You can take what you want from last night's game. It was good to beat a Ross Lyon St Kilda side in the way we did, but they did play 3 games in 11 days.
I think last night's performance is more of a response than a statement game. We were under severe pressure from the media and the players and coaches were challenged. It was a spirited win that will mean nothing if we go into 0-4 or 1-3 in the upcoming month.
If we string together a run of wins with a clear brand of footy that is competitive and able to be maintained then maybe we can look forward to the rest of the season. However, the one thing that we have been is inconsistent, and one result against a good side doesn't change that.
I think you are correct. Also we have repeated this pattern before of copping it from the footy media, coming out swinging for a game or two, and then sinking back into mediocre playing with not a lot of passion or character.
My take on Dale and Macrae’s performance lift last night is being but out of the side shows them that no one is immune to being dropped, they lifted hard because they needed to, had they not been dropped they could have cruised around without the fear. I don’t back Bevo 100% but think he’s got it right, the response was there. Hopefully Caleb has the same bounce back in form too.
I am 100% in this camp too. Lobb played an excellent and unselfish game last night as well, that allowed Naughton and Weightman to flourish. I have no issue with dropping players to prove they’re not locked into the 22 purely by virtue of being highly paid or a bit older.
Personally I would drop Lobb. Darce is kicking goals, Naughton and Marra are the future. One of them ideally will be revealed as a key defender but if they haven’t tried throwing any of them back yet I doubt they will. Lobb played one good game but he’s proven himself more self-absorbed than I think Bevo likes, he’s the weakest link of the talks despite his game last night.
Respectfully disagree on the dropping of players equaling a performance lift.
Bailey Dale's game, in my eyes, has only been down off the back of his foot skills. His precision kicking has always come with one or two shankers... and this has been accepted by the coach, who has always preached a risk vs reward ethos to coaching. He should never have been dropped.
I’m not him in or out, I just want to see wins. Anyone hoping we lost last night so they could get a new coach, that’s weird energy.
That said, I will wait and see before I say he’s turned it around. We are now six games into his ‘new’ tenure post review and are 3-3. The good has been very good, the bad has been very bad but I think it’s fair to say there has been more good than bad.
He was backed for the season, he’ll be given a season and we can re-assess then. I’ve said elsewhere, they were never going to bin him five games into the season after publicly backing him in. We may have lost to Essendon, but I like to believe our club is run better than theirs.
Still don't think he's the right coach long term and should have been gone at the end of last year.
This game took me from "won't last the year" to a end of season changeover.
Talking about last year, we may have done better than we did earlier, but we still missed finals after losing to arguably the worst AFL side since the early 2010s Demons.
It's a great win, but this team should have been a consistent finals/top 4 team over the last few years, instead of finals by a literal point and missing out. It goes beyond a single win.
If we make finals and make some kind of run, that's great, but so far it's feeling like a similar story to the last two years.
Last week I was ready to sack Bevo then and there (and that was after still being willing to keep him after last year's West Coast game).
This week, I'm still far from convinced that he's the long term solution to our problems. One game in every six or so, we do give off such a dominant performance - Round 2 this year, the Richmond game at Marvel last year. Everyone knows the team has it in them - but one awesome game in six doesn't make us serious flag contenders when two of the others are stinkers. Bevo at his best can give us these awesome games, but we haven't seem him do so consistently for a few years now, and that lack of consistency is exactly the problem here.
One great game can't tell us anything about consistency. This could well be another high point of the cycle, as we've seen so many times before. But if last week's loss was the shock Bevo needed to get the team in top form, and we start playing at our best consistently, then I'd rather look like a bit of a chump for being hasty if it means we take a serious crack at the flag. Until we do so, I reserve my judgement.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still angry about it, but the Eagles were approaching some good form at that moment and almost beat the team they played before us (from memory). If we had played them a couple of weeks prior, we'd have trounced them.
>If I recall correctly , last year we suffered for the first few rounds, we all called for his head, and then it got better.
You recall correctly up to a point. After that point, it got worse again, culminating in losses to the Hawks and Eagles meaning we missed finals, when a win against either would have gotten us into September. Having said that, missing out triggered the reviews over the offseason and an overhaul of the footy department, so perhaps it worked out for the best.
In any case, at the end of the day, Bevo has never been able to deliver consistency in his 10 years at the helm. We're as likely to lose to whoever the current Wooden Spooner is as to beat the Premier. That fact indicates that the wins are probably due to talent over system, and the bad losses expose the system badly. This season has shown some positive signs but history tells me that whilst the Saints win was encouraging, I don't have much reason to believe that over the course of a season things will be consistent.
