Carlton Supporters Club

We are up by 5 goals.  Second quarter, first ruck contest, Pittonet goes up against Mcinerny, free kick blown, ball in Cripps hand and he either misses the whistle (I heard it from row D in the forward pocket) and he bombs it long without looking.

I don't have a problem with that, pretty much everyone I was around at first thought it was a free kick to Pitto for McInerney blocking, including some of the players around the contest that moved off in the wrong direction. So Cripps probably thought he was in a play on to advantage scenario.

I thought that and some moments in the GF made a mockery of the stand and advantage rules, when they go wrong as subjective as they are they can become game changing and I doubt that was ever the intent!

In the GF we saw players back off the mark and be penalised 50m, then moments later another player does the very same and it's called as outside 5m. We saw player's more than once swap on the mark, and that's been a 50m pretty much all season but it wasn't on GF day. Outside 5m can be outside 3m or 2m depending on who is the umpire, at one stage Hill came into man the mark from 20m away and stopped less than 2m short of the original mark and was called as outside 5m. How can a player or coach predict that change in umpire behaviour?

If we are going to have such rules that are inherently subjective, perhaps it's time to have a faint grid / dot grid marked out that can be visible to umpires and players without being obvious on the broadcast!

The point being, that the risk vs reward there was far too great.  Having a quick look, and seeing which way it was blown or stopping may have been the difference between a run on and not.  Im not going to castrate him for thinking it was our free kick, but it is about managing the moments.  The penalty there was enormous.

Walsh obviously did well enough again as he just won the AFLCA Player of the Finals.

Marchbank was one of our better players on the day.  I was surprised that Kemp was omitted and Cincotta stayed in the side but not at all surprised by Marchy's selection.  Cincotta's form had really tapered off towards the end of the season and Kemp could have done his job while providing some extra marking/spoiling grunt.

The two ruck combination worked really well and made life difficult for McDonald, and Daniher and Hipwood when they rucked.  Pitto might be a bit of a plodder but the King provides plenty of run and energy around the ball.  Harry was good but Charlie was well off the boil and allowed Andrews to do as he liked.  It wasn't lack of run that cost us, it was our inability to clunk marks and/or bring the ball to ground, and to make Brisbane's defence accountable.

Owies and Cuningham both lost form towards the end of the season and didn't deserve a place in the team.  Yes, in form they could have made a difference, but they were both under-performing in terms of possessions, tackling, applying pressure and hitting the scoreboard.

We were too banged up and fired all of our bullets in the first quarter; hopefully a learning experience for the coaches, players and fitness staff.

Our season recovery came off the back of taking risks and backing ourselves in, and now fans want safety!

Newman expressed it the best when after one game BT tried to get Newman to concede he was nervous about repeating mistakes, or trying to embarrass Newman into a concession of a mistake, but Newman told BT not a chance he'd stop taking the risks that saw our season switch around.

It's pretty easy to make retrospective judgements, but if Voss wants them to take the game on, then given what happened in the 2nd half of the season I'd say they should take the game on!

Leave the harrumphs, hand wringing and regrets to the fans.

No, I want players to know that we need multiple modes to win the game, and understanding that situations don't have an automatic good bad result.  We kept going long and quick in the preliminary final.  It wasn't on that frequently but we did it anyway, and it contributed to not being able to arrest momentum.

The one thing I learned from the grand final is that you need to be able to play catch up when it counts, slow to arrest momentum, fast when you have momentum, and above all else be able to go through those gears, recognising WHEN to do it.  The moment is one of few that sticks in my mind. 

I'm not hanging anything on anyone here but simply talking facts.

1. I thought we lost it at the selection table.

We are up by 5 goals.  Second quarter, first ruck contest, Pittonet goes up against Mcinerny, free kick blown, ball in Cripps hand and he either misses the whistle (I heard it from row D in the forward pocket) and he bombs it long without looking. 

If he thought it was a free kick to Pittonet he should have quickly looked back & checked before kicking. There is no way known he didn't hear the whilstle, the umpire was only metres away.

Poor leadership, totally irresponsible & lacking in game awareness.

That was a game-changing moment that never should have happened.

That was a game-changing moment that never should have happened.