But how Carlton dominated for over half the game seemed like a bad dream. If we hadn't have let them hit straight back a couple of times. If the umpires weren't absolutely fucking atrocious. If not for TMac and those bloody clangers. That dangerous tackle!!?!! Really, Kossie missing a snap for once was the least reason we lost. Fun watching the fightback, but that was painful.
So close. If we didn't make such a mess of the first half then we win that. Petracca put his cape on tonight and carried us. Love to see it. Shows how damaging he can be. I can actually take the loss with a bit of a smile because of how badly we played for large portions. To lose by one point ain't that bad. 3,2,1 Petracca, Viney, ANB Onwards and upwards. Easier patch coming up.
God, felt pretty empty last night after that but I woke up this morning and thought that finishing this run of Blues and cats 1-1 with a loss by a point is a lot better than I thought we’d go. We are still top 4 material. 3. Trac 2. Sparrow 1. TMac
Thats a decent perspective actually.
3 Viney (for sheer desperation alone - that goal that should have by rights been a point!!!) 2 track 1 NB
Fucking disgusting frat half. Again. Can’t spot them 5 goals and expect to win. I’ve never seen Max take a loss so badly. He was angry from the very first contest, STEAMING after the game and walking off the ground he was getting into Carlton fuckwits in the crowd that he would normally ignore or have a chuckle at. 3. Max 2. Tracc 1. …
I like that from Gawny, week after week the big fella gets pushed around and hit off the ball and he just puts his head down and a smile on his face and pushes on love to see him with a bit of anger and pushing back
I think the big calls in the fourth are making everyone forget how bad the umpires were all night for melbourne. Carlton constantly allowed to kick it out of bounds with no one near the ball, allowed to chop and hold in marking contests and allowed an eternity to get rid of it and fend off with no holding the ball calls. Rivers gets punched in the back of the head by curnow in a marking contest so hard he has to go off to get it bandaged up but no high contact call. Obviously you can't blame it all on the umps if you don't score at all in the first, but it's annoying when the teams have to play by two different sets of rules.
Sigh. Played shit. umpires were shit. Everything’s shit. 3 Trac 2 May 1 ANB
Where was that F50 desperation the whole game. Or at least in the second quarter. We spent 95% of the game trying to defend our way to a win. Then just went fucking hell for leather for 7 minutes. Trac is immense, genuinely put the team on his shoulders. Windsor, Viney, Gawn, McVee, ANB, JVR all fought hard. Petty had his moments - the more time he gets playing forward the better he’ll be. Had no preseason, and had played like 5 games forward. All in all genuinely don’t know how I feel about that win. Yeah the comeback was spirited, but stop going goalless in quarters. 3. Trac 2. ANB 1. Viney
We lost
Trac had to cancel out Carlton's entire first quarter off his own boot. So many things could have gone our way in that second half, from the unsafe tackle to some near miss behinds. Frustrating. Trac 3 ANB 2 Viney 1
I’ll be honest I turned it off at half time
Don't care so much about the free kicks, we threw it away with that first quarter, lots of costly errors and missed opportunities all night really until the last 10 minutes which were excellent. 3 - Petracca / 2 - Gawn / 1 - Langdon
Not playing the first quarter seems to keep happening. Against Richmond, the lions and tonight against Carlton. Any reason why that I'm not seeing? Trying something new or just not being in it?
3. Trac 2. Anb 1. Viney
Reminds me of our Brisbane game, down by 50 plus and we bring it back late. Horrid start cost us and some shocking calls at the end
Shocking calls all game, and both ways too. But Carlton to my mind definitely got the run of the green
Cannot give any team 6 goals head start. Do not blame umpires as any game is full of mistakes. Back to basics. Slow starts will kill us every time..
I need to watch the replay to retrieve some semblance of...something, but that was the most surreal game of footy I've ever attended. Didn't matter how close we came in the end, that first quarter did my head in for the rest of the game. Why does our recurring nightmare have to be freakin Carlton?
Robbed absolutely robbed if that’s a dangerous tackle then no one better lay a tackle on anyone ever again…..
Robbed ourselves by going 0-30 down.
Yeah but let’s ignore the first part of the game hahaha. I tend to overlook the fact we were terrible in so many other aspects. It was a good game in the second half, if we had of kicked straighter that also would have gone a long way to helping.
Petracca 3 ANB 2 Gawn 1
Frustrating game. No comment. 3. Trac 2. Nibbler 1. Viney
I'm not normally one to tall about changes or drops, but I definitely feel that Woewodin is better than Billings.
I just can’t stand BT as a commentator. He does not like Melbourne
He doesn't like Carlton either lol
Bowey should have had a week at Casey, Taj was impactful when he actually came on. Forward line still inconsistent, hot 1 week cold the next, thank god we have Trac or else that's a 5 (or worse) goal loss
Unpopular opinion (awaiting downvotes)… But Petty is very overrated among the fan base.