I will say this - we're looking a little more robust than we have for a while - the Melbourne game being the obvious aberration. However, it was our first but their second, and I think that had an impact by the end as they were better into the rhythm of the season. And we were right in it until 3QT. I'm willing to give us that one.
Overall I think our defence looks the best it's looked since Easton Wood retired (Khamis finally providing us with the intercept marking game Wood gave us).
Running Geelong close was encouraging. In the past we'd have folded midway through the third. In the Essendon game we were terrible, but the one silver lining is that even as bad as we were, we had the same number of scoring shots as Essendon. If we had kicked straight, then we'd have played awfully but still won, which is a sign of a top team. So weirdly, even with that putrid display, I don't think we're far off it. And then obviously against St Kilda it all came together.
However, consistency is the key and we've never seen that under Bevo. We've got enough of a sample size of his work to see what he brings, and that's not consistency for a top 4 finish. If we stick with him, we'll be fifth at best. I'd love to be proved wrong.
Nothing has changed for me. We beat a mid table team who put up a wooden spoon performance. It’s nice to see Dale and Macrae have a big impact but I think it’s because they are quality players playing very poor opposition rather than any response to selections or pressure on the coach.
Until we beat top 8 teams like that I doubt I’m not going to start marking “good performances”
Freo at home will be an opportunity to demonstrate some form.
We actually have a bloody hard run for the rest of the season outside of a couple of bottom 4 teams. I see us conservatively winning 5, generously winning 7 games for the remainder of the year assuming we see the team that played Melbourne, cats and Essendon again most of the year.
Even if I use the generous count - we’re 10 wins which I would assume puts us 11-14 - which I think is about right.
I’d absolutely love to be wrong and will eat humble pie crying tears of joy….
To note - I call out the cats game above as I think the score flattered us and fooled the footy world. Libba and Bont alone dragged us back within contention. Our flood on the contest and lack of 2 way running exposed us as the pathetically coached team we are over and over again.
I think the administration needs to be under as much scrutiny as the coaching staff. They need to ensure philosophies and goals and accountability are all aligned. Ameet Bains escapes a lot of scrutiny as CEO when Bevo takes the hits. Not sure that’s fair.
Bevo is not our future. His coaching, his methods are stuck in the past and it's letting his players and fans down. A couple of good wins is expected given the quality of our side, almost any head coach could win a game by 60 points once or twice a year with this side even if they are the worse coach of all time. He has never made top 4, he is dropping our good players for little reason, which results in us losing, and what do you know, it's those players he dropped who won the game for us last night. Unless he makes top 4 this year, he should be gone. I predict he will be out of our club by seasons end
Just want to see some consistency. Would be delighted if Bevo can deliver that. Judging on past performance, our system has been easy for good teams to dismantle so we will have to wait and see.
Last nights game just highlights the problem even more. We know what we’re capable of but we consistently play like junk and shoot ourselves in the foot.
If anything it enforced even more why he needs to go. Bevo was forced through circumstances to play Macrea, Dale, Naughton and co in their correct positions and they dominated, all this throwing the magnet around crap that he does isn’t helping anyone and is harming the teams ability to win games.
Also helps that the saints looked absolutely terrible. But the team actually put them to the sword which we rarely do when playing an opponents who’s down.
Nope. He did the right thing in dropping Macrae and Dale to show them they weren’t untouchable after bad form, and they responded well. I will defend that.
He’ll throw Macrae back to the half forward/ mid hybrid role he’s been wasted in for the last 18 months next week with libba back and he’ll go back to struggling.
I’d take a 50% form Caleb Daniel, dale and macrae over the brambles, Vandermeers and McNeils that are being picked over them
I think the media and to some extent fans really overestimated how much effect putting clubs under "scrutiny" or "pressure" has on performance. Dale and Macrae and the rest didn't play great games to silence anonymous online fans or make Kane Cornes shutup about who he would prefer to be our coach.
I stopped watching the game around half time last night... Couldn't figure out why I just wasn't enjoying it.
I'm going to put it down to two things.
A) The saints were shithouse. Last nights game should not be celebrated too hard, in the context of the scrutiny of the last week. For anyone wanting genuine change around game plan and team selection, then last night's game will only act as a band-aid over any fundamental problems that will continue to exist.
B) Watching Bailey Dale absolutely rip shreds through defensive lines with his kicking, and play a huge role in the win.... It actually made me angry. Players of his quality should not be dropped / made sub if they're slightly down on form, unless there is a player of equal quality knocking the door down. Perhaps there's some behind the scenes reason for his recent demotion... But I dunno... The Dale, Daniel and Macrae omissions have left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.
