Round 10 Recap: We Blew It...(But so did Essendon!)

There's no getting around the fact that we had a chance to assure our place at top through our bye week and we came up short. We have now lost our last 2 away games. The Essendon loss was predictable, this one leaves me a little worried.

First, hats off to the Lions. They played hard throughout the entire game, applied great pressure and deserved the win. I mean, sure that final goal was a one in a million fluke, but whatever. All playing in front of a WAFL crowd too. Plus, was that Darling effort at the end a goal? Shame there's no type of 'review system' to see if it was...

But enough about them, because they are cellar-dwellers after all.  We have a litany  of excuses; 35 hour flight, 300% humidity weather, post-Derby drop-off. They're weak. The truth is we played poorly. The truth is we were up by 21 points with 15 minutes left and we failed to put the game away.

But what, specifically, is to blame? You can't really blame the forward line. We're missing key cogs in the machine but still we kicked 15 goals. That's a winning score. Our defence wasn't good enough. Especially in the last quarter where we conceded 8 goals. 8 GOALS! TO BRISBANE! Half of them to a little red-haired 12 year old! I do, to an extent, accept the humidity, flight B.S for the last quarter. Surely an aberration.

I think it's our midfield. I think I'll be in the minority here, but I don't rate our midfield. Kerr gets tagged out of most games. The lack of Shuey was important, but I think we have compiled a bunch of midsized, short, hardworking but overall one-track midfielders. Selwood, Shuey, Gaff, Masten, Swift (whose hair is still atrocious). I'm not saying they're bad players. They're very good. But they're not gamebreakers. Priddis was superb in the third but he's not a star. Whether that will stop us from winning a flag remains to be seen. But I look ahead to the Collingwood game and think that's when we will learn the answer. They have amazing talent around the ball;  Beams, Side-Arse, Thomas, the morbidly obese Swan, Pendles and so on.

But then again that might just be my misanthropic side. But 75 hitouts to 29 and 44 clearances to 45 isn't good enough.

In other news, Waters had a bit of a moment and has accepted a one match ban. The good news is that it's only one. The bad news is that it's against the Juddas and his deatheaters. But Glass, on the other hand, absolutely destroyed that little red haired shit and got away with it. Kudos to Mr Glass.

We have also been left exposed in terms of our ladder position. We are now only top by percentage, though we're lucky that the Bombers lost to the Demons (haha). But we have a bye next week meaning we could be third when we play next.

Mind the Step

This one hurts. We should have won. We didn't. It sucks.

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As there is no game this week I may post a review of the 2006 QF against those red and white bastards. I recently purchased the '2006 Victory Pack' Collection which has the QF, SF, PF and GF as well as season highlights. I received it today, the case was smashed. It was inside an Australia Post bag which pretty much said 'Our machines may have destroyed your package. Sucks for You'. Machine or Dockers Fan?

Anyway, the discs are in fine condition so I should be grateful. It could have been worse.

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Apologies for the extremely late recap but I had exams. Plus, the Eagles broke my heart.