Hmm, back at the footy, so stressful at times but, yeah, great to be back.
Wow, that was a fast game. So much run and pass going on. Can't see it lasting but clearly less ball ups.
Carlton have clearly improved. They seem to improve in small steps but that was a good showing by them. When they got free they seemed to have a lot of options getting out of defence and going forward. They scored 61% from inside 50 entries. Grimes may have been a bit down but that is way too high. We cannot let it happen.
I think the speed of the game was such that our defence was caught out too often. Clearly this is an issue further up the ground but I think the increased speed of the game means we might need to adjust the way our defence is set up. Also wings and centre need to maybe set up slightly different when it comes out of our forward line. It was noticeable that Carlton would pass the ball along the boundary line, didn't seem to switch to the corridor often, but they had an outlet just about every time. Something has changed and this being the first game of the season I reckon a lot of coaches will be looking at this game and sorting out their defence and even how they defend the wings after watching this. Carlton were able to get numbers behind our defence way too often.
I was worried about our positioning as Carlton seemed to always be in the right place when the ball came off a pack. We weren't.
Richmond were rusty, no doubt about that. Passes a little too high or too often straight to the opposition. A bit fumbley. We weren't putting enough pressure on their players. Plus, we only had 40% scoring from our inside 50s. Again, we need to fix up the inside 50 entry, seems to be a problem in the first half of the season every year.
Players saying they were buggered at the end of the game may mean they need to slow it down a bit. We seemed to run on at all costs and I'm not sure that is sustainable given the game is a bit more open and the quarters are back to standard length.
Still, we bank the 4 points and move on, and that is the main thing.
DS