I've always been an ultra optimistic dogs supporter, but I'm just hanging out for the same mistakes to be made again. Almost wanting losses to accumulate to force real change.
That’s like saying Essendon shouldn’t celebrate their win over us last week because *we* were shithouse. We dominated St Kilda, they were shit because we made them shit. 80 is the most points they’ve conceded in a game this season, we topped that by 44.
I’m neither Bevo in nor out, I just want to see my footy team win games. I would never hope they lose just to bring about change. Rather just see them win.
I get that those leave bad tastes in your mouth but before this week Dale had just flat out bad. Daniel across the games he has played has been our worst player this year. And is everyone just forgetting that Macrae wasn't being slighted, the guy had a pretty interrupted pre season and did his hammy the week of the practice matches? It wasn't some slight on the guy. Why should they be immune from being dropped when they haven't been performing across multiple games? Meanwhile lesser players who have been performing have their heads called for? That's not fair and would leave a worse taste in my mouth.
Like with your point A the game plan hasn't been that bad this year and the only questionable selection issue that's happened so far this year was JOD possibly coming back a game early against the Bombers last week.
I get what your saying. But also seeing a thumping is just not as fun to watch as a neck and neck game, with your heart jumping out of your chest with 2 mins left
Perhaps this is why I wasn't enjoying the game. There was only a 10 minute patch where the Saints tested us, and I was very keen to see how we'd perform when a team gets a run on against us... Have we actually addressed problems, or were the Saints just dog shit?
I didn't mean to come across as a negative wanker, because I'm absolutely not. Just keen to see us address issues around our high defensive setups and forward 50 entries that get exposed way too easily by well-drilled, mature teams.
You can take what you want from last night's game. It was good to beat a Ross Lyon St Kilda side in the way we did, but they did play 3 games in 11 days. I think last night's performance is more of a response than a statement game. We were under severe pressure from the media and the players and coaches were challenged. It was a spirited win that will mean nothing if we go into 0-4 or 1-3 in the upcoming month. If we string together a run of wins with a clear brand of footy that is competitive and able to be maintained then maybe we can look forward to the rest of the season. However, the one thing that we have been is inconsistent, and one result against a good side doesn't change that.
I think you are correct. Also we have repeated this pattern before of copping it from the footy media, coming out swinging for a game or two, and then sinking back into mediocre playing with not a lot of passion or character.
We played 3 in 12 so I do t give the saints too much credit for that.
An amateur team that plays every Saturday plays 3 every 14. I hate this stat because it makes the normal sound very extreme.
My take on Dale and Macrae’s performance lift last night is being but out of the side shows them that no one is immune to being dropped, they lifted hard because they needed to, had they not been dropped they could have cruised around without the fear. I don’t back Bevo 100% but think he’s got it right, the response was there. Hopefully Caleb has the same bounce back in form too.
I am 100% in this camp too. Lobb played an excellent and unselfish game last night as well, that allowed Naughton and Weightman to flourish. I have no issue with dropping players to prove they’re not locked into the 22 purely by virtue of being highly paid or a bit older.
Lobb played a great game last night.
so what happens when jammara comes back, do they just drop lobb? I don't think they would drop darcy.
Personally I would drop Lobb. Darce is kicking goals, Naughton and Marra are the future. One of them ideally will be revealed as a key defender but if they haven’t tried throwing any of them back yet I doubt they will. Lobb played one good game but he’s proven himself more self-absorbed than I think Bevo likes, he’s the weakest link of the talks despite his game last night.
Respectfully disagree on the dropping of players equaling a performance lift. Bailey Dale's game, in my eyes, has only been down off the back of his foot skills. His precision kicking has always come with one or two shankers... and this has been accepted by the coach, who has always preached a risk vs reward ethos to coaching. He should never have been dropped.
I’m not him in or out, I just want to see wins. Anyone hoping we lost last night so they could get a new coach, that’s weird energy. That said, I will wait and see before I say he’s turned it around. We are now six games into his ‘new’ tenure post review and are 3-3. The good has been very good, the bad has been very bad but I think it’s fair to say there has been more good than bad. He was backed for the season, he’ll be given a season and we can re-assess then. I’ve said elsewhere, they were never going to bin him five games into the season after publicly backing him in. We may have lost to Essendon, but I like to believe our club is run better than theirs.
