Post match. Pies blitz Bombers - all comments

[uuuuu..... The LoneSTAR]

A super 4 quarter performance - Didn't give them a sniff! The second most enjoyable game of the year right next to the recent victory against the boos. Most impressive. Carn'da PIES!!!!

[mel_kay39]

[Beast]

Best performance of the year no doubt and was awesome to see but lets keep our feet on the ground - we were fired up by their HGH comments and they played like a side that already knows they won't be featuring in September.

Having said that... how good were the tradebait Rusty and that horrible defender Rambo?
Lynch justified his selection over Witts, Harry in full flight on angry pills is a great sight, Clokey kicked straight, Maxwell had a very tidy game for a change, the good Heater was back, Blair and Elliott finally had an impact on the game, Sinkers and Marley were solid as, Keeffe answered the queries about his agility, Grundy continued to impress, Swanny's care factor about the game was enormous from start to finish, Bally was back to his best before tiring slightly, Pendles and Beamsy put on a clinic, Chopper is starting to look very comfortable up forward, Caff did a reasonable job on some girl he played etc etc

feelsgoodman

Need to back this up next week and I have confidence we will.

[Museman]

A little bit more delusional gold from over at bummerblitches...

[JC Hartley]

Essendon's victory was 46 points, not 36, while it was a 125 point turnaround, not 115. Incorrect on both counts.

[HAL]

When was this exactly?

[McMonkey]

Very tidy performance. Best of the year, even contribution, mids back to their dominant best. Even though Heppell got a bit of the ball, thought Caff did a great job and was worried about Grundy up against such a good duo - not sure why! He more than held is own.

Great to see such a turnaround from our last two weeks and glad the coaches and players will not stand for continued mediocrity.

Hopefully we can give a more than good account for ourselves this weekend.

[jack_spain]

[Dave The Man]

Robbo on Grundy:

[35forever]

WHAT a game!!! WHAT a performance!!! WHAT a statement!!!
Many will say a lot of it had to do with Essendon's drug woes, but having just watched the whole thing for the third lovely time, Essendon threw every dirty trick they had at us and believed they would come back at us after half-time like they did against Freo.
They didn’t!
Before half time we saw two of the most disgraceful off-the-ball umpiring decisions of the season thus far, the kind Collingwood just doesn’t give away. The first one gave Essendon their first goal of the match, the second took a goal off Brodie Grundy, who was lining up from 25 out dead in front. This is the kind of umpiring that can change games, and has done on many occasions, in fact it was exactly what happened to Footscray on Saturday when they were 8 points behind Sydney and playing great Footy. A Sydney shot at goal was clearly touched but called a goal because the field umpire apparently asked the wrong question of the third umpire. Thereafter Sydney piled on 35 points before Footscray could settle again, and that ended up being the final margin.
In our case both decisions were patently absurd, the replay showed it, and even the bomber loving commentators called both 'ridiculous'.
And it had the desired effect. Our scoring dried up, and Essendon was suddenly able to score. I fully expected our boys to drop their heads, and perhaps if the score was closer or the day drier they might have.
But they didn't. They kept plowing in, working hard, working for each other, and bringing up our best four quarter effort for the season, our best all-round effort for the season, and the first time we've seen the manic, desperate, Premiership Magpies since 2011.
Three BIG reasons, for the performance: Our Tackling was exceptional. The fact that we handled the ball like it was a dry day, and perhaps most important of all, we kicked straight when it counted, especially in that epic first quarter. Even Clokey kicked straight! Five zip!! THAT was what we did in 2010-2011.
If, and of course it's a mighty big IF, we play like that in the next two, we are as good a chance as anyone to not only have an impact in September, but add the longed for 16th cup to the trophy cabinet, with the best chance of anyone to reach 17 first. I'll go a step further, if this game is how we're going to play for the remaining 7 games we WILL be 2013 premiers, simple as that!

But of course if this season has shown us anything, it's that we will follow up a great performance with a craptacular one. making next week against Sydney far and away our most important game of the year. Our previous best game this year was the Geelong win, which we followed with the debacle against Sydney, which saw us out of the 8 for the first time in 2 years. Before that we'd followed up a stirring win over Carlton with a disaster against Hawthorn, our biggest loss of the year, and a great, Cloke led win over Richmond (who can forget the famous 'Eddie call'!?) with our worst Anzac day in several years. (which we revenged and then some yesterday!)
A sidebar here: Why is it that when we lost by 46 to them we dropped ten percentage points while beating them by nearly double that yesterday only brought us 5? Therein lies the reason why early games and the 'draw' are far more important than later ones.
So can we finally buck the trend?! All of our losses this year have come after great wins. The better the win, the bigger the let down the following week. So many times this season we've collectively thought to ourselves: "NOW were on the right track! This is how we'll play from here in". And just as many times the exact opposite has happened.

