Post Match. Saints punish Pies . All comments.

[pietillidie]

This is clearly a case of being underdone. It was always going to be difficult mentally, but being that far off the pace physically makes things uglier.

My main disappointment is how the coaching staff allowed them to enter a season this underdone. Not to mention with such a nasty early fixture.

It might be they knew but couldn't do much about it given the list profile, taking the medicine and hoping to pinch a couple in this early stretch.

A flag in the hand is certainly far better than two in the bush, but the let down is rather unpleasant, that's for sure.

[think positive]

[Geek]

[doriswilgus]

[Magpietothemax]

[Piesnchess]

[Charlie Oneeye]

For those of us who have been following footy for long long time, how many times have we walked away from a few bad losses not knowing where the improvement could possibly come from.

Tonight we made a shitload of skill and decision errors,..
1 tackle inside 50!!!! to their 10 !.
We did a lot of chasing and a lot of 180's fixing our turnovers.

Yet I also saw increasing glimpses of form. Not enough to offest our bad form, but I reckon a few % better, we would have should have beaten the Saints easily.

So we improve ball movement, more options, less turnovers where it hurts, and all of a sudden the good parts of our game will look a lot better.

12 wins got you in the 8 last year.

[What'sinaname]

Dear Fly.

You trust in the process, but the process this year is delivering defects. You have yo recognise this and change the process.

[masoncox]

[i hate carlton]

Gutted.

Going to be hard to go back to back playing like this.

[What'sinaname]

Can someone please tell me what Beau McCreery does to warrant an automatic selection every week? Asking for a friend.

[masoncox]

[warburton lad]

Thirty frees to fifteen.

15 points down and with all the momentum- McInnes gets his arms chopped 20 metres out- no free... then Higgins kicks a goal from outside the boundary line... game essentially over...

The most one-sided display of umpiring this century.

The draw put out by the AFL condemned Collingwood to a tardy start.

We can still make the eight, but if we lose a few more, I would be doing everything to get games into: Macrae, Carmichael, Jath, Allan, Steene, Begg, Ryan and De Mattea.

Any thought of playing McStay, or rushing Murphy back should be put on more ice than Walt Disney...

Prepare for the Next Gen Magpie team.

[Jezza]

The season is almost done and dusted and it's barely started. Either we get our acts together sooner rather than later and we chase our tail for the rest of the season, or we're essentially Geelong 2023 where we have fleeting moments of brilliance, but are ultimately tired and underdone and we amount to nothing. It's really disappointing to be defending the premiership in this manner, but it's only reiterated why I've cherished the 2023 flag so much.

On the match itself, St Kilda destroyed us on turnover. The fumbles and poor use of the footy handed them the game essentially. This was the same issue that surfaced against GWS and Sydney. The opposition applies pressure and we can't handle the heat or transition out of D50 quickly enough. Some horrific turnovers from Moore, Maynard and Sidebottom that cost us dearly.

Our ability to transition from the back half and generate scores was our biggest strength in 2022 and 2023, so to see this aspect of our game go missing is really concerning. Looks like opposition clubs have studied us in depth and have identified ways to cut off our movement. I think the predictability in our style isn't helping us now.

The inclusions in Frampton and McInnes were pretty good. Frampton looked competent down back and stopped St Kilda's talls from taking easy marks inside 50 and McInnes was a honest and reliable forward option. Really disappointed that Fin Macrae started as the sub again. I don't think it's sending the right message to our fringe players and youngsters if we're not going to utilise him to his full extent.

There were small glimpses of what we can do well (halfway through the last quarter being a case in point), but it was too few and far between unfortunately. The squad looks underdone and tired. I've been worried that age is now catching up with us and our Premiership window might be coming to an end. Thankfully, we capitalised on last year before it was slammed shut and our veterans fell off a cliff metaphorically speaking.

The umpiring was atrocious and arguably killed our momentum in the last quarter, but it wasn't the reason for our defeat. It was our mistakes in the defensive 50 that cost us.

Doesn't get any easier with Brisbane next week. We're very likely to be 0-4 heading into Gather Round.

[BenBronx]

The last team to start 0-3 and make the top four was North Melbourne in 2007. The last team to do it and make the Grand Final was North Melbourne in 1976; the year before, they were 0-3 and won the flag.