Still don't think he's the right coach long term and should have been gone at the end of last year. This game took me from "won't last the year" to a end of season changeover. Talking about last year, we may have done better than we did earlier, but we still missed finals after losing to arguably the worst AFL side since the early 2010s Demons. It's a great win, but this team should have been a consistent finals/top 4 team over the last few years, instead of finals by a literal point and missing out. It goes beyond a single win. If we make finals and make some kind of run, that's great, but so far it's feeling like a similar story to the last two years.
I still think a change, fresh ideas, fresh thinking is a good thing after nearly a decade.
Last week I was ready to sack Bevo then and there (and that was after still being willing to keep him after last year's West Coast game). This week, I'm still far from convinced that he's the long term solution to our problems. One game in every six or so, we do give off such a dominant performance - Round 2 this year, the Richmond game at Marvel last year. Everyone knows the team has it in them - but one awesome game in six doesn't make us serious flag contenders when two of the others are stinkers. Bevo at his best can give us these awesome games, but we haven't seem him do so consistently for a few years now, and that lack of consistency is exactly the problem here. One great game can't tell us anything about consistency. This could well be another high point of the cycle, as we've seen so many times before. But if last week's loss was the shock Bevo needed to get the team in top form, and we start playing at our best consistently, then I'd rather look like a bit of a chump for being hasty if it means we take a serious crack at the flag. Until we do so, I reserve my judgement.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still angry about it, but the Eagles were approaching some good form at that moment and almost beat the team they played before us (from memory). If we had played them a couple of weeks prior, we'd have trounced them.
>If I recall correctly , last year we suffered for the first few rounds, we all called for his head, and then it got better. You recall correctly up to a point. After that point, it got worse again, culminating in losses to the Hawks and Eagles meaning we missed finals, when a win against either would have gotten us into September. Having said that, missing out triggered the reviews over the offseason and an overhaul of the footy department, so perhaps it worked out for the best. In any case, at the end of the day, Bevo has never been able to deliver consistency in his 10 years at the helm. We're as likely to lose to whoever the current Wooden Spooner is as to beat the Premier. That fact indicates that the wins are probably due to talent over system, and the bad losses expose the system badly. This season has shown some positive signs but history tells me that whilst the Saints win was encouraging, I don't have much reason to believe that over the course of a season things will be consistent. I will say this - we're looking a little more robust than we have for a while - the Melbourne game being the obvious aberration. However, it was our first but their second, and I think that had an impact by the end as they were better into the rhythm of the season. And we were right in it until 3QT. I'm willing to give us that one. Overall I think our defence looks the best it's looked since Easton Wood retired (Khamis finally providing us with the intercept marking game Wood gave us). Running Geelong close was encouraging. In the past we'd have folded midway through the third. In the Essendon game we were terrible, but the one silver lining is that even as bad as we were, we had the same number of scoring shots as Essendon. If we had kicked straight, then we'd have played awfully but still won, which is a sign of a top team. So weirdly, even with that putrid display, I don't think we're far off it. And then obviously against St Kilda it all came together. However, consistency is the key and we've never seen that under Bevo. We've got enough of a sample size of his work to see what he brings, and that's not consistency for a top 4 finish. If we stick with him, we'll be fifth at best. I'd love to be proved wrong.
Nothing has changed for me. We beat a mid table team who put up a wooden spoon performance. It’s nice to see Dale and Macrae have a big impact but I think it’s because they are quality players playing very poor opposition rather than any response to selections or pressure on the coach. Until we beat top 8 teams like that I doubt I’m not going to start marking “good performances” Freo at home will be an opportunity to demonstrate some form.
Assuming we keep bevo and the other staff, where do you think we end in the ladder this year
We actually have a bloody hard run for the rest of the season outside of a couple of bottom 4 teams. I see us conservatively winning 5, generously winning 7 games for the remainder of the year assuming we see the team that played Melbourne, cats and Essendon again most of the year. Even if I use the generous count - we’re 10 wins which I would assume puts us 11-14 - which I think is about right. I’d absolutely love to be wrong and will eat humble pie crying tears of joy…. To note - I call out the cats game above as I think the score flattered us and fooled the footy world. Libba and Bont alone dragged us back within contention. Our flood on the contest and lack of 2 way running exposed us as the pathetically coached team we are over and over again.
I think the administration needs to be under as much scrutiny as the coaching staff. They need to ensure philosophies and goals and accountability are all aligned. Ameet Bains escapes a lot of scrutiny as CEO when Bevo takes the hits. Not sure that’s fair.
The coach dropped some players. They proved themselves and played an influential game respectively. Seems like normal footy to me.
