Round 10 Carlton v Adelaide - Saturday 6th June 1.40pm - MCG

[Mat0369]

I am in a better mood so I will post my thoughts on the game in here and then copy and paste it to the Carlton thread.

I thought we played extremely well, this was probably the best 4 quarter effort I have seen all year even though it was a loss. The first 15 minutes were brilliant, Simmo was playing loose and calling players into position to close up space. Once Simmo came off for a rest we broke down in transition the Crows were able to score quickly.

This was the best game I had seen Murph play in a while. He was simply amazing, he looked fit and firing. Hendo started slow but was very good after the first quarter. Simmo was amazing and lead by example again, it was awesome to see him running through the midfield again. He played a lot off the wing and through the middle in the 2nd half.

Cripps was good again, Graham looked good too, he showed a bit and has to keep playing. While Cripps and Graham are both plodders and can be beat in transition for leg speed, their contested and clearance wbork is awesome. When we start playing a better team defense we will be able to cover for them a bit more.

Buckley's run out of the backline was brilliant, like Graham he has to keep playing. It was good to see us running and attacking in numbers. It was almost like a flying V and it was great to watch. I haven't seen us run and attack like that in years.

Other players that were great included Curnow, Docherty, Everitt and Bell for their intent. While a couple of them butchered the ball a bit they kept going and you can't fault their intent

The gameplan also looked a hell of a lot better. We tried to avoid blazing away long and maintain possession while also trying to play on. The crowd got restless a few times because we were chipping back and sideways but the players had nothing ahead. It was a clear directive that they were told to switch and chip it around if they couldn't turn and go because Simmo went up and gave it to one of the young blokes that did the opposite. He ended up going to a contested one on one on the flank near the boundary line (which we marked) but there were 3 or 4 players calling for the switch 15 seconds before that. The run and carry was also great to see and we were trying to zone in defense with the loose (Simmo) chopping off and forcing the opposition to either kick it to a 1 on 2 or go short.

I think we dominated a hell of a lot of the game, while Adelaide had more scoring shots, the score board probably reflected the result. Adelaide were able to score a bit easier when they were dominating but we forced them into a few tough shots hence the behinds. At the end of the game they were able to exploit a couple of matchups (I'll get to that in the negatives) and in the end won the game.

One more positive before the negatives. Matty Kreuzer, welcome back to footy. While he may not have had the most in terms of disposals, his impact was huge. I will give a couple of examples. He managed to go back into defense a couple of times and effect some spoils that no other ruck on our list would have been able to execute effectively. One was a 1 on 1 where Sauce drew him deep, lead up to the ball and Kreuz spoiled the ball perfectly like a defender. The other one was late in the game when it was on the line, Kreuz comes in out of nowhere and executes another spoil, follows up, gets the ball and delivers it to an open team mate. He hit the score board, his tap work was brilliant and he tackled and pressured.

Now to the negatives, we had a few players that had absolute shockers. Sam Rowe probably played his worst game in a while. He was double grabbing everything that came his way. We were also trying to zone and Rowe was getting sucked up to the ball carrier when we already had a player in his face. This was resulting in Crows players getting loose out the back on their own for easy scoring shots. Tutt is 100% not an AFL level player, he just has no awareness and his disposal is shocking. We had quite a few players be poor by foot and it looked like a confidence thing because they normally hit targets. We also had a poor matchup late of Walker on Jenkins which was just a bad size mismatch.

If we can keep performing like this for the rest of the year it will do nothing but good for the future of the club and the development of some of these guys.