Reviews

Pre-season farce continues

No Lloyd, no Hird, no Jason Johnson, no Mark Johnson, no Rioli, no Hille... basically Essendon went into the Wizzer Cup game against the blues without a mid-field and without 6 of our best 10 players.

The Blues on the other hand went in with a full strength team, playing Whitnall and Fevola at FF & CHF, Kouta loose to run from half back, Stephens running without check through the midfield...

Of course the Blues were going to win when Sheedy is using Sam Hunt at Full Forward, Mark Bolton as a defensive forward on Kouta and sends Fletcher, Solomon and Allan to the bench before the last quarter had even started.

Why?

Because the whizzer cup promotes mis-matches.

The blues went in determined to win. With a few bad years, and the memberships dropping away, Carlton needs to win games. They aren't toying with their team... they are fine-tunning it.

Essendon on the other hand are trying to work out what to do now that their are some new recruits and some retirements.

Two teams with different motivations. Different motivations lead to different line-ups. Different line-ups lead to mis-matches.

For more on why the pre-season comp is a farce... AND HOW TO FIX IT head over to the 2005 pre-season rant.

Want to see it again? (no... not really I guess) Name a game from Australian football video have every game that's ever been shown on TV, be it free-to-air on 7, 9 or 10 or on Cable via Optus or Foxtel. You can own the video for this game, or any other just by heading over to Australian Football Video.

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