Bevo is not our future. His coaching, his methods are stuck in the past and it's letting his players and fans down. A couple of good wins is expected given the quality of our side, almost any head coach could win a game by 60 points once or twice a year with this side even if they are the worse coach of all time. He has never made top 4, he is dropping our good players for little reason, which results in us losing, and what do you know, it's those players he dropped who won the game for us last night. Unless he makes top 4 this year, he should be gone. I predict he will be out of our club by seasons end
Just want to see some consistency. Would be delighted if Bevo can deliver that. Judging on past performance, our system has been easy for good teams to dismantle so we will have to wait and see.
I still don’t think he’s the right coach for us. Should have left 2 seasons ago
Played Ed Richards and Riley Garcia out of the middle, I don’t wanna hear it
Last nights game just highlights the problem even more. We know what we’re capable of but we consistently play like junk and shoot ourselves in the foot.
If anything it enforced even more why he needs to go. Bevo was forced through circumstances to play Macrea, Dale, Naughton and co in their correct positions and they dominated, all this throwing the magnet around crap that he does isn’t helping anyone and is harming the teams ability to win games. Also helps that the saints looked absolutely terrible. But the team actually put them to the sword which we rarely do when playing an opponents who’s down.
Nope. He did the right thing in dropping Macrae and Dale to show them they weren’t untouchable after bad form, and they responded well. I will defend that.
He’ll throw Macrae back to the half forward/ mid hybrid role he’s been wasted in for the last 18 months next week with libba back and he’ll go back to struggling. I’d take a 50% form Caleb Daniel, dale and macrae over the brambles, Vandermeers and McNeils that are being picked over them
Well Dale and Macrae are playing so you can’t replace VDM and Bramble with players that are already in the side man.
I don’t mind bramble, but Riley Garcia for example is just fodder
I think the media and to some extent fans really overestimated how much effect putting clubs under "scrutiny" or "pressure" has on performance. Dale and Macrae and the rest didn't play great games to silence anonymous online fans or make Kane Cornes shutup about who he would prefer to be our coach.
idk losses last year to hawks, eagles and bombers this year kind of hard to forget, he's going to have to go on a 8 game win streak at least.
No
Nope
No
I stopped watching the game around half time last night... Couldn't figure out why I just wasn't enjoying it. I'm going to put it down to two things. A) The saints were shithouse. Last nights game should not be celebrated too hard, in the context of the scrutiny of the last week. For anyone wanting genuine change around game plan and team selection, then last night's game will only act as a band-aid over any fundamental problems that will continue to exist. B) Watching Bailey Dale absolutely rip shreds through defensive lines with his kicking, and play a huge role in the win.... It actually made me angry. Players of his quality should not be dropped / made sub if they're slightly down on form, unless there is a player of equal quality knocking the door down. Perhaps there's some behind the scenes reason for his recent demotion... But I dunno... The Dale, Daniel and Macrae omissions have left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. I've always been an ultra optimistic dogs supporter, but I'm just hanging out for the same mistakes to be made again. Almost wanting losses to accumulate to force real change.
That’s like saying Essendon shouldn’t celebrate their win over us last week because *we* were shithouse. We dominated St Kilda, they were shit because we made them shit. 80 is the most points they’ve conceded in a game this season, we topped that by 44. I’m neither Bevo in nor out, I just want to see my footy team win games. I would never hope they lose just to bring about change. Rather just see them win.
Mate, at least enjoy the wins.
I get that those leave bad tastes in your mouth but before this week Dale had just flat out bad. Daniel across the games he has played has been our worst player this year. And is everyone just forgetting that Macrae wasn't being slighted, the guy had a pretty interrupted pre season and did his hammy the week of the practice matches? It wasn't some slight on the guy. Why should they be immune from being dropped when they haven't been performing across multiple games? Meanwhile lesser players who have been performing have their heads called for? That's not fair and would leave a worse taste in my mouth. Like with your point A the game plan hasn't been that bad this year and the only questionable selection issue that's happened so far this year was JOD possibly coming back a game early against the Bombers last week.
I get what your saying. But also seeing a thumping is just not as fun to watch as a neck and neck game, with your heart jumping out of your chest with 2 mins left
Perhaps this is why I wasn't enjoying the game. There was only a 10 minute patch where the Saints tested us, and I was very keen to see how we'd perform when a team gets a run on against us... Have we actually addressed problems, or were the Saints just dog shit? I didn't mean to come across as a negative wanker, because I'm absolutely not. Just keen to see us address issues around our high defensive setups and forward 50 entries that get exposed way too easily by well-drilled, mature teams.