The one area we must dominate the Cats

[Bruce G McAbee]

We have to dominate the ruck this Saturday.
Both Ryder and Marshall have to take full advantage of Geelong's weakness in the ruck.

[happy feet]

The scoreboard?

[WellardSaint]

How about being a lot more precise about who we are giving the ball to.
Make sure each possession goes to advantage (well, try to make each one count)

Crouch, I'm looking at you.
27 touches but mostly rushed, pressured

[aaron82]

It’s the midfield that will dictate the result. Unfortunately at the moment we are relying on King & Higgins to kick the bulk of our score. If we don’t find more avenues to goal, 8-11 goals will be our end result.

Our midfielders just aren’t dangerous enough. None of them are good kicks with the exception of Sinclair but even he rarely hits the scoreboard. Gresh can kick goals but his kicking is generally horrendous.

Jack Hayes as a few people alluded to in another post is a big out. No star, but he rarely lost a contest & allowed King & Membrey to have more one on one marking contest opportunities. He also was a steady kick for goal. Hopefully having Billings back in will help alleviate some of the pressure on King & Higgins

[Banger9798]

Contested ball...got to win it in the middle

[Vortex]

It’s the midfield that will dictate the result. Unfortunately at the moment we are relying on King & Higgins to kick the bulk of our score. If we don’t find more avenues to goal, 8-11 goals will be our end result.

Our midfielders just aren’t dangerous enough. None of them are good kicks with the exception of Sinclair but even he rarely hits the scoreboard. Gresh can kick goals but his kicking is generally horrendous.

Jack Hayes as a few people alluded to in another post is a big out. No star, but he rarely lost a contest & allowed King & Membrey to have more one on one marking contest opportunities. He also was a steady kick for goal. Hopefully having Billings back in will help alleviate some of the pressure on King & Higgins

I said immediately he went down with his ACL, since when has 4.1 gamer been so important to the fortunes of a season.
We have looked vulnerable ever since.

[samuraisaint]

Our starts in games.
We can't be giving up the first 2-3 goals to them or we will play catch up all afternoon.
If we get off to a good start we can get the match played on our terms with scoreboard pressure, rather than it being a hard slog, like it has been nearly every game this season.

[meher baba]

Does no thread on here offer an escape from the absurd cult of Jack Hayes?

[meher baba]

How about being a lot more precise about who we are giving the ball to.
Make sure each possession goes to advantage (well, try to make each one count)

Crouch, I'm looking at you.
27 touches but mostly rushed, pressured

Outrageous that Crouch allowed himself to be so heavily pressured by what is easily the best midfield of the competition (sarcasm alert).

Personally, I thought he did wondefully well to get his hands on the ball so often: it was unbelievably tough in there. The ball quite often goes astray in the engine room, but there's far more excuse than for those players who seem to be incapable of hitting a target in open play. (And, thankfully, we've moved some of the worst culprits out of our club in recent years.)

I agree that the ruck is one area of potential advantage against Geelong. Geelong's defence, while it includes some good players, isn't as strong as that of the other top clubs. We should move the ball forward quickly: even bombing it in is ok if we can't find an obvious lead. We can't expect our defence to completely shut down Geelong's powerful forward line, so we are going to need to kick plenty of goals.

[Impatient Sainter]

We have to dominate the ruck this Saturday.
Both Ryder and Marshall have to take full advantage of Geelong's weakness in the ruck.

Stanley will be back and he has a good leap to match Paddy. It is the big physical ruckmen that Stanley struggles against. Blicavs is also very mobile and will trouble Roma around the ground. Roma needs a huge lift he is only just going atm.

[spert]

If our midfield don't work harder at ground level, then it's a Cat win

[Yorkeys]

This is not so much about an area we must dominate but one where we have allowed the Cats to dominate us: mentally, imo.

The Cats know they can beat us and expect to beat us. They can wait for our accumulated clangers to bring us undone, allow us a considerable lead knowing in the past we choke, be fairly confident we wont kick straight and that we will panic kick to Stewart, Henry, Blicavs often enough to forfeit many scoring opportunities, because that's what we have done in the past. We follow that script most years even though we have been quite capable of beating them with the amount of possession we have had and talent on the field.

I'd like it if we came out confident we can beat them but understand it will take 30 plus minutes a quarter for all 4 of them. Understand umpires will not pay holding the ball against them, particularly their names, allow Hawkins and often Stewart to push/block illegally, allow them to throw the ball with scooping motions - know all that and don't be upset when it happens just keep tackling and harrying them . Know there will be ebbs and flows.

I hope Ratts can get the right mindset into the group. At least don't run out with a defeatist attitude, which will be hard because we are on a losing streak and don't seem to have fully grasped a culture of team composure. On the other hand we are good enough to win and have shown it in games this year.

[shanegrambeau]

Kicking for goal accuracy please.


Ross
Crouch
Steele
Jones

Won’t suddenly overnight become better players than
Selwood
Danger
Duncan

etc.

I expect two of the three wise arses of
Rohan
Cameron
Dawkins

To be accounted for,
But one will get off the leache..

Watch out Saints.

I don’t know what a kicking coach/sports psychologist is telling King and Membrey this week …
Maybe we can offer them a used car from Tiny Town motors for every goal they miss?

[SunnyErnie]

What we need to do against Girl-long is give Danger and Hawkins a corkey so they can't run!!!