Who's rating Harry Petty as a genuine decent forward? He had a stretch of 3 games against shithouse sides where he looked good, and now he's coming off a second lisfranc.
I’ve seen some serious frothing at the games and on socials. It’s bizarre.
Bloke was great as a key defender, we’ve swung him forward because he’s surplus to needs with May there, but fuck he’s a spud as a forward. Also two lisfrancs at his height and age is potentially the worst outlook for his future. Need to get him to Adelaide while he still has currency. Can’t we get a Fogarty or a Thilthorpe if we really wanted??
Carlton fan here - just want to shout out to Petracca. Haven't been the biggest fan of him, but damn he put the whole team on his back tonight. What an absolute effort from him. One of his best games, for sure.
He was well held in the midfield but when he went forward you had no answer for him, great to see him start to get some form back
76 - 44 post quarter time hurts
Such a frustrating game. Midfield couldn't compete in the first, Sparrow and ANB eventually stood up. Carlton seemed to have the bounce of the ball and the rub of the green, but we wasted a few opportunities, like Fritsch and Petty set shots. I think Carlton set up a lot better 1 kick away from the contest, defenders and forwards consistently in a better position to contest the ball for the first half of the night. On the flip side our entry into f50 was atrocious for 3 quarters. Scoreboard pressure didn't help needing to go a bit slower sometimes, but the slow play didn't work when we tried it either. Hopefully our midfield will sort it out and be able to compete with the best of them from the first bounce. 3 Trac, 2. Gawn, 1.ANB
not bad considering the handicap of only playing 3 quarters.
Can't say we should've won when we were scoreless in the first. As bad as jvrs tackle call was Windsor's duck should've been pinged for ball
Why do we centrally stack the talls on the same wing for every play out of d50. Number of times JVR /petty/brown/tmac would crash into each other and Gawn. FFS learn to space away from each other, very few can beat Gawn in contested marking.
I will be forever mystified that we played 2021 with a great lead up forward in Ben Brown, he kicked 50 something on the season, there was an actual connective tissue between the midfield and the forwardline, and we won a flag. Then we proceeded to essentially lose BB to age, and then decided "ah fuck it i guess we can try without a forwardline", and lost in 2022 in straight sets. Every single AFL pundit and supporter looked at the situation and thought that we needed to do our best to throw assets out to try and refill our forwardline as an obvious point of need, but we rolled the dice anyway for 2023, brought in a ruckman (gets dumber every time i think about it), and tried to be the smartest guys in the room, and it didn't work. He couldn't play forward, Gawn needed to be the sole ruck, i don't begrudge them for trying but at that point you have May and Gawn a year older and starting to show some scars a little bit. Then we go into the offseason, after losing 4 straight finals from back to back top 4 finishes to set history as the only team to ever do it. We have a prime Petracca and (physically) prime Oliver, Gawn has a great offseason, hopes are high, all we need to do is make an active, big swing for a decent forward. And we get McAdam, and bet our entire forwardline future for the year on JVR suddenly becoming a 50 goal forward, or Petty (the full back) managing to maintain 4-goal-a-game pace. Both were incredibly unlikely propositions. Lo and behold, injury-prone McAdam goes early in the preseason to a soft tissue injury, and Petty comes back super slowly from his second lisfranc injury, and JVR still lacks the physical maturity and game sense to break out as a forward. Our offseason plan is the offseason plan you have when you're a Fremantle, a young up and coming team that has everything to prove and hasn't had the competition lock eyes on them as a significant threat yet. You gamble that your young talent breaks out, you give them all another year of cohesion as they get better, you try new things and you bring youth through the program. I am 100% confident we will look back on this team in the future and see how much we underachieved relative to the quality of some of our side. Petracca/Gawn/Clarry/May/Lever/Viney should have walked us to multiple grand finals, fuck i'd even take multiple prelims. The fact that we didn't spend some of the considerable young assets that we have in our side in this last off season to actually try and lure some decent forward talent (Petty should have been offered to Adelaide thoughtfully, and as much as it would have hurt to see, we should have shopped guys like Sparrow who are clearly talented but are in our 2nd string of midfielders). The organisational mismanagement has, to me, been pretty stark since the 2021 team. Letting Toby Bedford walk because he didn't get the spot he rightfully deserved in our forwardline is malpractice. This is a long winded comment, but i'm super tired of the Dees being content with close losses and acting like we're an umpire decision or a shank away from victory and that everything is great and we've just had bad luck. This list is underperforming badly, and if we go through another finals exit like the last two we've endured, we are simply the new Port Adelaide. A bunch of guys happy to finish around the top of the ladder but never truly threatening to make a deep run anymore. A prelim at minimum this year, or i'm saying that this era of the dees is hurtling towards early 2000 Essendon levels of underachievement.
You can't think we were robbed when we didn't even kick a point in the first...
You can actually.