R5 Port v Eagles Sunday 2.10PM

[Aerie]

Do these games even count? Oh well, at least it ends up around even with a thrashing of the Crows Reserves earlier and getting towelled up by the other AFL Reserves team today. Back to the real stuff next week.

[Reddeer]

Where did our much vaunted great depth of talent go today. A few good players absent through injury and we collapse

[wedgetail]

A very 'un-Eagles like' performance today. Poor skills, poor decision making, fumbly, lack of pressure on the ball carrier, numerous broken tackles and physically intimidated. I can't remember a worse performance than this for a long time. Even the debacle at norwood last year was better than today.

[Mr Fuller]

Port far too good today. Unfortunately no positives for the Eagles coming out of this. Loss of Hayes before the game was massive and our experienced midfielders were well down. I hardly noticed them. They were dominated and yet they somehow still racked up big numbers but most of these were ineffectual. I think Redden might be pretty well done. He came up against possibly the best ruckman in the competition at the moment but his inability to get around the ground these days is costly. VB with only 6 possessions as well. Difficult to nominate our best players as no one really won their positions but in no particular order i would go Knights, Giuffreda, Menzel, Jungfer and Stengle.

[gazzamagoo]

Port far too good today. Unfortunately no positives for the Eagles coming out of this. Loss of Hayes before the game was massive and our experienced midfielders were well down. I hardly noticed them. They were dominated and yet they somehow still racked up big numbers but most of these were ineffectual. I think Redden might be pretty well done. He came up against possibly the best ruckman in the competition at the moment but his inability to get around the ground these days is costly. VB with only 6 possessions as well. Difficult to nominate our best players as no one really won their positions but in no particular order i would go Knights, Giuffreda, Menzel, Jungfer and Stengle.

Tsitas had 40 possessions but no mention?

[ferret]

A difficult game to watch. Our linking of chains of play is still a problem. I thought a good positive was the second half played by Zane Williams when moved on to the ball. He ran hard, covered a lot of ground and found a bit of the ball. Maybe a shift further up the ground could be on.

[schimma]

Not often you walk away unhappy with the effort. But yesterday was one of them. Few players pulling out of contests and the skill level was ordinary at best. Yes a few players out. but the effort was not good enough. Only good thing from the day was the pasties and the beers in the bowls club. Port too good. move onto the Mike Ranns this week at Eagle Park

[Eagles Nest]

Very un-Eagles like performance and traditionally we bounce back well from a drubbing.
Badly need Lonergan and his big arse back in the midfield.
Another good test for Sheedy this week.

[Mr Fuller]

Unfortunately we haven't had a good run with injury this year like we did last year.

One of the most unlikely players who has been a big loss for us is Jordan West as this has upset the team structure. With him rucking it would allow Hayes to spend the bulk of his time up forward where we badly miss a tall target to kick to. With Hayes more or less stationed up forward it then allows the Menzels to be those medium leading targets without having to worry about taking that pack mark. They can then play to their strengths. It also means players like VB are under more pressure to be more competitive and fight hard to retain their places.

Lonegan and Much will be important 'ins' when they are back in a few weeks. We just need to keep in the hunt until we get our best team back together again in about 4 weeks time.