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June 05, 2005
Oh The Pain...
The ridiculous ticket situation had me leaving Geelong at 3:15 to make sure I could get a nice seat for looming clash. While in line for the gates to open I saw three girls wearing pants made out of sewn together Collingwood scarves, "Welcome to Magpie Country" they may have well said.
After snagging a top seat on the wing, it left my traveling army & I to get a few amber ales down the hatch in the Bundaberg Bar before the bounce. This as it turned out unfortunately was the highlight of the night. The hilarious sight of seeing the Kolonel come back to the bar with some Kent Kingsley/GFC artwork all over his face was quickly cancelled out by the news that big Henry Playfair was a late withdrawal meaning Longergan would step in for him. The convicts also had a late change with Woewodin coming in for B. Johnson. Their out may have been bigger name wise, ours was definitely greater structure wise as the night would prove.
The first half seemed to go extremely quickly (probably partly alcohol induced). Like last week we decided to be really nice and give the opposition a five goal headstart. This would prove to be very costly. The courageous, hard at the ball Cats that we had built a rep for over the past season & a half failed to materialise as we played slow, reactive and timid football. When we actually woke up and realised this wasn't any stroll in the park our delivery into the forward line was at times simply horrid & short sighted. Ottens was the main victim of this as often the ball fell a good 10-15m short of where he was leading to. Ottens being the big, powerful forward he is we often try to isolate him one out. This is fine when we can deliver the ball well, otherwise it leaves him in trouble. We desperately need a professional crumber at his feet all game, he is seldom out marked. He either marks it or brings the ball to ground.
The idea of having Kingsley well up the ground on a flank or wing simply does not work. Firstly, he is one of the softest players in the history of the game when it comes to marking contests across half forward. He achieved a life long goal of taking his first mark above his head on the weekend. Then, in the rare occurrence of winning possession, he doesn't know what to do with it, nor have the skills to hit someone.
Playfair prooved ultimately to be the difference. We greatly missed him across the half forward line as we either bombed it in straight to James Clement or went way too short & slow.
Down 43 points at half time I spent the majority of the half time break with my head in my hands in pure frustration & disbelief. The second half constantly teased us by getting back close to Collingwood only for them to reply with a couple more buffer goals. David Johnson went down with a hamstring injury that should see him out the better part of a month & Josh Hunt celebrated his 50th game in style by getting reported for Striking Chris Egan. Congratulations to Kent "The Duke" Kingsley who kicked his 200th goal in his 100th match, if we had played well I might, just might have cared. The final siren finally put us out of our misery five Alan Didak goals too late. Towards the end of the match the Collingwood faithful showed their maturity by boo-ing some of our players for no reason, going by the intelligence of the old timer sitting in front of me, this was not surprising in the least.
Have we been found out or have our last two losses been of our own devices? We seem to be getting killed by this possession game all of a sudden as Magpie players were repeatedly found all alone everywhere on the ground. We simply take too long to wake up to this game plan, are our midfielders running ahead of the ball too much suddenly?
Collingwoods pressure was very good (as it was expected to be). The amount of times we embarrassingly turned the ball over on the half back line was unbelievable. As was the efforts of Steven King in the last quarter when he tried to kick the ball out of mid-air instead of putting his body on the line. We had worked the ball very well to that point through grit & determination only to be thwarted by King who let the team down after his team-mates only five seconds before had set the example. This effort shouldn't be tolerated by a first gamer let alone our captain!
All in all we didn't deserve the points, but it was another game this season in which we lost despite going inside 50 more times than our opponent, 62-49!
COLLINGWOOD: 5.2, 11.6, 14.11, 18.13 (121)
GEELONG: 3.3, 4.5, 9.10, 14.12 (96)
GOALS – Collingwood: Didak 5, Rusling 2, Caracella 2, T. Cloke 2, Burns 2, Tarrant 2, O'Bree, Maxwell, Holland
Geelong: Kingsley 3, Lonergan 2, Mackie 2, Ablett 2, Ottens 2, Riccardi, Chapman, Ling
INJURIES – Collingwood: Nil
Geelong: D. Johnson (hamstring)
CHANGES – Collingwood: Johnson (corked thigh), replaced in selected side by Woewodin
Geelong: Playfair replaced in selected side by Lonergan
REPORTS - Hunt (Geelong) for striking Egan (Collingwood)
UMPIRES - James, Rowe, Wenn
CROWD - 48,261 at Telstra Dome
A tough night for votes...
5. Kelly
4. Enright
3. Chapman
2. Kingsley
1. Riccardi (for sparking us)
geelongblog.com Player of the Year:
Chapman - 23
Enright - 22
Corey - 15
Ling - 13
Hunt - 12
Milburn - 11
Bartel - 10
Kelly - 10
David Johnson - 9
Ablett - 8
Next week we are taking on the Crows at Kardinia Park on Sunday. 2:10 pm start. The Crows are white hot at the moment coming off a 88 point thumping of Essendon Saturday night & have jumped above us on the ladder. Should be one hell of a battle...if we turn up
Posted by Sammy D at June 5, 2005 09:07 PM