[Life Long Saint]

What we need to do against Girl-long is give Danger and Hawkins a corkey so they can't run!!!

Do we really need the mysoginistic comment?

[shanegrambeau]

What we need to do against Girl-long is give Danger and Hawkins a corkey so they can't run!!!

Do we really need the mysoginistic comment?

He’s being ironic ….
(As you probably guessed..the faux outrage is part of his shtick… Enough is enough!!!
But thin ice nevertheless..

And society doesn’t tolerate it, even irony, especially irony.

ENOUGH is ENOUGH!!!

[older saint]

Isolate King one on one. We saw at Kardina park what could happen last year before he was injured. 9 months on a lot stronger and 10 or so more games excites me with the opportunities this presents.
Geelong are not quick but control the ball well. Use our outside speed and win the possession contest goes a long way to beat them.
Howard on Hawkins, Wilkie or Battle on Cameron who pushed up the ground more last week ( battle has the tank to go with him on that).
Covert in front of goal and Billings in for Butler is an upgrade.
Higgins has been great this year , especially at Marvel - was sat on last week probably the first time in his career , he will learn from this and be better for it.
Actually feel we should win this game , however a loss probably means we go from a 3-6 team to a 7-10 team

[Life Long Saint]

What we need to do against Girl-long is give Danger and Hawkins a corkey so they can't run!!!

Do we really need the mysoginistic comment?

He’s being ironic ….
(As you probably guessed..the faux outrage is part of his shtick… Enough is enough!!!
But thin ice nevertheless..

And society doesn’t tolerate it, even irony, especially irony.

ENOUGH is ENOUGH!!!

I think you're giving him too much credit. I suspect he's trying to be funny in a juvenile way. It's not working.
It's akin to casual homophobia.

[shanegrambeau]

What we need to do against Girl-long is give Danger and Hawkins a corkey so they can't run!!!

Do we really need the mysoginistic comment?

He’s being ironic ….
(As you probably guessed..the faux outrage is part of his shtick… Enough is enough!!!
But thin ice nevertheless..

And society doesn’t tolerate it, even irony, especially irony.

ENOUGH is ENOUGH!!!

I think you're giving him too much credit. I suspect he's trying to be funny in a juvenile way. It's not working.
It's akin to casual homophobia.

Don’t wanna make a biggie out if it, but if it’s not irony it is a sign of lacking something - and I apologize if so. He might be like me, occasional lapses when reading cues and using what is still intact of our social intuition…and consequently screw up ..

OK enough is enough of that!! Bless all posters..

Back to the topic at hand.

I think he and others are right on the money ..
We gotta kick straight
We gotta make sure king leads more than waits
(He may be a good contested, but not THAT good)
We gotta watch the bomb
We gotta flow but we can’t just scrap it

I think we can win..it’s a dice roll ..

[SunnyErnie]

What we need to do against Girl-long is give Danger and Hawkins a corkey so they can't run!!!

Do we really need the mysoginistic comment?

The Woke crowd can go and get stuffed. Ayers Rock is Ayers Rock, Golliwog is still a Golliwog and I will still say Ba Ba black sheep. Nobody is going to tell me what words I can use. If you don't like my language Life Long Saint feel free to place me on your Foe list.

[Life Long Saint]

What we need to do against Girl-long is give Danger and Hawkins a corkey so they can't run!!!

Do we really need the mysoginistic comment?

The Woke crowd can go and get stuffed. Ayers Rock is Ayers Rock, Golliwog is still a Golliwog and I will still say Ba Ba black sheep. Nobody is going to tell me what words I can use. If you don't like my language Life Long Saint feel free to place me on your Foe list.

I don't have a foe list, and I don't think I need to place you on it, but I will call out patently obvious displays of racism, homophobia, or misogyny.
You are allowed to be racist, sexist, and homophobic. That's your right to freedom of speech.
But freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequence.

To be honest, I was under the impression that you are young and naive. But I am clearly wrong on that front. You are an attention seeking troll. That's at least two posts where you have indicated that we should deliberately injure opposition players. The other one was when you suggested that Ben Long deliberately take out Toby Greene.

[bangaulegend]

As said in another post we have to stop centre clearance but really we have to match it with them in all areas or our back line will not be able to cope with potency of their forward line IMO anyway

[SaintPav]

Gir-long? Is misogynistic?

Aren’t we being a bit precious?

We are losing our sense of humour and it’s not good.

[SaintJohno]

Gir-long? Is misogynistic?

Aren’t we being a bit precious?

We are losing our sense of humour and it’s not good.

Sorry, I didn't mean to thank that comment as I think it's quite shite. Couldn't work out how to de-thank it. I don't consider myself part of the woke left, but the infantile girls are bad, boys are good comments do actually need to be called out. If we sit back at let the golliwog, black, redhead comments just go without pointing out that they're just s*** comments, how are the intellectuals like Sunny Ernie going to get smarter? Well done life long saint for just calling it out.

[Banger9798]

The girl-long is neither here nor there, it's simply childish.
The Golliwog on the other hand, is just provactive bulls***.
Sunny Ernie, you seem to delight in provoking and dividing a forum which for all of its tricky individuals, manages to sail along pretty well.
Mostly a bunch of frustrated Saints fans hoping for just one flag before they kick the bucket.
Stop making following the Saints harder than it already is with your constant nonsense. It is so tedious.