Disfunctional entries & disfunctional forward line

[Dave The Man]

Was good in NAB 1 without Cloke but when Cloke came back for NAB 2 it went back to being Crap Again

[swoop]

I and what seems like most f the posts so far are struggling to understand the logic of the Cloke centric forays into the forward line.
At times it seems like the team is trying to get Cloke into the game and by doing so he is getting multiple spoilers with oppo runners waiting to rebound!
Whats the solution?

Well imo that is up to Cloke.
Is he capable of taking his game to the next level?

[HAL]

Do you think I should know if it is?

[swoop]

It would help.

[Dave The Man]

[swoop]

Ok,
but can he do it for 4 qtrs?

[Boot]

The players need to take some responsibility for kicking to Cloke when he is not in an advantageous position to win possession. It appears the players have far too much faith in Cloke's ability to wrestle and win position.

There needs to be a bit more strength from the coaching panel to hammer home the message that we need to kick to only those in an advantageous position i.e. on the lead.

If there is no-one in the forward 50 apart from opposition players then don't kick it there!! Hold it up even if they have to go backwards. How many times did the Pies player kick to the opposition in our forward 50 when they were not under pressure...just awfully frustrating.

Cory Gault is progressing and being a typical big guy is going to take time but he is certainly worth persisting with. However, in my opinion at this rate of improvement he will only be a fringe player who gets a game only if several others are injured or we are shockingly out of form this year. Next year he may be ahead of players like Jesse White and Lachlan Keefe as forward / ruck option.
Being young he doesn't get both hands to the ball in the marking contest enough. Hopefully the coaching panel can work with him on this facet of his game as when he does get both hands in the contest he is very good at clunking the ball and he can kick straight... a rare skill for a Collingwood key forward! With further body development and experience I have great hopes for Cory Gault to play the Leigh Brown role of 2010/11.

[Tannin]

^ Oh, give our blokes some credit. We are two-thirds of the way there. We are pretty good at getting the pill, and we are pretty good at spotting a player on his own inside the 50 and passing it to his advantage. All we have to do now is teach them the other bit, which does seem to be a bit harder, the bit about getting the pill and passing it to a player on his own inside the 50 who is wearing a black and white jumper.

[PyreneesPie]

[Johnno75]

Surely we don't do this at training (or do we)?

We have a few decent lead up smaller forwards like Faz, Elliot (when he is back) and Goldsack and the midfielders look like they need to lower their eyes rather than bombing. It looked like they were doing it in the first half so maybe a bit of pressure or fatigue changed that in the second half.

The obvious one was in the 3rd qtr when Varcoe was streaming through the middle then kicked long to Cloke who was 1 on 3. Two magpies on their own at half forward so he needs to lower the eyes and go short to them.

[jackcass]

[jackcass]

[Darkstranger]

I could fall into the same bracket and say same old which in part looked like it, but...... in the proper season we’ll have bigger grounds, fitter and better prepared team, a consistent structure with Cloke, White, Elliott, Fasolo, Varcoe & Karnezis

Let’s not get too caught up in these games, Pies had around 8 first starters and Pendles Swan & Cloke playing their first game and we should have rolled a Carlscum team that jumped us by 6 goals with probably 5-6 out as well and you could say 3 good players amongst that lot.

Yes don’t think we’ll be top 4 side but we have a good young team and with a good run of injuries we could make the top 8.

Players like De Goey, Moore, Marsh, Scharenberg, Maynard & Abbott could surprise us and really come through.

[Jezza]

The delivery into the forward line was atrocious on Sunday but it was quite good against Hawthorn in our first practice match so there's definitely potential for consistency and for our forward line to kick big scores if all our forwards are up and about rather than being a non-existent threat up front.

However this problem will need to be addressed this year as our inability to kick big scores last year hurt us massively. Our defence did really well in the circumstances to reduce the score of the opposition in most games last year but sadly our forward line didn't step up especially when our inexperienced defence started fading away in the latter part of the year after a bright start to the year where these forward line problems were generally covered and not spoken about in length.

It's odd but not having Cloke against Hawthorn may have helped us due to our ability to be unpredictable and we actually hit our targets rather than kicking in hope and hoping Cloke would outmuscle his opponent. Personally I think Cloke is best suited to playing at CHF rather than at full forward where he's always double-teamed and robbed by the umpires in most games plus Cloke seems to have better accuracy in front of goal further out than he does when he's closer to the goals.

Fasolo, White, Karnezis and possibly Gault if he maintains his good pre-season form all need to step up this year if we're to kick big scores. They did well against Hawthorn but apart from White's obvious exclusion Fasolo and Karnezis provided very little up forward this week against Carlton. Gault is the only one who can really hold his head up high in this regard.

[E]