If there's one difference this time, it's the full four quarters of effort. We won each quarter convincingly, both on the field and on the scoreboard. Even that second quarter, when the umpires produced two breathtakingly obvious bad decisions which could easily have turned the game, we weathered the storm and kept to the plan, hanging on to win the quarter by just 7 points, and then continuing as we had begun after the main break to win the second half by more than we won the first, and passing the post with a leg in the air, showing no signs of tiring, a feat even the most one-eyed magpie wasn't expecting.

So next week is an absolute whopper in determining how our season will finish up. We are in 6th by a bee's err... appendage, which is the highest rung we've occupied this season, We're only 2 games outside the 4, We probably have more of our best 22 available for selection than we've had all year, including round 1, the notable exception being Daisy of course, however getting games into Beamer Bally, and Keefy has been a godsend. All 3 are now looking in great touch. Technically, with 4 matches remaining, we could snaffle top spot, however that would require a ridiculous series of upsets and occurrences. In reality, even if we won all our remaining games we'd be lucky to make the 4, given the armchair ride afforded teams around us by our friends at the AFL, but it certainly could happen, and if it's Freo who drops out (although their draw makes it nearly impossible- in fact they could easily pinch a top 2 spot), 4th is no different to 1st. On the other hand, 5th is no different to 8th, and no one has won it from outside the 4. Still, keep up this form and anything could happen because our best is the best there is.

The wash up is simple: This was our best game since 2011, And next week we find out everything.

[skaman]

Great summation 35. Ripper game!

[35forever]

Thanks Skaman, but I posted that as a new topic as I thought there were issues in it that warranted further discussion, apparently the mods know better. Given that I've started about 4 threads in 7 years here, while posting to hundreds of other folks threads I might have believed that I had a case, but oh well, lesson learned.

[Precarious]

Great post, 35forever!

I've also watched the game three times now and enjoyed the style and intensity of play immensely.

I agree about the second-quarter umpiring. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but there appears to be a tendency, perhaps to protect TV ratings, of umpires trying to get teams back into the game in the second or third quarter if one team has got a break on the other. I notice that we got a lot of inconsequential free kicks in the final quarter, possibly to obscure what happened in the second quarter. IMO this umpiring trend has helped Geelong on several occasions this season after slow starts. Such umpiring will hurt the team who expends energy early to develop a lead. The slow starter gets an armchair ride back into the contest and potentially can finish more strongly. I wonder if this has been a factor for North this season.

It's probably just a sign of my insanity, but I am almost tempted to conduct a study of when, where and under what circumstances free kicks are given during games, how significant they are and how debatable the decisions. With the rules committee constantly creating uncertainty and the nature of the game itself, there are generally three or four free kicks that can be paid or not paid at every contest with much room for arbitrariness on the part of the umpires. Then there are the 50-metre penalties for off-the-ball incidents that can pretty much be paid on a whim but usually overlooked. This gives large scope for manufacturing closer games and possibly desired results, such as IMO systematically favoring the swans.

This is not just a whinge about the umpiring of pies games. I actually think the smaller Melbourne clubs often get the rough end of the stick, perhaps because they offer no expansion value to the AFL and less ratings value for 7 and Foxtel.

Having said all this, I haven't studied the numbers, and so probably should not comment. It is my honest impression but possibly the result of paranoia fueled by what seems to be an ever increasing level of corruption and manipulation in society, including in sport. The AFL's integrity unit reminds me of the law of inverse relevance: the less you intend to do about something, the more you have to keep talking about it.

[yin-YANG]

Re the 'Sidebar' 35Forever... you do realise that if you win by just 25 pts for the first game of the year ... e.g. 50 v 25 you get a % of 200! But it is volatile and can be more easily reversed compared to a percentage of 200 in round 20!

So if our games against the Dons were reversed and we won the first game by 79 and they won the recent game by 46 our percentage would of course be exactly what it is right now - there is no overall difference to winning earlier or later in the final wash-up...

Percentage is points For divided by Points against and by the end of the season the wins or losses are not able to make as big a difference to the percentages because there are more points accumulated... clearly relative to the total points for and against.

Now whether percentage matters... that is a debate worthy of its own thread! !

[GoWoodsmen]