Just when you thought it possibly couldn’t get any worse, it did. Another weekend and another demoralising loss.
I half-heartedly joked during the week that we would be a certainty to lose to North Melbourne since they were lower than us on the ladder. I say half-heartedly because the one-eyed Crows nut inside of me was thinking surely, just surely, we would snap out this rut.
I even tipped us to win. What was I thinking? We barely even got close.
The thing is when you turn up every single week, and have been doing so for more than ten years, a part of you is always going to have faith in your club. That being said over the past decade we’ve seen more good than bad.
These are testing times and they’re challenging the best of us. I know I’m going to cling to my loyalty for the team but there are others out there who will not. And I almost don’t blame them.
It is not easy watching clearance after clearance go straight down the throat of the opposition. Our first term on Sunday afternoon was down right deplorable. When the stats came up on the screen at Etihad at quarter time I gasped in absolute horror. They were 22-3 in North Melbourne’s favour.
To come out straight off the bat and be so non-competitive in an area we’ve been so bad in all year was mind-boggling. And it was so predictable. Rucks go up, Goldstein palms the ball straight down to Swallow and North win the clearance.
Our centre bounces were particularly woeful. Whose grand idea was it to leave one side of the circle unmanned? If you’re not winning a clear hitout every once in a while then you’re not going to get very far.
Only after the quarter time break, once we had already been blasted on the scoreboard, and Neil Craig had given the team a piece of his mind did we decide to play with some intensity around the stoppages enabling us to win the odd one.
Something else that had me scratching my head was the substitution of Jared Petrenko. Now here’s a guy who gets a rough run.
Petrenko was handed the red vest by Brad Symes early into the third term. We had only kicked four goals up until half time with two of those the result of a couple of perfect passes off of Petrenko’s boot.
With minimal inside 50 entries for the game, we lost that one 58-34, and so many of them being low percentage plays if anything we needed more Petrenko’s on the field not less.
Unfortunately though we can’t and we’re seeing guys who appear comfortable with merely going through the paces. This is especially disheartening when our season is heading further south than it is north.
I find myself each week expecting, well, hoping that we’ll fight back from our form slump. But every game the same slipped tackles are there, as are the half efforts and loping runs instead of dashing sprints.
I know I’ve asked this question before but I’ll ask it again. How are the players content walking off the field with their performance? Now they might not be happy but we’re not seeing any sort of change in their attitude on the field at all.
I would think if you were serving up the sort of stuff they are at the moment they would be desperate to salvage the season. They appear anything but. Who takes responsibility? The coaches? The players? Or both?
For the time being I’ll keep waiting, I’ll keep cheering, I’ll keep going and most of all I’ll keep anticipating the return of the competitive footy side we love.
